The Book of the Damned Part 40

Fritsche, Stark, De Cuppis, Sidebotham, Lescarbault, Lummis, Gruthinson, De Vico, Scott, Wray, Russell, Hind, Lowe, Coumbray, Weber, Standacher, Lichtenberg, Dangos, Hoffman, Schmidt, Lofft, Steinheibel, Pastorff--

These are only the observations conventionally listed relatively to an Intra-Mercurial planet. They are formidable enough to prevent our being diverted, as if it were all the dream of a lonely amateur--but they're a mere advance-guard. From now on other data of large celestial bodies, some dark and some reflecting light, will pa.s.s and pa.s.s and keep on pa.s.sing--

So that some of us will remember a thing or two, after the procession's over--possibly.

Taking up only one of the listed observations--

Or our impression that the discrediting of Leverrier has nothing to do with the acceptability of these data:

In the London _Times_, Jan. 10, 1860, is Benjamin Scott's account of his observation:

That, in the summer of 1847, he had seen a body that had seemed to be the size of Venus, crossing the sun. He says that, hardly believing the evidence of his sense of sight, he had looked for someone, whose hopes or ambitions would not make him so subject to illusion. He had told his little son, aged five years, to look through the telescope. The child had exclaimed that he had seen "a little balloon" crossing the sun.

Scott says that he had not had sufficient self-reliance to make public announcement of his remarkable observation at the time, but that, in the evening of the same day, he had told Dr. d.i.c.k, F.R.A.S., who had cited other instances. In the _Times_, Jan. 12, 1860, is published a letter from Richard Abbott, F.R.A.S.: that he remembered Mr. Scott's letter to him upon this observation, at the time of the occurrence.

I suppose that, at the beginning of this chapter, one had the notion that, by hard scratching through musty old records we might rake up vague, more than doubtful data, distortable into what's called evidence of unrecognized worlds or constructions of planetary size--

But the high authenticity and the support and the modernity of these of the accursed that we are now considering--

And our acceptance that ours is a quasi-existence, in which above all other things, hopes, ambitions, emotions, motivations, stands Attempt to Positivize: that we are here considering an attempt to systematize that is sheer fanaticism in its disregard of the unsystematizable--that it represented the highest good in the 19th century--that it is mono-mania, but heroic mono-mania that was quasi-divine in the 19th century--

But that this isn't the 19th century.

As a doubly sponsored Brahmin--in the regard of Baptists--the objects of July 29, 1878, stand out and proclaim themselves so that nothing but disregard of the intensity of mono-mania can account for their reception by the system:

Or the total eclipse of July 29, 1878, and the reports by Prof. Watson, from Rawlins, Wyoming, and by Prof. Swift, from Denver, Colorado: that they had seen two s.h.i.+ning objects at a considerable distance from the sun.

It's quite in accord with our general expression: not that there is an Intra-Mercurial planet, but that there are different bodies, many vast things; near this earth sometimes, near the sun sometimes; orbitless worlds, which, because of scarcely any data of collisions, we think of as under navigable control--or dirigible super-constructions.

Prof. Watson and Prof. Swift published their observations.

Then the disregard that we cannot think of in terms of ordinary, sane exclusions.

The text-book systematists begin by telling us that the trouble with these observations is that they disagree widely: there is considerable respectfulness, especially for Prof. Swift, but we are told that by coincidence these two astronomers, hundreds of miles apart, were illuded: their observations were so different--

Prof. Swift (_Nature_, Sept. 19, 1878):

That his own observation was "in close approximation to that given by Prof. Watson."

In the _Observatory_, 2-161, Swift says that his observations and Watson's were "confirmatory of each other."

The faithful try again:

That Watson and Swift mistook stars for other bodies.

In the _Observatory_, 2-193, Prof. Watson says that he had previously committed to memory all stars near the sun, down to the seventh magnitude--

And he's d.a.m.ned anyway.

How such exclusions work out is shown by Lockyer (_Nature_, Aug. 20, 1878). He says: "There is little doubt that an Intra-Mercurial planet has been discovered by Prof. Watson."

That was before excommunication was p.r.o.nounced.

He says:

"If it will fit one of Leverrier's...o...b..ts"--

It didn't fit.

In _Nature_, 21-301, Prof. Swift says:

"I have never made a more valid observation, nor one more free from doubt."

He's d.a.m.ned anyway.

We shall have some data that will not live up to most rigorous requirements, but, if anyone would like to read how carefully and minutely these two sets of observations were made, see Prof. Swift's detailed description in the _Am. Jour. Sci._, 116-313; and the technicalities of Prof. Watson's observations in _Monthly Notices_, 38-525.

Our own acceptance upon dirigible worlds, which is a.s.suredly enough, more nearly real than attempted concepts of large planets relatively near this earth, moving in orbits, but visible only occasionally; which more nearly approximates to reasonableness than does wholesale slaughter of Swift and Watson and Fritsche and Stark and De Cuppis--but our own acceptance is so painful to so many minds that, in another of the charitable moments that we have now and then for the sake of contrast, we offer relief:

The things seen high in the sky by Swift and Watson--

Well, only two months before--the horse and the barn--

We go on with more observations by astronomers, recognizing that it is the very thing that has given them life, sustained them, held them together, that has crushed all but the quasi-gleam of independent life out of them. Were they not systematized, they could not be at all, except sporadically and without sustenance. They are systematized: they must not vary from the conditions of the system: they must not break away for themselves.

The two great commandments:

Thou shalt not break Continuity;

Thou shalt try.

We go on with these disregarded data, some of which, many of which, are of the highest degree of acceptability. It is the System that pulls back its variations, as this earth is pulling back the Matterhorn. It is the System that nourishes and rewards, and also freezes out life with the chill of disregard. We do note that, before excommunication is p.r.o.nounced, orthodox journals do liberally enough record una.s.similable observations.

All things merge away into everything else.

That is Continuity.

So the System merges away and evades us when we try to focus against it.

We have complained a great deal. At least we are not so dull as to have the delusion that we know just exactly what it is that we are complaining about. We speak seemingly definitely enough of "the System,"

but we're building upon observations by members of that very system. Or what we are doing--gathering up the loose heresies of the orthodox. Of course "the System" fringes and ravels away, having no real outline. A Swift will antagonize "the System," and a Lockyer will call him back; but, then, a Lockyer will vary with a "meteoric hypothesis," and a Swift will, in turn, represent "the System." This state is to us typical of all intermediatist phenomena; or that not conceivably is anything really anything, if its parts are likely to be their own opposites at any time. We speak of astronomers--as if there were real astronomers--but who have lost their ident.i.ty in a System--as if it were a real System--but behind that System is plainly a rapport, or loss of ident.i.ty in the Spirit of an Era.

Bodies that have looked like dark bodies, and lights that may have been sunlight reflected from inter-planetary--objects, ma.s.ses, constructions--

Lights that have been seen upon--or near?--the moon:

In _Philosophical Transactions_, 82-27, is Herschel's report upon many luminous points, which he saw upon--or near?--the moon, during an eclipse. Why they should be luminous, whereas the moon itself was dark, would get us into a lot of trouble--except that later we shall, or we sha'n't, accept that many times have luminous objects been seen close to this earth--at night.

But numerousness is a new factor, or new disturbance, to our explorations--