The Book of the Damned Part 38

That, upon the super-ocean, there are regularized planets, but also that there are tramp worlds:

That astronomers are like mercantile purists who would deny commercial vagabondage.

Our acceptance is that vast celestial vagabonds have been excluded by astronomers, primarily because their irresponsibilities are an affront to the pure and the precise, or to attempted positivism; and secondarily because they have not been seen so very often. The planets steadily reflect the light of the sun: upon this uniformity a system that we call Primary Astronomy has been built up; but now the subject-matter of Advanced Astronomy is data of celestial phenomena that are sometimes light and sometimes dark, varying like some of the satellites of Jupiter, but with a wider range. However, light or dark, they have been seen and reported so often that the only important reason for their exclusion is--that they don't fit in.

With dark bodies that are probably external to our own solar system, I have, in the provincialism that no one can escape, not much concern.

Dark bodies afloat in outer s.p.a.ce would have been d.a.m.ned a few years ago, but now they're sanctioned by Prof. Barnard--and, if he says they're all right, you may think of them without the fear of doing something wrong or ridiculous--the close kinship we note so often between the evil and the absurd--I suppose by the ridiculous I mean the froth of evil. The dark companion of Algol, for instance. Though that's a clear case of celestial miscegenation, the purists, or positivists, admit that's so. In the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Science_, 1915-394, Prof. Barnard writes of an object--he calls it an "object"--in Cephus. His idea is that there are dark, opaque bodies outside this solar system. But in the _Astrophysical Journal_, 1916-1, he modifies into regarding them as "dark nebulae." That's not so interesting.

We accept that Venus, for instance, has often been visited by other worlds, or by super-constructions, from which come ciders and c.o.ke and coal; that sometimes these things have reflected light and have been seen from this earth--by professional astronomers. It will be noted that throughout this chapter our data are accursed Brahmins--as, by hypnosis and inertia, we keep on and keep on saying, just as a good many of the scientists of the 19th century kept on and kept on admitting the power of the system that preceded them--or Continuity would be smashed.

There's a big chance here for us to be instantaneously translated to the Positive Absolute--oh, well--

What I emphasize here is that our d.a.m.ned data are observations by astronomers of the highest standing, excommunicated by astronomers of similar standing--but backed up by the dominant spirit of their era--to which all minds had to equilibrate or be negligible, unheard, submerged.

It would seem sometimes, in this book, as if our revolts were against the dogmatisms and pontifications of single scientists of eminence. This is only a convenience, because it seems necessary to personify. If we look over _Philosophical Transactions_, or the publications of the Royal Astronomical Society, for instance, we see that Herschel, for instance, was as powerless as any boy stargazer, to enforce acceptance of any observation of his that did not harmonize with the system that was growing up as independently of him and all other astronomers, as a phase in the development of an embryo compels all cells to take on appearances concordantly with the design and the predetermined progress and schedule of the whole.

Visitors to Venus:

Evans, _Ways of the Planets_, p. 140:

That, in 1645, a body large enough to look like a satellite was seen near Venus. Four times in the first half of the 18th century, a similar observation was reported. The last report occurred in 1767.

A large body has been seen--seven times, according to _Science Gossip_, 1886-178--near Venus. At least one astronomer, Houzeau, accepted these observations and named the--world, planet, super-construction--"Neith."

His views are mentioned "in pa.s.sing, but without endors.e.m.e.nt," in the _Trans. N.Y. Acad._, 5-249.

Houzeau or someone writing for the magazine-section of a Sunday newspaper--outer darkness for both alike. A new satellite in this solar system might be a little disturbing--though the formulas of Laplace, which were considered final in his day, have survived the admittance of five or six hundred bodies not included in those formulas--a satellite to Venus might be a little disturbing, but would be explained--but a large body approaching a planet--staying awhile--going away--coming back some other time--anchoring, as it were--

Azuria is pretty bad, but Azuria is no worse than Neith.

_Astrophysical Journal_, 1-127:

A light-reflecting body, or a bright spot near Mars: seen Nov. 25, 1894, by Prof. Pickering and others, at the Lowell Observatory, above an unilluminated part of Mars--self-luminous, it would seem--thought to have been a cloud--but estimated to have been about twenty miles away from the planet.

Luminous spot seen moving across the disk of Mercury, in 1799, by Harding and Schroeter. (_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 38-338.)

In the first Bulletin issued by the Lowell Observatory, in 1903, Prof.

Lowell describes a body that was seen on the terminator of Mars, May 20, 1903. On May 27, it was "suspected." If still there, it had moved, we are told, about 300 miles--"probably a dust cloud."

Very conspicuous and brilliant spots seen on the disk of Mars, October and November, 1911. (_Popular Astronomy_, Vol. 19, No. 10.)

So one of them accepted six or seven observations that were in agreement, except that they could not be regularized, upon a world--planet--satellite--and he gave it a name. He named it "Neith."

Monstrator and Elvera and Azuria and Super-Romanimus--

Or heresy and orthodoxy and the oneness of all quasiness, and our ways and means and methods are the very same. Or, if we name things that may not be, we are not of lonely guilt in the nomenclature of absences--

But now Leverrier and "Vulcan."

Leverrier again.

Or to demonstrate the collapsibility of a froth, stick a pin in the largest bubble of it. Astronomy and inflation: and by inflation we mean expansion of the attenuated. Or that the science of Astronomy is a phantom-film distended with myth-stuff--but always our acceptance that it approximates higher to substantiality than did the system that preceded it.

So Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan."

And we repeat, and it will do us small good to repeat. If you be of the ma.s.ses that the astronomers have hypnotized--being themselves hypnotized, or they could not hypnotize others--or that the hypnotist's control is not the masterful power that it is popularly supposed to be, but only transference of state from one hypnotic to another--

If you be of the ma.s.ses that the astronomers have hypnotized, you will not be able even to remember. Ten pages from here, and Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan" will have fallen from your mind, like beans from a magnet, or like data of cold meteorites from the mind of a Thomson.

Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan."

And much the good it will do us to repeat.

But at least temporarily we shall have an impression of a historic fiasco, such as, in our acceptance, could occur only in a quasi-existence.

In 1859, Dr. Lescarbault, an amateur astronomer, of Orgeres, France, announced that, upon March 26, of that year, he had seen a body of planetary size cross the sun. We are in a subject that is now as unholy to the present system as ever were its own subjects to the system that preceded it, or as ever were slanders against miracles to the preceding system. Nevertheless few text-books go so far as quite to disregard this tragedy. The method of the systematists is slightingly to give a few instances of the unholy, and dispose of the few. If it were desirable to them to deny that there are mountains upon this earth, they would record a few observations upon some slight eminences near Orange, N.J., but say that commuters, though estimable persons in several ways, are likely to have their observations mixed. The text-books casually mention a few of the "supposed" observations upon "Vulcan," and then pa.s.s on.

Dr. Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier, who hastened to Orgeres--

Because this announcement a.s.similated with his own calculations upon a planet between Mercury and the sun--

Because this solar system itself has never attained positiveness in the aspect of Regularity: there are to Mercury, as there are to Neptune, phenomena irreconcilable with the formulas, or motions that betray influence by something else.

We are told that Leverrier "satisfied himself as to the substantial accuracy of the reported observation." The story of this investigation is told in _Monthly Notices_, 20-98. It seems too bad to threaten the nave little thing with our rude sophistications, but it is amusingly of the ingenuousness of the age from which present dogmas have survived.

Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier. Leverrier hastened to Orgeres. But he was careful not to tell Lescarbault who he was. Went right in and "subjected Dr. Lescarbault to a very severe cross-examination"--just the way you or I may feel at liberty to go into anybody's home and be severe with people--"pressing him hard step by step"--just as anyone might go into someone else's house and press him hard, though unknown to the hard-pressed one. Not until he was satisfied, did Leverrier reveal his ident.i.ty. I suppose Dr. Lescarbault expressed astonishment. I think there's something utopian about this: it's so unlike the stand-offishness of New York life.

Leverrier gave the name "Vulcan" to the object that Dr. Lescarbault had reported.

By the same means by which he is, even to this day, supposed--by the faithful--to have discovered Neptune, he had already announced the probable existence of an Intra-Mercurial body, or group of bodies. He had five observations besides Lescarbault's upon something that had been seen to cross the sun. In accordance with the mathematical hypnoses of his era, he studied these six transits. Out of them he computed elements giving "Vulcan" a period of about 20 days, or a formula for heliocentric longitude at any time.

But he placed the time of best observation away up in 1877.

But even so, or considering that he still had probably a good many years to live, it may strike one that he was a little rash--that is if one has not gone very deep into the study of hypnoses--that, having "discovered"

Neptune by a method which, in our acceptance, had no more to recommend it than had once equally well-thought-of methods of witch-finding, he should not have taken such chances: that if he was right as to Neptune, but should be wrong as to "Vulcan," his average would be away below that of most fortune-tellers, who could scarcely hope to do business upon a fifty per cent. basis--all that the reasoning of a tyro in hypnoses.

The date:

March 22, 1877.

The scientific world was up on its hind legs nosing the sky. The thing had been done so authoritatively. Never a pope had said a thing with more of the seeming of finality. If six observations correlated, what more could be asked? The Editor of _Nature_, a week before the predicted event, though cautious, said that it is difficult to explain how six observers, unknown to one another, could have data that could be formulated, if they were not related phenomena.

In a way, at this point occurs the crisis of our whole book.

Formulas are against us.

But can astronomic formulas, backed up by observations in agreement, taken many years apart, calculated by a Leverrier, be as meaningless, in a positive sense, as all other quasi-things that we have encountered so far?

The preparations they made, before March 22, 1877. In England, the Astronomer Royal made it the expectation of his life: notified observers at Madras, Melbourne, Sydney, and New Zealand, and arranged with observers in Chili and the United States. M. Struve had prepared for observations in Siberia and j.a.pan--

March 22, 1877--

Not absolutely, hypocritically, I think it's pathetic, myself. If anyone should doubt the sincerity of Leverrier, in this matter, we note, whether it has meaning or not, that a few months later he died.