That it is within the power of anybody, who does not know a hyperbola
from a cosine, to find out whether the astronomers are led by a cloud of
rubbish by day and a pillar of bosh by night—
If, by the magic of his mathematics, any astronomer could have pointed
to the position of Neptune, let him point to the planet past Neptune.
According to the same reasoning by which a planet past Uranus was
supposed to be, a Trans-Neptunian planet may be supposed to be. Neptune
shows perturbations similar to those of Uranus.
According to Prof. Todd there is such a planet, and it revolves around
the sun once in 375 years. There are two, according to Prof. Forbes, one
revolving once in 1,000 years, and the other once in 5,000 years. See
Macpherson’s _A Century’s Progress in Astronomy_. It exists, according
to Dr. Eric Doolittle, and revolves once in 283 years (_Sci. Amer._,
122-641). According to Mr. Hind it revolves once in 1,600 years
(_Smithson. Miscell. Cols._, 20-20).
So then we have found out some things, and, relatively to the
oppressions that we felt from our opposition, they are reassuring. But
also are they depressing. Because, if, in this existence of ours, there
is no prestige higher than that of astronomic science, and, if that
seeming of substantial renown has been achieved by a composition of
bubbles, what of anything like soundness must there be to all lesser
reputes and achievements?
Let three bodies inter-act. There is no calculus by which their
inter-actions can be formulated. But there are a thousand inter-acting
bodies in this solar system—or supposed solar system—and we find that
the highest prestige in our existence is built upon the tangled
assertions that there are magicians who can compute in a thousand
quantities, though they can not compute in three.
Then all other so-called human triumphs, or moderate successes, products
of anybody’s reasoning processes and labors—and what are they, if higher
than them all, more academic, austere, rigorous, exact are the methods
and the processes of the astronomers? What can be thought of our whole
existence, its nature and its destiny?
That our existence, a thing within one solar system, or supposed solar
system, is a stricken thing that is mewling through space, shocking
able-minded, healthy systems with the sores on its sun, its ghastly
moons, its civilizations that are all broken out with sciences; a
celestial leper, holding out doddering expanses into which charitable
systems drop golden comets? If it be the leprous thing that our findings
seem to indicate, there is no encouragement for us to go on. We can not
discover: we can only betray new symptoms. If I be a part of such a
stricken thing, I know of nothing but sickness and sores and rags to
reason with: my data will be postules; my interpretations will be
inflammations—