were able without having succeeded in detecting any such apparent
motion among the stars. Here was a mystery which they could not solve.
Either the Copernican system was not true, after all, and the earth did
not move in an orbit, or the stars were at such immense distances that
the whole immeasurable orbit of the earth is a mere point in
comparison. Philosophers could not believe that the Creator would waste
room by allowing the inconceivable spaces which appeared to lie between
our system and the fixed stars to remain unused, and so thought there
must be something wrong in the theory of the earth's motion.
Not until the nineteenth century was well in progress did the most
skilful observers of their time, Bessel and Struve, having at command
the most refined instruments which science was then able to devise,
discover the reality of the parallax of the stars, and show that the
nearest of these bodies which they could find was more than 400,000
times as far as the 93,000,000 of miles which separate the earth from
the sun. During the half-century and more which has elapsed since this
discovery, astronomers have been busily engaged in fathoming the
heavenly depths. The nearest star they have been able to find is about
280,000 times the sun's distance. A dozen or a score more are within
1,000,000 times that distance. Beyond this all is unfathomable by any
sounding-line yet known to man.
The results of these astronomical measures are stupendous beyond
conception. No mere statement in numbers conveys any idea of it. Nearly
all the brighter stars are known to be flying through space at speeds
which generally range between ten and forty or fifty miles per second,
some slower and some swifter, even up to one or two hundred miles a
second. Such a speed would carry us across the Atlantic while we were
reading two or three of these sentences. These motions take place some
in one direction and some in another. Some of the stars are coming
almost straight towards us. Should they reach us, and pass through our
solar system, the result would be destructive to our earth, and perhaps
to our sun.
Are we in any danger? No, because, however madly they may come, whether
ten, twenty, or one hundred miles per second, so many millions of years
must elapse before they reach us that we need give ourselves no concern
in the matter. Probably none of them are coming straight to us; their
course deviates just a hair's-breadth from our system, but that
hair's-breadth is so large a quantity that when the millions of years
elapse their course will lie on one side or the other of our system and
they will do no harm to our planet; just as a bullet fired at an insect
a mile away would be nearly sure to miss it in one direction or the
other.
Our instrument makers have constructed telescopes more and more
powerful, and with these the whole number of stars visible is carried
up into the millions, say perhaps to fifty or one hundred millions. For
aught we know every one of those stars may have planets like our own
circling round it, and these planets may be inhabited by beings equal
to ourselves. To suppose that our globe is the only one thus inhabited
is something so unlikely that no one could expect it. It would be very
nice to know something about the people who may inhabit these bodies,
but we must await our translation to another sphere before we can know
anything on the subject. Meanwhile, we have gained what is of more
value than gold or silver; we have learned that creation transcends all
our conceptions, and our ideas of its Author are enlarged accordingly.
XV
AN ASTRONOMICAL FRIENDSHIP
There are few men with whom I would like so well to have a quiet talk
as with Father Hell. I have known more important and more interesting
men, but none whose acquaintance has afforded me a serener
satisfaction, or imbued me with an ampler measure of a feeling that I
am candid enough to call self-complacency. The ties that bind us are
peculiar. When I call him my friend, I do not mean that we ever
hobnobbed together. But if we are in sympathy, what matters it that he
was dead long before I was born, that he lived in one century and I in
another? Such differences of generation count for little in the
brotherhood of astronomy, the work of whose members so extends through
all time that one might well forget that he belongs to one century or
to another.
Father Hell was an astronomer. Ask not whether he was a very great one,
for in our science we have no infallible gauge by which we try men and
measure their stature. He was a lover of science and an indefatigable
worker, and he did what in him lay to advance our knowledge of the
stars. Let that suffice. I love to fancy that in some other sphere,
either within this universe of ours or outside of it, all who have
successfully done this may some time gather and exchange greetings.
Should this come about there will be a few--Hipparchus and Ptolemy,
Copernicus and Newton, Galileo and Herschel--to be surrounded by
admiring crowds. But these men will have as warm a grasp and as kind a
word for the humblest of their followers, who has merely discovered a
comet or catalogued a nebula, as for the more brilliant of their
brethren.
My friend wrote the letters S. J. after his name. This would indicate
that he had views and tastes which, in some points, were very different
from my own. But such differences mark no dividing line in the
brotherhood of astronomy. My testimony would count for nothing were I
called as witness for the prosecution in a case against the order to
which my friend belonged. The record would be very short: Deponent
saith that he has at various times known sundry members of the said
order; and that they were lovers of sound learning, devoted to the
discovery and propagation of knowledge; and further deponent saith not.
If it be true that an undevout astronomer is mad, then was Father Hell
the sanest of men. In his diary we find entries like these:
"Benedicente Deo, I observed the Sun on the meridian to-day.... Deo
quoque benedicente, I to-day got corresponding altitudes of the Sun's
upper limb." How he maintained the simplicity of his faith in the true
spirit of the modern investigator is shown by his proceedings during a
momentous voyage along the coast of Norway, of which I shall presently
speak. He and his party were passengers on a Norwegian vessel. For
twelve consecutive days they had been driven about by adverse storms,
threatened with shipwreck on stony cliffs, and finally compelled to
take refuge in a little bay, with another ship bound in the same
direction, there to wait for better weather.
Father Hell was philosopher enough to know that unusual events do not
happen without cause. Perhaps he would have undergone a week of storm
without its occurring to him to investigate the cause of such a bad
spell of weather. But when he found the second week approaching its end
and yet no sign of the sun appearing or the wind abating, he was
satisfied that something must be wrong. So he went to work in the
spirit of the modern physician who, when there is a sudden outbreak of
typhoid fever, looks at the wells and examines their water with the
microscope to find the microbes that must be lurking somewhere. He
looked about, and made careful inquiries to find what wickedness
captain and crew had been guilty of to bring such a punishment. Success
soon rewarded his efforts. The King of Denmark had issued a regulation
that no fish or oil should be sold along the coast except by the
regular dealers in those articles. And the vessel had on board
contraband fish and blubber, to be disposed of in violation of this law.
The astronomer took immediate and energetic measures to insure the
public safety. He called the crew together, admonished them of their
sin, the suffering they were bringing on themselves, and the necessity
of getting back to their families. He exhorted them to throw the fish
overboard, as the only measure to secure their safety. In the goodness
of his heart, he even offered to pay the value of the jettison as soon
as the vessel reached Drontheim.
But the descendants of the Vikings were stupid and unenlightened
men--"educatione sua et professione homines crassissimi"--and would not
swallow the medicine so generously offered. They claimed that, as they
had bought the fish from the Russians, their proceedings were quite
lawful. As for being paid to throw the fish overboard, they must have
spot cash in advance or they would not do it.
After further fruitless conferences, Father Hell determined to escape
the danger by transferring his party to the other vessel. They had not
more than got away from the wicked crew than Heaven began to smile on
their act--"factum comprobare Deus ipse videtur"--the clouds cleared
away, the storm ceased to rage, and they made their voyage to
Copenhagen under sunny skies. I regret to say that the narrative is
silent as to the measure of storm subsequently awarded to the homines
crassissimi of the forsaken vessel.
For more than a century Father Hell had been a well-known figure in
astronomical history. His celebrity was not, however, of such a kind as
the Royal Astronomer of Austria that he was ought to enjoy. A not
unimportant element in his fame was a suspicion of his being a black
sheep in the astronomical flock. He got under this cloud through
engaging in a trying and worthy enterprise. On June 3, 1769, an event
occurred which had for generations been anticipated with the greatest
interest by the whole astronomical world. This was a transit of Venus
over the disk of the sun. Our readers doubtless know that at that time
such a transit afforded the most accurate method known of determining
the distance of the earth from the sun. To attain this object, parties
were sent to the most widely separated parts of the globe, not only
over wide stretches of longitude, but as near as possible to the two
poles of the earth. One of the most favorable and important regions of
observation was Lapland, and the King of Denmark, to whom that country
then belonged, interested himself in getting a party sent thither.
After a careful survey of the field he selected Father Hell, Chief of
the Observatory at Vienna, and well known as editor and publisher of an
annual ephemeris, in which the movements and aspects of the heavenly
bodies were predicted. The astronomer accepted the mission and
undertook what was at that time a rather hazardous voyage. His station
was at Vardo in the region of the North Cape. What made it most
advantageous for the purpose was its being situated several degrees
within the Arctic Circle, so that on the date of the transit the sun
did not set. The transit began when the sun was still two or three
hours from his midnight goal, and it ended nearly an equal time
afterwards. The party consisted of Hell himself, his friend and
associate, Father Sajnovics, one Dominus Borgrewing, of whom history,
so far as I know, says nothing more, and an humble individual who in
the record receives no other designation than "Familias." This implies,
we may suppose, that he pitched the tent and made the coffee. If he did
nothing but this we might pass him over in silence. But we learn that
on the day of the transit he stood at the clock and counted the
all-important seconds while the observations were going on.
The party was favored by cloudless weather, and made the required
observations with entire success. They returned to Copenhagen, and
there Father Hell remained to edit and publish his work. Astronomers
were naturally anxious to get the results, and showed some impatience
when it became known that Hell refused to announce them until they were
all reduced and printed in proper form under the auspices of his royal
patron. While waiting, the story got abroad that he was delaying the
work until he got the results of observations made elsewhere, in order
to "doctor" his own and make them fit in with the others. One went so
far as to express a suspicion that Hell had not seen the transit at
all, owing to clouds, and that what he pretended to publish were pure
fabrications. But his book came out in a few months in such good form
that this suspicion was evidently groundless. Still, the fears that the
observations were not genuine were not wholly allayed, and the results
derived from them were, in consequence, subject to some doubt. Hell
himself considered the reflections upon his integrity too contemptible
to merit a serious reply. It is said that he wrote to some one offering
to exhibit his journal free from interlineations or erasures, but it
does not appear that there is any sound authority for this statement.
What is of some interest is that he published a determination of the
parallax of the sun based on the comparison of his own observations
with those made at other stations. The result was 8".70. It was then,
and long after, supposed that the actual value of the parallax was
about 8".50, and the deviation of Hell's result from this was
considered to strengthen the doubt as to the correctness of his work.
It is of interest to learn that, by the most recent researches, the
number in question must be between 8".75 and 8".80, so that in reality
Hell's computations came nearer the truth than those generally current
during the century following his work.
Thus the matter stood for sixty years after the transit, and for a
generation after Father Hell had gone to his rest. About 1830 it was
found that the original journal of his voyage, containing the record of
his work as first written down at the station, was still preserved at
the Vienna Observatory. Littrow, then an astronomer at Vienna, made a
critical examination of this record in order to determine whether it
had been tampered with. His conclusions were published in a little book
giving a transcript of the journal, a facsimile of the most important
entries, and a very critical description of the supposed alterations
made in them. He reported in substance that the original record had
been so tampered with that it was impossible to decide whether the
observations as published were genuine or not. The vital figures, those
which told the times when Venus entered upon the sun, had been erased,
and rewritten with blacker ink. This might well have been done after
the party returned to Copenhagen. The case against the observer seemed
so well made out that professors of astronomy gave their hearers a
lesson in the value of truthfulness, by telling them how Father Hell
had destroyed what might have been very good observations by trying to
make them appear better than they really were.
In 1883 I paid a visit to Vienna for the purpose of examining the great
telescope which had just been mounted in the observatory there by
Grubb, of Dublin. The weather was so unfavorable that it was necessary
to remain two weeks, waiting for an opportunity to see the stars. One
evening I visited the theatre to see Edwin Booth, in his celebrated
tour over the Continent, play King Lear to the applauding Viennese. But
evening amusements cannot be utilized to kill time during the day.
Among the works I had projected was that of rediscussing all the
observations made on the transits of Venus which had occurred in 1761
and 1769, by the light of modern discovery. As I have already remarked,
Hell's observations were among the most important made, if they were
only genuine. So, during my almost daily visits to the observatory, I
asked permission of the director to study Hell's manuscript, which was
deposited in the library of the institution. Permission was freely
given, and for some days I pored over the manuscript. It is a very
common experience in scientific research that a subject which seems
very unpromising when first examined may be found more and more
interesting as one looks further into it. Such was the case here. For
some time there did not seem any possibility of deciding the question
whether the record was genuine. But every time I looked at it some new
point came to light. I compared the pages with Littrow's published
description and was struck by a seeming want of precision, especially
when he spoke of the ink with which the record had been made. Erasers
were doubtless unknown in those days--at least our astronomer had none
on his expedition--so when he found he had written the wrong word he
simply wiped the place off with, perhaps, his finger and wrote what he
wanted to say. In such a case Littrow described the matter as erased
and new matter written. When the ink flowed freely from the quill pen
it was a little dark. Then Littrow said a different kind of ink had
been used, probably after he had got back from his journey. On the
other hand, there was a very singular case in which there had been a
subsequent interlineation in ink of quite a different tint, which
Littrow said nothing about. This seemed so curious that I wrote in my
notes as follows:
"That Littrow, in arraying his proofs of Hell's forgery, should have
failed to dwell upon the obvious difference between this ink and that
with which the alterations were made leads me to suspect a defect in
his sense of color."
The more I studied the description and the manuscript the stronger this
impression became. Then it occurred to me to inquire whether perhaps
such could have been the case. So I asked Director Weiss whether
anything was known as to the normal character of Littrow's power of
distinguishing colors. His answer was prompt and decisive. "Oh yes,
Littrow was color-blind to red. He could not distinguish between the
color of Aldebaran and the whitest star." No further research was
necessary. For half a century the astronomical world had based an
impression on the innocent but mistaken evidence of a color-blind
man--respecting the tints of ink in a manuscript.
It has doubtless happened more than once that when an intimate friend
has suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, the reader has ardently
wished that it were possible to whisper just one word of appreciation
across the dark abyss. And so it is that I have ever since felt that I
would like greatly to tell Father Hell the story of my work at Vienna
in 1883.
XVI
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR
[Footnote: Presidential address at the opening of the International
Congress of Arts and Science, St. Louis Exposition, September 21: 1904.]
As we look at the assemblage gathered in this hall, comprising so many
names of widest renown in every branch of learning--we might almost say
in every field of human endeavor--the first inquiry suggested must be
after the object of our meeting. The answer is that our purpose
corresponds to the eminence of the assemblage. We aim at nothing less
than a survey of the realm of knowledge, as comprehensive as is
permitted by the limitations of time and space. The organizers of our
congress have honored me with the charge of presenting such preliminary
view of its field as may make clear the spirit of our undertaking.
Certain tendencies characteristic of the science of our day clearly
suggest the direction of our thoughts most appropriate to the occasion.
Among the strongest of these is one towards laying greater stress on
questions of the beginnings of things, and regarding a knowledge of the
laws of development of any object of study as necessary to the
understanding of its present form. It may be conceded that the
principle here involved is as applicable in the broad field before us
as in a special research into the properties of the minutest organism.
It therefore seems meet that we should begin by inquiring what agency
has brought about the remarkable development of science to which the
world of to-day bears witness. This view is recognized in the plan of
our proceedings by providing for each great department of knowledge a
review of its progress during the century that has elapsed since the
great event commemorated by the scenes outside this hall. But such
reviews do not make up that general survey of science at large which is
necessary to the development of our theme, and which must include the
action of causes that had their origin long before our time. The
movement which culminated in making the nineteenth century ever
memorable in history is the outcome of a long series of causes, acting
through many centuries, which are worthy of especial attention on such
an occasion as this. In setting them forth we should avoid laying
stress on those visible manifestations which, striking the eye of every
beholder, are in no danger of being overlooked, and search rather for
those agencies whose activities underlie the whole visible scene, but
which are liable to be blotted out of sight by the very brilliancy of
the results to which they have given rise. It is easy to draw attention
to the wonderful qualities of the oak; but, from that very fact, it may
be needful to point out that the real wonder lies concealed in the
acorn from which it grew.
Our inquiry into the logical order of the causes which have made our
civilization what it is to-day will be facilitated by bringing to mind
certain elementary considerations--ideas so familiar that setting them
forth may seem like citing a body of truisms--and yet so frequently
overlooked, not only individually, but in their relation to each other,
that the conclusion to which they lead may be lost to sight. One of
these propositions is that psychical rather than material causes are
those which we should regard as fundamental in directing the
development of the social organism. The human intellect is the really
active agent in every branch of endeavor--the primum mobile of
civilization--and all those material manifestations to which our
attention is so often directed are to be regarded as secondary to this
first agency. If it be true that "in the world is nothing great but
man; in man is nothing great but mind," then should the key-note of our
discourse be the recognition of this first and greatest of powers.
Another well-known fact is that those applications of the forces of
nature to the promotion of human welfare which have made our age what
it is are of such comparatively recent origin that we need go back only
a single century to antedate their most important features, and
scarcely more than four centuries to find their beginning. It follows
that the subject of our inquiry should be the commencement, not many
centuries ago, of a certain new form of intellectual activity.