Vast thing, black and poised, like a crow, over the moon.
But only because it's more circumstantial, and because it has
corroboration, do I think it more extraordinary than--
Vast poised thing, black as a crow, over the moon.
Mr. H.C. Russell, who was usually as orthodox as anybody, I suppose--at
least, he wrote "F.R.A.S." after his name--tells in the _Observatory_,
2-374, one of the wickedest, or most preposterous, stories that we have
so far exhumed:
That he and another astronomer, G.D. Hirst, were in the Blue fountains,
near Sydney, N.S.W., and Mr. Hirst was looking at the moon--
He saw on the moon what Russell calls "one of those remarkable facts,
which being seen should be recorded, although no explanation can at
present be offered."
That may be so. It is very rarely done. Our own expression upon
evolution by successive dominants and their correlates is against it. On
the other hand, we express that every era records a few observations out
of harmony with it, but adumbratory or preparatory to the spirit of
eras still to come. It's very rarely done. Lashed by the phantom-scourge
of a now passing era, the world of astronomers is in a state of
terrorism, though of a highly attenuated, modernized, devitalized kind.
Let an astronomer see something that is not of the conventional,
celestial sights, or something that it is "improper" to see--his very
dignity is in danger. Some one of the corralled and scourged may stick a
smile into his back. He'll be thought of unkindly.
With a hardihood that is unusual in his world of ethereal
sensitivenesses, Russell says, of Hirst's observation:
"He found a large part of it covered with a dark shade, quite as dark as
the shadow of the earth during an eclipse of the moon."
But the climax of hardihood or impropriety or wickedness,
preposterousness or enlightenment:
"One could hardly resist the conviction that it was a shadow, yet it
could not be the shadow of any known body."
Richard Proctor was a man of some liberality. After a while we shall
have a letter, which once upon a time we'd have called delirious--don't
know that we could read such a thing now, for the first time, without
incredulous laughter--which Mr. Proctor permitted to be published in
_Knowledge_. But a dark, unknown world that could cast a shadow upon a
large part of the moon, perhaps extending far beyond the limb of the
moon; a shadow as deep as the shadow of this earth--
Too much for Mr. Proctor's politeness.
I haven't read what he said, but it seems to have been a little coarse.
Russell says that Proctor "freely used" his name in the _Echo_, of March
14, 1879, ridiculing this observation which had been made by Russell as
well as Hirst. If it hadn't been Proctor, it would have been someone
else--but one notes that the attack came out in a newspaper. There is no
discussion of this remarkable subject, no mention in any other
astronomic journal. The disregard was almost complete--but we do note
that the columns of the _Observatory_ were open to Russell to answer
Proctor.
In the answer, I note considerable intermediateness. Far back in 1879,
it would have been a beautiful positivism, if Russell had said--
"There was a shadow on the moon. Absolutely it was cast by an unknown
body."
According to our religion, if he had then given all his time to the
maintaining of this one stand, of course breaking all friendships, all
ties with his fellow astronomers, his apotheosis would have occurred,
greatly assisted by means well known to quasi-existence when its
compromises and evasions, and phenomena that are partly this and partly
that, are flouted by the definite and uncompromising. It would be
impossible in a real existence, but Mr. Russell, of quasi-existence,
says that he did resist the conviction; that he had said that one could
"hardly resist"; and most of his resentment is against Mr. Proctor's
thinking that he had not resisted. It seems too bad--if apotheosis be
desirable.
The point in Intermediatism here is:
Not that to adapt to the conditions of quasi-existence is to have what
is called success in quasi-existence, but is to lose one's soul--
But is to lose "one's" chance of attaining soul, self, or entity.
One indignation quoted from Proctor interests us:
"What happens on the moon may at any time happen to this earth."
Or:
That is just the teaching of this department of Advanced Astronomy:
That Russell and Hirst saw the sun eclipsed relatively to the moon by a
vast dark body:
That many times have eclipses occurred relatively to this earth, by
vast, dark bodies:
That there have been many eclipses that have not been recognized as
eclipses by scientific kindergartens.
There is a merger, of course. We'll take a look at it first--that, after
all, it may have been a shadow that Hirst and Russell saw, but the only
significance is that the sun was eclipsed relatively to the moon by a
cosmic haze of some kind, or a swarm of meteors close together, or a
gaseous discharge left behind by a comet. My own acceptance is that
vagueness of shadow is a function of vagueness of intervention; that a
shadow as dense as the shadow of this earth is cast by a body denser
than hazes and swarms. The information seems definite enough in this
respect--"quite as dark as the shadow of this earth during the eclipse
of the moon."
Though we may not always be as patient toward them as we should be, it
is our acceptance that the astronomic primitives have done a great deal
of good work: for instance, in the allaying of fears upon this earth.
Sometimes it may seem as if all science were to us very much like what a
red flag is to bulls and anti-socialists. It's not that: it's more like
what unsquare meals are to bulls and anti-socialists--not the
scientific, but the insufficient. Our acceptance is that Evil is the
negative state, by which we mean the state of maladjustment, discord,
ugliness, disorganization, inconsistency, injustice, and so on--as
determined in Intermediateness, not by real standards, but only by
higher approximations to adjustment, harmony, beauty, organization,
consistency, justice, and so on. Evil is outlived virtue, or incipient
virtue that has not yet established itself, or any other phenomenon that
is not in seeming adjustment, harmony, consistency with a dominant. The
astronomers have functioned bravely in the past. They've been good for
business: the big interests think kindly, if at all, of them. It's bad
for trade to have an intense darkness come upon an unaware community and
frighten people out of their purchasing values. But if an obscuration be
foretold, and if it then occur--may seem a little uncanny--only a
shadow--and no one who was about to buy a pair of shoes runs home
panic-stricken and saves the money.
Upon general principles we accept that astronomers have
quasi-systematized data of eclipses--or have included some and
disregarded others.
They have done well.
They have functioned.