Just a faint flicker in them, or in one of them, every time we hear of
the "triumphal discovery of Neptune"--this "monumental achievement of
theoretical astronomy," as the text-books call it.
The whole trouble is that we've looked it up.
The text-books omit this:
That, instead of the orbit of Neptune agreeing with the calculations of
Adams and Leverrier, it was so different--that Leverrier said that it
was not the planet of his calculations.
Later it was thought best to say no more upon that subject.
The text-books omit this:
That, in 1846, everyone who knew a sine from a cosine was out sining and
cosining for a planet beyond Uranus.
Two of them guessed right.
To some minds, even after Leverrier's own rejection of Neptune, the word
"guessed" may be objectionable--but, according to Prof. Peirce, of
Harvard, the calculations of Adams and Leverrier would have applied
quite as well to positions many degrees from the position of Neptune.
Or for Prof. Peirce's demonstration that the discovery of Neptune was
only a "happy accident," see _Proc. Amer. Acad. Sciences_, 1-65.
For references, see Lowell's _Evolution of Worlds_.
Or comets: another nebulous resistance to our own notions. As to
eclipses, I have notes upon several of them that did not occur upon
scheduled time, though with differences only of seconds--and one
delightful lost soul, deep-buried, but buried in the ultra-respectable
records of the Royal Astronomical Society, upon an eclipse that did not
occur at all. That delightful, ultra-sponsored thing of perdition is too
good and malicious to be dismissed with passing notice: we'll have him
later.
Throughout the history of astronomy, every comet that has come back upon
predicted time--not that, essentially, there was anything more abstruse
about it than is a prediction that you can make of a postman's
periodicities tomorrow--was advertised for all it was worth. It's the
way reputations are worked up for fortune-tellers by the faithful. The
comets that didn't come back--omitted or explained. Or Encke's comet. It
came back slower and slower. But the astronomers explained. Be almost
absolutely sure of that: they explained. They had it all worked out and
formulated and "proved" why that comet was coming back slower and
slower--and there the damn thing began coming faster and faster.
Halley's comet.
Astronomy--"the perfect science, as we astronomers like to call it."
(Jacoby.)
It's my own notion that if, in a real existence, an astronomer could not
tell one longitude from another, he'd be sent back to this purgatory of
ours until he could meet that simple requirement.
Halley was sent to the Cape of Good Hope to determine its longitude. He
got it degrees wrong. He gave to Africa's noble Roman promontory a
retrousse twist that would take the pride out of any Kaffir.
We hear everlastingly of Halley's comet. It came back--maybe. But,
unless we look the matter up in contemporaneous records, we hear nothing
of--the Leonids, for instance. By the same methods as those by which
Halley's comet was predicted, the Leonids were predicted. November,
1898--no Leonids. It was explained. They had been perturbed. They would
appear in November, 1899. November, 1899--November, 1900--no Leonids.
My notion of astronomic accuracy:
Who could not be a prize marksman, if only his hits be recorded?
As to Halley's comet, of 1910--everybody now swears he saw it. He has to
perjure himself: otherwise he'd be accused of having no interest in
great, inspiring things that he's never given any attention to.
Regard this:
That there never is a moment when there is not some comet in the sky.
Virtually there is no year in which several new comets are not
discovered, so plentiful are they. Luminous fleas on a vast black
dog--in popular impressions, there is no realization of the extent to
which this solar system is flea-bitten.
If a comet have not the orbit that astronomers have
predicted--perturbed. If--like Halley's comet--it be late--even a year
late--perturbed. When a train is an hour late, we have small opinion of
the predictions of timetables. When a comet's a year late, all we ask
is--that it be explained. We hear of the inflation and arrogance of
astronomers. My own acceptance is not that they are imposing upon us:
that they are requiting us. For many of us priests no longer function to
give us seeming rapport with Perfection, Infallibility--the Positive
Absolute. Astronomers have stepped forward to fill a vacancy--with
quasi-phantomosity--but, in our acceptance, with a higher approximation
to substantiality than had the attenuations that preceded them. I should
say, myself, that all that we call progress is not so much response to
"urge" as it is response to a hiatus--or if you want something to grow
somewhere, dig out everything else in its area. So I have to accept that
the positive assurances of astronomers are necessary to us, or the
blunderings, evasions and disguises of astronomers would never be
tolerated: that, given such latitude as they are permitted to take, they
could not be very disastrously mistaken. Suppose the comet called
Halley's had not appeared--
Early in 1910, a far more important comet than the anaemic luminosity
said to be Halley's, appeared. It was so brilliant that it was visible
in daylight. The astronomers would have been saved anyway. If this other
comet did not have the predicted orbit--perturbation. If you're going to
Coney Island, and predict there'll be a special kind of a pebble on the
beach, I don't see how you can disgrace yourself, if some other pebble
will do just as well--because the feeble thing said to have been seen in
1910 was no more in accord with the sensational descriptions given out
by astronomers in advance than is a pale pebble with a brick-red
boulder.
I predict that next Wednesday, a large Chinaman, in evening clothes,
will cross Broadway, at 42nd Street, at 9 P.M. He doesn't, but a
tubercular Jap in a sailor's uniform does cross Broadway, at 35th
Street, Friday, at noon. Well, a Jap is a perturbed Chinaman, and
clothes are clothes.
I remember the terrifying predictions made by the honest and credulous
astronomers, who must have been themselves hypnotized, or they could not
have hypnotized the rest of us, in 1909. Wills were made. Human life
might be swept from this planet. In quasi-existence, which is
essentially Hibernian, that would be no reason why wills should not be
made. The less excitable of us did expect at least some pretty good
fireworks.
I have to admit that it is said that, in New York, a light was seen in
the sky.
It was about as terrifying as the scratch of a match on the seat of some
breeches half a mile away.
It was not on time.
Though I have heard that a faint nebulosity, which I did not see,
myself, though I looked when I was told to look, was seen in the sky, it
appeared several days after the time predicted.
A hypnotized host of imbeciles of us: told to look up at the sky: we
did--like a lot of pointers hypnotized by a partridge.
The effect:
Almost everybody now swears that he saw Halley's comet, and that it was
a glorious spectacle.
An interesting circumstance here is that seemingly we are trying to
discredit astronomers because astronomers oppose us--that's not my
impression. We shall be in the Brahmin caste of the hell of the
Baptists. Almost all our data, in some regiments of this procession, are
observations by astronomers, few of them mere amateur astronomers. It is
the System that opposes us. It is the System that is suppressing
astronomers. I think we pity them in their captivity. Ours is not
malice--in a positive sense. It's chivalry--somewhat. Unhappy
astronomers looking out from high towers in which they are
imprisoned--we appear upon the horizon.
But, as I have said, our data do not relate to some especial other
world. I mean very much what a savage upon an ocean island might
vaguely think of in his speculations--not upon some other land, but
complexes of continents and their phenomena: cities, factories in
cities, means of communication--
Now all the other savages would know of a few vessels sailing in their
regular routes, passing this island in regularized periodicities. The
tendency in these minds would be expression of the universal tendency
toward positivism--or Completeness--or conviction that these few
regularized vessels constituted all. Now I think of some especial savage
who suspects otherwise--because he's very backward and unimaginative and
insensible to the beautiful ideals of the others: not piously occupied,
like the others, in bowing before impressive-looking sticks of wood;
dishonestly taking time for his speculations, while the others are
patriotically witch-finding. So the other higher and nobler savages know
about the few regularized vessels: know when to expect them; have their
periodicities all worked out; just about when vessels will pass, or
eclipse each other--explaining that all vagaries were due to atmospheric
conditions.
They'd come out strong in explaining.
You can't read a book upon savages without noting what resolute
explainers they are.
They'd say that all this mechanism was founded upon the mutual
attraction of the vessels--deduced from the fall of a monkey from a palm
tree--or, if not that, that devils were pushing the vessels--something
of the kind.
Storms.
Debris, not from these vessels, cast up by the waves.
Disregarded.
How can one think of something and something else, too?
I'm in the state of mind of a savage who might find upon a shore, washed
up by the same storm, buoyant parts of a piano and a paddle that was
carved by cruder hands than his own: something light and summery from
India, and a fur overcoat from Russia--or all science, though
approximating wider and wider, is attempt to conceive of India in terms
of an ocean island, and of Russia in terms of India so interpreted.
Though I am trying to think of Russia and India in world-wide terms, I
cannot think that that, or the universalizing of the local, is cosmic
purpose. The higher idealist is the positivist who tries to localize
the universal, and is in accord with cosmic purpose: the super-dogmatist
of a local savage who can hold out, without a flurry of doubt, that a
piano washed up on a beach is the trunk of a palm tree that a shark has
bitten, leaving his teeth in it. So we fear for the soul of Dr. Gray,
because he did not devote his whole life to that one stand that, whether
possible or inconceivable, thousands of fishes had been cast from one
bucket.
So, unfortunately for myself, if salvation be desirable, I look out
widely but amorphously, indefinitely and heterogeneously. If I say I
conceive of another world that is now in secret communication with
certain esoteric inhabitants of this earth, I say I conceive of still
other worlds that are trying to establish communication with all the
inhabitants of this earth. I fit my notions to the data I find. That is
supposed to be the right and logical and scientific thing to do; but it
is no way to approximate to form, system, organization. Then I think I
conceive of other worlds and vast structures that pass us by, within a
few miles, without the slightest desire to communicate, quite as tramp
vessels pass many islands without particularizing one from another. Then
I think I have data of a vast construction that has often come to this
earth, dipped into an ocean, submerged there a while, then going
away--Why? I'm not absolutely sure. How would an Eskimo explain a
vessel, sending ashore for coal, which is plentiful upon some Arctic
beaches, though of unknown use to the natives, then sailing away, with
no interest in the natives?
A great difficulty in trying to understand vast constructions that show
no interest in us:
The notion that we must be interesting.
I accept that, though we're usually avoided, probably for moral reasons,
sometimes this earth has been visited by explorers. I think that the
notion that there have been extra-mundane visitors to China, within what
we call the historic period, will be only ordinarily absurd, when we
come to that datum.
I accept that some of the other worlds are of conditions very similar to
our own. I think of others that are very different--so that visitors
from them could not live here--without artificial adaptations.
How some of them could breathe our attenuated air, if they came from a
gelatinous atmosphere--
Masks.
The masks that have been found in ancient deposits.
Most of them are of stone, and are said to have been ceremonial regalia
of savages--
But the mask that was found in Sullivan County, Missouri, in 1879
(_American Antiquarian_, 3-336).
It is made of iron and silver.
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