Chapter VIII: Part 8

I think that even more amusing is our own acceptance that, not very far above this earth's surface, is a region that will be the subject of a whole new science--super-geography--with which we shall immortalize ourselves in the resentments of the schoolboys of the future--

Pebbles and fragments of meteors and things from Mars and Jupiter and Azuria: wedges, delayed messages, cannon balls, bricks, nails, coal and coke and charcoal and offensive old cargoes--things that coat in ice in some regions and things that get into areas so warm that they putrefy--or that there are all the climates of geography in super-geography. I shall have to accept that, floating in the sky of this earth, there often are fields of ice as extensive as those on the Arctic Ocean--volumes of water in which are many fishes and frogs--tracts of land covered with caterpillars--

Aviators of the future. They fly up and up. Then they get out and walk. The fishing's good: the bait's right there. They find messages from other worlds--and within three weeks there's a big trade worked up in forged messages. Sometime I shall write a guide book to the Super-Sargasso Sea, for aviators, but just at present there wouldn't be much call for it.

We now have more of our expression upon hail as a concomitant, or more data of things that have fallen from the sky, with hail.

In general, the expression is:

These things may have been raised from some other part of the earth's surface, in whirlwinds, or may not have fallen, and may have been upon the ground, in the first place--but were the hailstones found with them, raised from some other part of the earth's surface, or were the hailstones upon the ground, in the first place?

As I said before, this expression is meaningless as to a few instances; it is reasonable to think of some coincidence between the fall of hail and the fall of other things: but, inasmuch as there have been a good many instances,--we begin to suspect that this is not so much a book we're writing as a sanitarium for overworked coincidences. If not conceivably could very large hailstones and lumps of ice form in this earth's atmosphere, and so then had to come from external regions, then other things in or accompanying very large hailstones and lumps of ice came from external regions--which worries us a little: we may be instantly translated to the Positive Absolute.

_Cosmos_, 13-120, quotes a Virginia newspaper, that fishes said to have been catfishes, a foot long, some of them, had fallen, in 1853, at Norfolk, Virginia, with hail.

Vegetable debris, not only nuclear, but frozen upon the surfaces of large hailstones, at Toulouse, France, July 28, 1874. (_La Science Pour Tous_, 1874-270.)

Description of a storm, at Pontiac, Canada, July 11, 1864, in which it is said that it was not hailstones that fell, but "pieces of ice, from half an inch to over two inches in diameter" (_Canadian Naturalist_, 2-1-308):

"But the most extraordinary thing is that a respectable farmer, of undoubted veracity, says he picked up a piece of hail, or ice, in the center of which was a small green frog."

Storm at Dubuque, Iowa, June 16, 1882, in which fell hailstones and pieces of ice (_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1882):

"The foreman of the Novelty Iron Works, of this city, states that in two large hailstones melted by him were found small living frogs." But the pieces of ice that fell upon this occasion had a peculiarity that indicates--though by as bizarre an indication as any we've had yet--that they had been for a long time motionless or floating somewhere. We'll take that up soon.

_Living Age_, 52-186:

That, June 30, 1841, fishes, one of which was ten inches long, fell at Boston; that, eight days later, fishes and ice fell at Derby.

In Timb's _Year Book_, 1842-275, it is said that, at Derby, the fishes had fallen in enormous numbers; from half an inch to two inches long, and some considerably larger. In the _Athenaeum_, 1841-542, copied from the Sheffield _Patriot_, it is said that one of the fishes weighed three ounces. In several accounts, it is said that, with the fishes, fell many small frogs and "pieces of half-melted ice." We are told that the frogs and the fishes had been raised from some other part of the earth's surface, in a whirlwind; no whirlwind specified; nothing said as to what part of the earth's surface comes ice, in the month of July--interests us that the ice is described as "half-melted." In the London _Times_, July 15, 1841, it is said that the fishes were sticklebacks; that they had fallen with ice and small frogs, many of which had survived the fall. We note that, at Dunfermline, three months later (Oct. 7, 1841) fell many fishes, several inches in length, in a thunderstorm. (London _Times_, Oct. 12, 1841.)

Hailstones, we don't care so much about. The matter of stratification seems significant, but we think more of the fall of lumps of ice from the sky, as possible data of the Super-Sargasso Sea:

Lumps of ice, a foot in circumference, Derbyshire, England, May 12, 1811 (_Annual Register_, 1811-54); cuboidal mass, six inches in diameter, that fell at Birmingham, 26 days later (Thomson, _Intro. to Meteorology_, p. 179); size of pumpkins, Bangalore, India, May 22, 1851 (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1855-35); masses of ice of a pound and a half each, New Hampshire, Aug. 13, 1851 (Lummis, _Meteorology_, p. 129); masses of ice, size of a man's head, in the Delphos tornado (Ferrel, _Popular Treatise_, p. 428); large as a man's hand, killing thousands of sheep, Texas, May 3, 1877 (_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1877); "pieces of ice so large that they could not be grasped in one hand," in a tornado, in Colorado, June 24, 1877 (_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1877); lumps of ice four and a half inches long, Richmond, England, Aug. 2, 1879 (_Symons' Met. Mag._, 14-100); mass of ice, 21 inches in circumference that fell with hail, Iowa, June, 1881 (_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1881); "pieces of ice" eight inches long, and an inch and a half thick, Davenport, Iowa, Aug. 30, 1882 (_Monthly Weather Review_, Aug., 1882); lump of ice size of a brick; weight two pounds, Chicago, July 12, 1883 (_Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1883); lumps of ice that weighed one pound and a half each, India, May (?), 1888 (_Nature_, 37-42); lump of ice weighing four pounds, Texas, Dec. 6, 1893 (_Sc. Am._, 68-58); lumps of ice one pound in weight, Nov. 14, 1901, in a tornado, Victoria (_Meteorology of Australia_, p. 34).

Of course it is our acceptance that these masses not only accompanied tornadoes, but were brought down to this earth by tornadoes.

Flammarion, _The Atmosphere_, p. 34:

Block of ice, weighing four and a half pounds that fell at Cazorta, Spain, June 15, 1829; block of ice, weighing eleven pounds, at Cette, France, October, 1844; mass of ice three feet long, three feet wide, and more than two feet thick, that fell, in a storm, in Hungary, May 8, 1802.

_Scientific American_, 47-119:

That, according to the _Salina Journal_, a mass of ice weighing about 80 pounds had fallen from the sky, near Salina, Kansas, August, 1882. We are told that Mr. W.J. Hagler, the North Santa Fe merchant became possessor of it, and packed it in sawdust in his store.

London _Times_, April 7, 1860:

That, upon the 16th of March, 1860, in a snowstorm, in Upper Wasdale, blocks of ice, so large that at a distance they looked like a flock of sheep, had fallen.

_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1851-32:

That a mass of ice about a cubic yard in size had fallen at Candeish, India, 1828.

Against these data, though, so far as I know, so many of them have never been assembled together before, there is a silence upon the part of scientific men that is unusual. Our Super-Sargasso Sea may not be an unavoidable conclusion, but arrival upon this earth of ice from external regions does seem to be--except that there must be, be it ever so faint, a merger. It is in the notion that these masses of ice are only congealed hailstones. We have data against this notion, as applied to all our instances, but the explanation has been offered, and, it seems to me, may apply in some instances. In the _Bull. Soc. Astro. de France_, 20-245, it is said of blocks of ice the size of decanters that had fallen at Tunis that they were only masses of congealed hailstones.

London _Times_, Aug. 4, 1857.

That a block of ice, described as "pure" ice, weighing 25 pounds, had been found in the meadow of Mr. Warner, of Cricklewood. There had been a storm the day before. As in some of our other instances, no one had seen this object fall from the sky. It was found after the storm: that's all that can be said about it.

Letter from Capt. Blakiston, communicated by Gen. Sabine, to the Royal Society (_London Roy. Soc. Proc._, 10-468):

That, Jan. 14, 1860, in a thunderstorm, pieces of ice had fallen upon Capt. Blakiston's vessel--that it was not hail. "It was not hail, but irregular-shaped pieces of solid ice of different dimensions, up to the size of half a brick."

According to the _Advertiser-Scotsman_, quoted by the Edinburgh _New Philosophical Magazine_, 47-371, an irregular-shaped mass of ice fell at Ord, Scotland, August, 1849, after "an extraordinary peal of thunder."

It is said that this was homogeneous ice, except in a small part, which looked like congealed hailstones.

The mass was about 20 feet in circumference.

The story, as told in the London _Times_, Aug. 14, 1849, is that, upon the evening of the 13th of August, 1849, after a loud peal of thunder, a mass of ice said to have been 20 feet in circumference, had fallen upon the estate of Mr. Moffat, of Balvullich, Ross-shire. It is said that this object fell alone, or without hailstones.

Altogether, though it is not so strong for the Super-Sargasso Sea, I think this is one of our best expressions upon external origins. That large blocks of ice could form in the moisture of this earth's atmosphere is about as likely as that blocks of stone could form in a dust whirl. Of course, if ice or water comes to this earth from external sources, we think of at least minute organisms in it, and on, with our data, to frogs, fishes; on to anything that's thinkable, coming from external sources. It's of great importance to us to accept that large lumps of ice have fallen from the sky, but what we desire most--perhaps because of our interest in its archaeologic and palaeontologic treasures--is now to be through with tentativeness and probation, and to take the Super-Sargasso Sea into full acceptance in our more advanced fold of the chosen of this twentieth century.

In the _Report of the British Association_, 1855-37, it is said that, at Poorhundur, India, Dec. 11, 1854, flat pieces of ice, many of them weighing several pounds--each, I suppose--had fallen from the sky. They are described as "large ice-flakes."

Vast fields of ice in the Super-Arctic regions, or strata, of the Super-Sargasso Sea. When they break up, their fragments are flake-like. In our acceptance, there are aerial ice-fields that are remote from this earth; that break up, fragments grinding against one another, rolling in vapor and water, of different constituency in different regions, forming slowly as stratified hailstones--but that there are ice-fields near this earth, that break up into just such flat pieces of ice as cover any pond or river when ice of a pond or river is broken, and are sometimes soon precipitated to the earth, in this familiar flat formation.

_Symons' Met. Mag._, 43-154:

A correspondent writes that, at Braemar, July 2, 1908, when the sky was clear overhead, and the sun shining, flat pieces of ice fell--from somewhere. The sun was shining, but something was going on somewhere: thunder was heard.

Until I saw the reproduction of a photograph in the _Scientific American_, Feb. 21, 1914, I had supposed that these ice-fields must be, say, at least ten or twenty miles away from this earth, and invisible, to terrestrial observers, except as the blurs that have so often been reported by astronomers and meteorologists. The photograph published by the _Scientific American_ is of an aggregation supposed to be clouds, presumably not very high, so clearly detailed are they. The writer says that they looked to him like "a field of broken ice." Beneath is a picture of a conventional field of ice, floating ordinarily in water. The resemblance between the two pictures is striking--nevertheless, it seems to me incredible that the first of the photographs could be of an aerial ice-field, or that gravitation could cease to act at only a mile or so from this earth's surface--

Unless:

The exceptional: the flux and vagary of all things.

Or that normally this earth's gravitation extends, say, ten or fifteen miles outward--but that gravitation must be rhythmic.

Of course, in the pseudo-formulas of astronomers, gravitation as a fixed quantity is essential. Accept that gravitation is a variable force, and astronomers deflate, with a perceptible hissing sound, into the punctured condition of economists, biologists, meteorologists, and all the others of the humbler divinities, who can admittedly offer only insecure approximations.

We refer all who would not like to hear the hiss of escaping arrogance, to Herbert Spencer's chapters upon the rhythm of all phenomena.

If everything else--light from the stars, heat from the sun, the winds and the tides; forms and colors and sizes of animals; demands and supplies and prices; political opinions and chemic reactions and religious doctrines and magnetic intensities and the ticking of clocks; and arrival and departure of the seasons--if everything else is variable, we accept that the notion of gravitation as fixed and formulable is only another attempted positivism, doomed, like all other illusions of realness in quasi-existence. So it is intermediatism to accept that, though gravitation may approximate higher to invariability than do the winds, for instance, it must be somewhere between the Absolutes of Stability and Instability. Here then we are not much impressed with the opposition of physicists and astronomers, fearing, a little mournfully, that their language is of expiring sibilations.

So then the fields of ice in the sky, and that, though usually so far away as to be mere blurs, at times they come close enough to be seen in detail. For description of what I call a "blur," see _Pop. Sci. News_, February, 1884--sky, in general, unusually clear, but, near the sun, "a white, slightly curdled haze, which was dazzlingly bright."

We accept that sometimes fields of ice pass between the sun and the earth: that many strata of ice, or very thick fields of ice, or superimposed fields would obscure the sun--that there have been occasions when the sun was eclipsed by fields of ice:

Flammarion, _The Atmosphere_, p. 394:

That a profound darkness came upon the city of Brussels, June 18, 1839:

There fell flat pieces of ice, an inch long.

Intense darkness at Aitkin, Minn., April 2, 1889: sand and "solid chunks of ice" reported to have fallen (_Science_, April 19, 1889).

In _Symons' Meteorological Magazine_, 32-172, are outlined rough-edged but smooth-surfaced pieces of ice that fell at Manassas, Virginia, Aug. 10, 1897. They look as much like the roughly broken fragments of a smooth sheet of ice--as ever have roughly broken fragments of a smooth sheet of ice looked. About two inches across, and one inch thick. In _Cosmos_, 3-116, it is said that, at Rouen, July 5, 1853, fell irregular-shaped pieces of ice, about the size of a hand, described as looking as if all had been broken from one enormous block of ice. That, I think, was an aerial iceberg. In the awful density, or almost absolute stupidity of the 19th century, it never occurred to anybody to look for traces of polar bears or of seals upon these fragments.

Of course, seeing what we want to see, having been able to gather these data only because they are in agreement with notions formed in advance, we are not so respectful to our own notions as to a similar impression forced upon an observer who had no theory or acceptance to support. In general, our prejudices see and our prejudices investigate, but this should not be taken as an absolute.

_Monthly Weather Review_, July, 1894:

That, from the Weather Bureau, of Portland, Oregon, a tornado, of June 3, 1894, was reported.

Fragments of ice fell from the sky.

They averaged three to four inches square, and about an inch thick. In length and breadth they had the smooth surfaces required by our acceptance: and, according to the writer in the _Review_, "gave the impression of a vast field of ice suspended in the atmosphere, and suddenly broken into fragments about the size of the palm of the hand."

This datum, profoundly of what we used to call the "damned," or before we could no longer accept judgment, or cut and dried condemnation by infants, turtles, and lambs, was copied--but without comment--in the _Scientific American_, 71-371.

Our theology is something like this:

Of course we ought to be damned--but we revolt against adjudication by infants, turtles, and lambs.

We now come to some remarkable data in a rather difficult department of super-geography. Vast fields of aerial ice. There's a lesson to me in the treachery of the imaginable. Most of our opposition is in the clearness with which the conventional, but impossible, becomes the imaginable, and then the resistant to modifications. After it had become the conventional with me, I conceived clearly of vast sheets of ice, a few miles above this earth--then the shining of the sun, and the ice partly melting--that note upon the ice that fell at Derby--water trickling and forming icicles upon the lower surface of the ice sheet. I seemed to look up and so clearly visualized those icicles hanging like stalactites from a flat-roofed cave, in white calcite. Or I looked up at the under side of an aerial ice-lump, and seemed to see a papillation similar to that observed by a calf at times. But then--but then--if icicles should form upon the under side of a sheet of aerial ice, that would be by the falling of water toward this earth; an icicle is of course an expression of gravitation--and, if water melting from ice should fall toward this earth, why not the ice itself fall before an icicle could have time to form? Of course, in quasi-existence, where everything is a paradox, one might argue that the water falls, but the ice does not, because the ice is heavier--that is, in masses. That notion, I think, belongs in a more advanced course than we are taking at present.

Our expression upon icicles:

A vast field of aerial ice--it is inert to this earth's gravitation--but by universal flux and variation, part of it sags closer to this earth, and is susceptible to gravitation--by cohesion with the main mass, this part does not fall, but water melting from it does fall, and forms icicles--then, by various disturbances, this part sometimes falls in fragments that are protrusive with icicles.

Of the ice that fell, some of it enclosing living frogs, at Dubuque, Iowa, June 16, 1882, it is said (_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1882) that there were pieces from one to seventeen inches in circumference, the largest weighing one pound and three-quarters--that upon some of them were icicles half an inch in length. We emphasize that these objects were not hailstones.

The only merger is that of knobby hailstones, or of large hailstones with protuberances wrought by crystallization: but that is no merger with terrestrial phenomena, and such formations are unaccountable to orthodoxy; or it is incredible that hail could so crystallize--not forming by accretion--in the fall of a few seconds. For an account of such hailstones, see _Nature_, 61-594. Note the size--"some of them the size of turkeys' eggs."

It is our expression that sometimes the icicles themselves have fallen, as if by concussion, or as if something had swept against the under side of an aerial ice floe, detaching its papillations.

_Monthly Weather Review_, June, 1889:

That, at Oswego, N.Y., June 11, 1889, according to the Turin (N.Y.) _Leader_, there fell, in a thunderstorm, pieces of ice that "resembled the fragments of icicles."

_Monthly Weather Review_, 29-506:

That on Florence Island, St. Lawrence River, Aug. 8, 1901, with ordinary hail, fell pieces of ice "formed like icicles, the size and shape of lead pencils that had been cut into sections about three-eighths of an inch in length."

So our data of the Super-Sargasso Sea, and its Arctic region: and, for weeks at a time, an ice field may hang motionless over a part of this earth's surface--the sun has some effect upon it, but not much until late in the afternoon, I should say--part of it has sagged, but is held up by cohesion with the main mass--whereupon we have such an occurrence as would have been a little uncanny to us once upon a time--or fall of water from a cloudless sky, day after day, in one small part of this earth's surface, late in the afternoon, when the sun's rays had had time for their effects:

_Monthly Weather Review_, October, 1886:

That, according to the Charlotte _Chronicle_, Oct. 21, 1886, for three weeks there had been a fall of water from the sky, in Charlotte, N.C., localized in one particular spot, every afternoon, about three o'clock; that, whether the sky was cloudy or cloudless, the water or rain fell upon a small patch of land between two trees and nowhere else.

This is the newspaper account, and, as such, it seems in the depths of the unchosen, either by me or any other expression of the Salvation Army. The account by the Signal Service observer, at Charlotte, published in the _Review_, follows:

"An unusual phenomenon was witnessed on the 21st: having been informed that, for some weeks prior to date, rain had been falling daily, after 3 P.M., on a particular spot, near two trees, corner of 9th and D streets, I visited the place, and saw precipitation in the form of rain drops at 4:47 and 4:55 P.M., while the sun was shining brightly. On the 22nd, I again visited the place, and from 4:05 to 4:25 P.M., a light shower of rain fell from a cloudless sky.... Sometimes the precipitation falls over an area of half an acre, but always appears to center at these two trees, and when lightest occurs there only."

14

We see conventionally. It is not only that we think and act and speak and dress alike, because of our surrender to social attempt at Entity, in which we are only super-cellular. We see what it is "proper" that we should see. It is orthodox enough to say that a horse is not a horse, to an infant--any more than is an orange an orange to the unsophisticated. It's interesting to walk along a street sometimes and look at things and wonder what they'd look like, if we hadn't been taught to see horses and trees and houses as horses and trees and houses. I think that to super-sight they are local stresses merging indistinguishably into one another, in an all-inclusive nexus.

I think that it would be credible enough to say that many times have Monstrator and Elvera and Azuria crossed telescopic fields of vision, and were not even seen--because it wouldn't be proper to see them; it wouldn't be respectable, and it wouldn't be respectful: it would be insulting to old bones to see them: it would bring on evil influences from the relics of St. Isaac to see them.

But our data:

Of vast worlds that are orbitless, or that are navigable, or that are adrift in inter-planetary tides and currents: the data that we shall have of their approach, in modern times, within five or six miles of this earth--

But then their visits, or approaches, to other planets, or to other of the few regularized bodies that have surrendered to the attempted Entity of this solar system as a whole--

The question that we can't very well evade:

Have these other worlds, or super-constructions, ever been seen by astronomers?

I think there would not be much approximation to realness in taking refuge in the notion of astronomers who stare and squint and see only that which it is respectable and respectful to see. It is all very well to say that astronomers are hypnotics, and that an astronomer looking at the moon is hypnotized by the moon, but our acceptance is that the bodies of this present expression often visit the moon, or cross it, or are held in temporary suspension near it--then some of them must often have been within the diameter of an astronomer's hypnosis.

Our general expression:

That, upon the oceans of this earth, there are regularized vessels, but also that there are tramp vessels:

That, upon the super-ocean, there are regularized planets, but also that there are tramp worlds:

That astronomers are like mercantile purists who would deny commercial vagabondage.

Our acceptance is that vast celestial vagabonds have been excluded by astronomers, primarily because their irresponsibilities are an affront to the pure and the precise, or to attempted positivism; and secondarily because they have not been seen so very often. The planets steadily reflect the light of the sun: upon this uniformity a system that we call Primary Astronomy has been built up; but now the subject-matter of Advanced Astronomy is data of celestial phenomena that are sometimes light and sometimes dark, varying like some of the satellites of Jupiter, but with a wider range. However, light or dark, they have been seen and reported so often that the only important reason for their exclusion is--that they don't fit in.

With dark bodies that are probably external to our own solar system, I have, in the provincialism that no one can escape, not much concern. Dark bodies afloat in outer space would have been damned a few years ago, but now they're sanctioned by Prof. Barnard--and, if he says they're all right, you may think of them without the fear of doing something wrong or ridiculous--the close kinship we note so often between the evil and the absurd--I suppose by the ridiculous I mean the froth of evil. The dark companion of Algol, for instance. Though that's a clear case of celestial miscegenation, the purists, or positivists, admit that's so. In the _Proceedings of the National Academy of Science_, 1915-394, Prof. Barnard writes of an object--he calls it an "object"--in Cephus. His idea is that there are dark, opaque bodies outside this solar system. But in the _Astrophysical Journal_, 1916-1, he modifies into regarding them as "dark nebulae." That's not so interesting.

We accept that Venus, for instance, has often been visited by other worlds, or by super-constructions, from which come ciders and coke and coal; that sometimes these things have reflected light and have been seen from this earth--by professional astronomers. It will be noted that throughout this chapter our data are accursed Brahmins--as, by hypnosis and inertia, we keep on and keep on saying, just as a good many of the scientists of the 19th century kept on and kept on admitting the power of the system that preceded them--or Continuity would be smashed. There's a big chance here for us to be instantaneously translated to the Positive Absolute--oh, well--

What I emphasize here is that our damned data are observations by astronomers of the highest standing, excommunicated by astronomers of similar standing--but backed up by the dominant spirit of their era--to which all minds had to equilibrate or be negligible, unheard, submerged. It would seem sometimes, in this book, as if our revolts were against the dogmatisms and pontifications of single scientists of eminence. This is only a convenience, because it seems necessary to personify. If we look over _Philosophical Transactions_, or the publications of the Royal Astronomical Society, for instance, we see that Herschel, for instance, was as powerless as any boy stargazer, to enforce acceptance of any observation of his that did not harmonize with the system that was growing up as independently of him and all other astronomers, as a phase in the development of an embryo compels all cells to take on appearances concordantly with the design and the predetermined progress and schedule of the whole.

Visitors to Venus:

Evans, _Ways of the Planets_, p. 140:

That, in 1645, a body large enough to look like a satellite was seen near Venus. Four times in the first half of the 18th century, a similar observation was reported. The last report occurred in 1767.

A large body has been seen--seven times, according to _Science Gossip_, 1886-178--near Venus. At least one astronomer, Houzeau, accepted these observations and named the--world, planet, super-construction--"Neith." His views are mentioned "in passing, but without endorsement," in the _Trans. N.Y. Acad._, 5-249.

Houzeau or someone writing for the magazine-section of a Sunday newspaper--outer darkness for both alike. A new satellite in this solar system might be a little disturbing--though the formulas of Laplace, which were considered final in his day, have survived the admittance of five or six hundred bodies not included in those formulas--a satellite to Venus might be a little disturbing, but would be explained--but a large body approaching a planet--staying awhile--going away--coming back some other time--anchoring, as it were--

Azuria is pretty bad, but Azuria is no worse than Neith.

_Astrophysical Journal_, 1-127:

A light-reflecting body, or a bright spot near Mars: seen Nov. 25, 1894, by Prof. Pickering and others, at the Lowell Observatory, above an unilluminated part of Mars--self-luminous, it would seem--thought to have been a cloud--but estimated to have been about twenty miles away from the planet.

Luminous spot seen moving across the disk of Mercury, in 1799, by Harding and Schroeter. (_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 38-338.)

In the first Bulletin issued by the Lowell Observatory, in 1903, Prof. Lowell describes a body that was seen on the terminator of Mars, May 20, 1903. On May 27, it was "suspected." If still there, it had moved, we are told, about 300 miles--"probably a dust cloud."

Very conspicuous and brilliant spots seen on the disk of Mars, October and November, 1911. (_Popular Astronomy_, Vol. 19, No. 10.)

So one of them accepted six or seven observations that were in agreement, except that they could not be regularized, upon a world--planet--satellite--and he gave it a name. He named it "Neith."

Monstrator and Elvera and Azuria and Super-Romanimus--

Or heresy and orthodoxy and the oneness of all quasiness, and our ways and means and methods are the very same. Or, if we name things that may not be, we are not of lonely guilt in the nomenclature of absences--

But now Leverrier and "Vulcan."

Leverrier again.

Or to demonstrate the collapsibility of a froth, stick a pin in the largest bubble of it. Astronomy and inflation: and by inflation we mean expansion of the attenuated. Or that the science of Astronomy is a phantom-film distended with myth-stuff--but always our acceptance that it approximates higher to substantiality than did the system that preceded it.

So Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan."

And we repeat, and it will do us small good to repeat. If you be of the masses that the astronomers have hypnotized--being themselves hypnotized, or they could not hypnotize others--or that the hypnotist's control is not the masterful power that it is popularly supposed to be, but only transference of state from one hypnotic to another--

If you be of the masses that the astronomers have hypnotized, you will not be able even to remember. Ten pages from here, and Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan" will have fallen from your mind, like beans from a magnet, or like data of cold meteorites from the mind of a Thomson.

Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan."

And much the good it will do us to repeat.

But at least temporarily we shall have an impression of a historic fiasco, such as, in our acceptance, could occur only in a quasi-existence.

In 1859, Dr. Lescarbault, an amateur astronomer, of Orgeres, France, announced that, upon March 26, of that year, he had seen a body of planetary size cross the sun. We are in a subject that is now as unholy to the present system as ever were its own subjects to the system that preceded it, or as ever were slanders against miracles to the preceding system. Nevertheless few text-books go so far as quite to disregard this tragedy. The method of the systematists is slightingly to give a few instances of the unholy, and dispose of the few. If it were desirable to them to deny that there are mountains upon this earth, they would record a few observations upon some slight eminences near Orange, N.J., but say that commuters, though estimable persons in several ways, are likely to have their observations mixed. The text-books casually mention a few of the "supposed" observations upon "Vulcan," and then pass on.

Dr. Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier, who hastened to Orgeres--

Because this announcement assimilated with his own calculations upon a planet between Mercury and the sun--

Because this solar system itself has never attained positiveness in the aspect of Regularity: there are to Mercury, as there are to Neptune, phenomena irreconcilable with the formulas, or motions that betray influence by something else.

We are told that Leverrier "satisfied himself as to the substantial accuracy of the reported observation." The story of this investigation is told in _Monthly Notices_, 20-98. It seems too bad to threaten the naive little thing with our rude sophistications, but it is amusingly of the ingenuousness of the age from which present dogmas have survived. Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier. Leverrier hastened to Orgeres. But he was careful not to tell Lescarbault who he was. Went right in and "subjected Dr. Lescarbault to a very severe cross-examination"--just the way you or I may feel at liberty to go into anybody's home and be severe with people--"pressing him hard step by step"--just as anyone might go into someone else's house and press him hard, though unknown to the hard-pressed one. Not until he was satisfied, did Leverrier reveal his identity. I suppose Dr. Lescarbault expressed astonishment. I think there's something utopian about this: it's so unlike the stand-offishness of New York life.

Leverrier gave the name "Vulcan" to the object that Dr. Lescarbault had reported.

By the same means by which he is, even to this day, supposed--by the faithful--to have discovered Neptune, he had already announced the probable existence of an Intra-Mercurial body, or group of bodies. He had five observations besides Lescarbault's upon something that had been seen to cross the sun. In accordance with the mathematical hypnoses of his era, he studied these six transits. Out of them he computed elements giving "Vulcan" a period of about 20 days, or a formula for heliocentric longitude at any time.

But he placed the time of best observation away up in 1877.

But even so, or considering that he still had probably a good many years to live, it may strike one that he was a little rash--that is if one has not gone very deep into the study of hypnoses--that, having "discovered" Neptune by a method which, in our acceptance, had no more to recommend it than had once equally well-thought-of methods of witch-finding, he should not have taken such chances: that if he was right as to Neptune, but should be wrong as to "Vulcan," his average would be away below that of most fortune-tellers, who could scarcely hope to do business upon a fifty per cent. basis--all that the reasoning of a tyro in hypnoses.

The date:

March 22, 1877.

The scientific world was up on its hind legs nosing the sky. The thing had been done so authoritatively. Never a pope had said a thing with more of the seeming of finality. If six observations correlated, what more could be asked? The Editor of _Nature_, a week before the predicted event, though cautious, said that it is difficult to explain how six observers, unknown to one another, could have data that could be formulated, if they were not related phenomena.

In a way, at this point occurs the crisis of our whole book.

Formulas are against us.

But can astronomic formulas, backed up by observations in agreement, taken many years apart, calculated by a Leverrier, be as meaningless, in a positive sense, as all other quasi-things that we have encountered so far?

The preparations they made, before March 22, 1877. In England, the Astronomer Royal made it the expectation of his life: notified observers at Madras, Melbourne, Sydney, and New Zealand, and arranged with observers in Chili and the United States. M. Struve had prepared for observations in Siberia and Japan--

March 22, 1877--

Not absolutely, hypocritically, I think it's pathetic, myself. If anyone should doubt the sincerity of Leverrier, in this matter, we note, whether it has meaning or not, that a few months later he died.

I think we'll take up Monstrator, though there's so much to this subject that we'll have to come back.

According to the _Annual Register_, 9-120, upon the 9th of August, 1762, M. de Rostan, of Basle, France, was taking altitudes of the sun, at Lausanne. He saw a vast, spindle-shaped body, about three of the sun's digits in breadth and nine in length, advancing slowly across the disk of the sun, or "at no more than half the velocity with which the ordinary solar spots move." It did not disappear until the 7th of September, when it reached the sun's limb. Because of the spindle-like form, I incline to think of a super-Zeppelin, but another observation, which seems to indicate that it was a world, is that, though it was opaque, and "eclipsed the sun," it had around it a kind of nebulosity--or atmosphere? A penumbra would ordinarily be a datum of a sun spot, but there are observations that indicate that this object was at a considerable distance from the sun:

It is recorded that another observer, at Paris, watching the sun, at this time, had not seen this object:

But that M. Croste, at Sole, about forty-five German leagues northward from Lausanne, had seen it, describing the same spindle-form, but disagreeing a little as to breadth. Then comes the important point: that he and M. de Rostan did not see it upon the same part of the sun. This, then, is parallax, and, compounded with invisibility at Paris, is great parallax--or that, in the course of a month, in the summer of 1762, a large, opaque, spindle-shaped body traversed the disk of the sun, but at a great distance from the sun. The writer in the _Register_ says: "In a word, we know of nothing to have recourse to, in the heavens, by which to explain this phenomenon." I suppose he was not a hopeless addict to explaining. Extraordinary--we fear he must have been a man of loose habits in some other respects.

As to us--

Monstrator.

In the _Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, February, 1877, Leverrier, who never lost faith, up to the last day, gives the six observations upon an unknown body of planetary size, that he had formulated:

Fritsche, Oct. 10, 1802; Stark, Oct. 9, 1819; De Cuppis, Oct. 30, 1839; Sidebotham, Nov. 12, 1849; Lescarbault, March 26, 1859; Lummis, March 20, 1862.

If we weren't so accustomed to Science in its essential aspect of Disregard, we'd be mystified and impressed, like the Editor of _Nature_, with the formulation of these data: agreement of so many instances would seem incredible as a coincidence: but our acceptance is that, with just enough disregard, astronomers and fortune-tellers can formulate anything--or we'd engage, ourselves, to formulate periodicities in the crowds in Broadway--say that every Wednesday morning, a tall man, with one leg and a black eye, carrying a rubber plant, passes the Singer Building, at quarter past ten o'clock. Of course it couldn't really be done, unless such a man did have such periodicity, but if some Wednesday mornings it should be a small child lugging a barrel, or a fat negress with a week's wash, by ordinary disregard that would be prediction good enough for the kind of quasi-existence we're in.

So whether we accuse, or whether we think that the word "accuse" over-dignifies an attitude toward a quasi-astronomer, or mere figment in a super-dream, our acceptance is that Leverrier never did formulate observations--

That he picked out observations that could be formulated--

That of this type are all formulas--

That, if Leverrier had not been himself helplessly hypnotized, or if he had had in him more than a tincture of realness, never could he have been beguiled by such a quasi-process: but that he was hypnotized, and so extended, or transferred, his condition to others, that upon March 22, 1877, he had this earth bristling with telescopes, with the rigid and almost inanimate forms of astronomers behind them--

And not a blessed thing of any unusuality was seen upon that day or succeeding days.

But that the science of Astronomy suffered the slightest in prestige?

It couldn't. The spirit of 1877 was behind it. If, in an embryo, some cells should not live up to the phenomena of their era, the others will sustain the scheduled appearances. Not until an embryo enters the mammalian stage are cells of the reptilian stage false cells.

It is our acceptance that there were many equally authentic reports upon large planetary bodies that had been seen near the sun; that, of many, Leverrier picked out six; not then deciding that all the other observations related to still other large, planetary bodies, but arbitrarily, or hypnotically, disregarding--or heroically disregarding--every one of them--that to formulate at all he had to exclude falsely. The denouement killed him, I think. I'm not at all inclined to place him with the Grays and Hitchcocks and Symonses. I'm not, because, though it was rather unsportsmanlike to put the date so far ahead, he did give a date, and he did stick to it with such a high approximation--

I think Leverrier was translated to the Positive Absolute.

The disregarded:

Observation, of July 26, 1819, by Gruthinson--but that was of two bodies that crossed the sun together--

_Nature_, 14-469:

That, according to the astronomer, J.R. Hind, Benjamin Scott, City Chamberlain of London, and Mr. Wray, had, in 1847, seen a body similar to "Vulcan" cross the sun.

Similar observation by Hind and Lowe, March 12, 1849 (_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1876-9).

_Nature_, 14-505:

Body of apparent size of Mercury, seen, Jan. 29, 1860, by F.A.R. Russell and four other observers, crossing the sun.

De Vico's observation of July 12, 1837 (_Observatory_, 2-424).

_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1865-16:

That another amateur astronomer, M. Coumbray, of Constantinople, had written to Leverrier, that, upon the 8th of March, 1865, he had seen a black point, sharply outlined, traverse the disk of the sun. It detached itself from a group of sun spots near the limb of the sun, and took 48 minutes to reach the other limb. Figuring upon the diagram sent by M. Coumbray, a central passage would have taken a little more than an hour. This observation was disregarded by Leverrier, because his formula required about four times that velocity. The point here is that these other observations are as authentic as those that Leverrier included; that, then, upon data as good as the data of "Vulcan," there must be other "Vulcans"--the heroic and defiant disregard, then, of trying to formulate one, omitting the others, which, by orthodox doctrine, must have influenced it greatly, if all were in the relatively narrow space between Mercury and the sun.

Observation upon another such body, of April 4, 1876, by M. Weber, of Berlin. As to this observation, Leverrier was informed by Wolf, in August, 1876 (_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1876-7). It made no difference, so far as can be known, to this notable positivist.

Two other observations noted by Hind and Denning--London _Times_, Nov. 3, 1871, and March 26, 1873.

_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 20-100:

Standacher, February, 1762; Lichtenberg, Nov. 19, 1762; Hoffman, May, 1764; Dangos, Jan. 18, 1798; Stark, Feb. 12, 1820. An observation by Schmidt, Oct. 11, 1847, is said to be doubtful: but, upon page 192, it is said that this doubt had arisen because of a mistaken translation, and two other observations by Schmidt are given: Oct. 14, 1849, and Feb. 18, 1850--also an observation by Lofft, Jan. 6, 1818. Observation by Steinheibel, at Vienna, April 27, 1820 (_Monthly Notices_, 1862).

Haase had collected reports of twenty observations like Lescarbault's. The list was published in 1872, by Wolf. Also there are other instances like Gruthinsen's:

_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 2-28-446:

Report by Pastorff that he had seen twice in 1836, and once in 1837, two round spots of unequal size moving across the sun, changing position relatively to each other, and taking a different course, if not orbit, each time: that, in 1834, he had seen similar bodies pass six times across the disk of the sun, looking very much like Mercury in his transits.

March 22, 1876--

But to point out Leverrier's poverty-stricken average--or discovering planets upon a fifty per cent. basis--would be to point out the low percentage of realness in the quasi-myth-stuff of which the whole system is composed. We do not accuse the text-books of omitting this fiasco, but we do note that theirs is the conventional adaptation here of all beguilers who are in difficulties--

The diverting of attention.

It wouldn't be possible in a real existence, with real mentality, to deal with, but I suppose it's good enough for the quasi-intellects that stupefy themselves with text-books. The trick here is to gloss over Leverrier's mistake, and blame Lescarbault--he was only an amateur--had delusions. The reader's attention is led against Lescarbault by a report from M. Lias, director of the Brazilian Coast Survey, who, at the time of Lescarbault's "supposed" observation had been watching the sun in Brazil, and, instead of seeing even ordinary sun spots, had noted that the region of the "supposed transit" was of "uniform intensity."

But the meaninglessness of all utterances in quasi-existence--

"Uniform intensity" turns our way as much as against us--or some day some brain will conceive a way of beating Newton's third law--if every reaction, or resistance, is, or can be, interpretable as stimulus instead of resistance--if this could be done in mechanics, there's a way open here for someone to own the world--specifically in this matter, "uniform intensity" means that Lescarbault saw no ordinary sun spot, just as much as it means that no spot at all was seen upon the sun. Continuing the interpretation of a resistance as an assistance, which can always be done with mental forces--making us wonder what applications could be made with steam and electric forces--we point out that invisibility in Brazil means parallax quite as truly as it means absence, and, inasmuch as "Vulcan" was supposed to be distant from the sun, we interpret denial as corroboration--method of course of every scientist, politician, theologian, high-school debater.

So the text-books, with no especial cleverness, because no especial cleverness is needed, lead the reader into contempt for the amateur of Orgeres, and forgetfulness of Leverrier--and some other subject is taken up.

But our own acceptance:

That these data are as good as ever they were;

That, if someone of eminence should predict an earthquake, and if there should be no earthquake at the predicted time, that would discredit the prophet, but data of past earthquakes would remain as good as ever they had been. It is easy enough to smile at the illusion of a single amateur--

The mass-formation:

Fritsche, Stark, De Cuppis, Sidebotham, Lescarbault, Lummis, Gruthinson, De Vico, Scott, Wray, Russell, Hind, Lowe, Coumbray, Weber, Standacher, Lichtenberg, Dangos, Hoffman, Schmidt, Lofft, Steinheibel, Pastorff--

These are only the observations conventionally listed relatively to an Intra-Mercurial planet. They are formidable enough to prevent our being diverted, as if it were all the dream of a lonely amateur--but they're a mere advance-guard. From now on other data of large celestial bodies, some dark and some reflecting light, will pass and pass and keep on passing--

So that some of us will remember a thing or two, after the procession's over--possibly.

Taking up only one of the listed observations--

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:

The things seen high in the sky by Swift and Watson--

Well, only two months before--the horse and the barn--