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. Dick, 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 shining 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 damned 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 pronounced.
He says:
"If it will fit one of Leverrier's orbits"--
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 damned 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 assuredly 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: