Chapter IX: Part 9

We go on with more observations by astronomers, recognizing that it is the very thing that has given them life, sustained them, held them together, that has crushed all but the quasi-gleam of independent life out of them. Were they not systematized, they could not be at all, except sporadically and without sustenance. They are systematized: they must not vary from the conditions of the system: they must not break away for themselves.

The two great commandments:

Thou shalt not break Continuity;

Thou shalt try.

We go on with these disregarded data, some of which, many of which, are of the highest degree of acceptability. It is the System that pulls back its variations, as this earth is pulling back the Matterhorn. It is the System that nourishes and rewards, and also freezes out life with the chill of disregard. We do note that, before excommunication is pronounced, orthodox journals do liberally enough record unassimilable observations.

All things merge away into everything else.

That is Continuity.

So the System merges away and evades us when we try to focus against it.

We have complained a great deal. At least we are not so dull as to have the delusion that we know just exactly what it is that we are complaining about. We speak seemingly definitely enough of "the System," but we're building upon observations by members of that very system. Or what we are doing--gathering up the loose heresies of the orthodox. Of course "the System" fringes and ravels away, having no real outline. A Swift will antagonize "the System," and a Lockyer will call him back; but, then, a Lockyer will vary with a "meteoric hypothesis," and a Swift will, in turn, represent "the System." This state is to us typical of all intermediatist phenomena; or that not conceivably is anything really anything, if its parts are likely to be their own opposites at any time. We speak of astronomers--as if there were real astronomers--but who have lost their identity in a System--as if it were a real System--but behind that System is plainly a rapport, or loss of identity in the Spirit of an Era.

Bodies that have looked like dark bodies, and lights that may have been sunlight reflected from inter-planetary--objects, masses, constructions--

Lights that have been seen upon--or near?--the moon:

In _Philosophical Transactions_, 82-27, is Herschel's report upon many luminous points, which he saw upon--or near?--the moon, during an eclipse. Why they should be luminous, whereas the moon itself was dark, would get us into a lot of trouble--except that later we shall, or we sha'n't, accept that many times have luminous objects been seen close to this earth--at night.

But numerousness is a new factor, or new disturbance, to our explorations--

A new aspect of inter-planetary inhabitancy or occupancy--

Worlds in hordes--or beings--winged beings perhaps--wouldn't astonish me if we should end up by discovering angels--or beings in machines--argosies of celestial voyagers--

In 1783 and 1787, Herschel reported more lights on or near the moon, which he supposed were volcanic.

The word of a Herschel has had no more weight, in divergences from the orthodox, than has had the word of a Lescarbault. These observations are of the disregarded.

Bright spots seen on the moon, November, 1821 (_Proc. London Roy. Soc._, 2-167).

For four other instances, see Loomis (_Treatise on Astronomy_, p. 174).

A moving light is reported in _Phil. Trans._, 84-429. To the writer, it looked like a star passing over the moon--"which, on the next moment's consideration I knew to be impossible." "It was a fixed, steady light upon the dark part of the moon." I suppose "fixed" applies to luster.

In the _Report of the Brit. Assoc._, 1847-18, there is an observation by Rankin, upon luminous points seen on the shaded part of the moon, during an eclipse. They seemed to this observer like reflections of stars. That's not very reasonable: however, we have, in the _Annual Register_, 1821-687, a light not referable to a star--because it moved with the moon: was seen three nights in succession; reported by Capt. Kater. See _Quart. Jour. Roy. Inst._, 12-133.

_Phil. Trans._, 112-237:

Report from the Cape Town Observatory: a whitish spot on the dark part of the moon's limb. Three smaller lights were seen.

The call of positiveness, in its aspects of singleness, or homogeneity, or oneness, or completeness. In data now coming, I feel it myself. A Leverrier studies more than twenty observations. The inclination is irresistible to think that they all relate to one phenomenon. It is an expression of cosmic inclination. Most of the observations are so irreconcilable with any acceptance other than of orbitless, dirigible worlds that he shuts his eyes to more than two-thirds of them; he picks out six that can give him the illusion of completeness, or of all relating to one planet.

Or let it be that we have data of many dark bodies--still do we incline almost irresistibly to think of one of them as the dark-body-in-chief. Dark bodies, floating, or navigating, in inter-planetary space--and I conceive of one that's the Prince of Dark Bodies:

Melanicus.

Vast dark thing with the wings of a super-bat, or jet-black super-construction; most likely one of the spores of the Evil One.

The extraordinary year, 1883:

London _Times_, Dec. 17, 1883:

Extract from a letter by Hicks Pashaw: that, in Egypt, Sept. 24, 1883, he had seen, through glasses, "an immense black spot upon the lower part of the sun."

Sun spot, maybe.

One night an astronomer was looking up at the sky, when something obscured a star, for three and a half seconds. A meteor had been seen nearby, but its train had been only momentarily visible. Dr. Wolf was the astronomer (_Nature_, 86-528).

The next datum is one of the most sensational we have, except that there is very little to it. A dark object that was seen by Prof. Heis, for eleven degrees of arc, moving slowly across the Milky Way. (Greg's Catalogue, _Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1867-426.)

One of our quasi-reasons for accepting that orbitless worlds are dirigible is the almost complete absence of data of collisions: of course, though in defiance of gravitation, they may, without direction like human direction, adjust to one another in the way of vortex rings of smoke--a very human-like way, that is. But in _Knowledge_, February, 1894, are two photographs of Brooks' comet that are shown as evidence of its seeming collision with a dark object, October, 1893. Our own wording is that it "struck against something": Prof. Barnard's is that it had "entered some dense medium, which shattered it." For all I know it had knocked against merely a field of ice.

Melanicus.

That upon the wings of a super-bat, he broods over this earth and over other worlds, perhaps deriving something from them: hovers on wings, or wing-like appendages, or planes that are hundreds of miles from tip to tip--a super-evil thing that is exploiting us. By Evil I mean that which makes us useful.

He obscures a star. He shoves a comet. I think he's a vast, black, brooding vampire.

_Science_, July 31, 1896:

That, according to a newspaper account, Mr. W.R. Brooks, director of the Smith Observatory, had seen a dark round object pass rather slowly across the moon, in a horizontal direction. In Mr. Brooks' opinion it was a dark meteor. In _Science_, Sept. 14, 1896, a correspondent writes that, in his opinion, it may have been a bird. We shall have no trouble with the meteor and bird mergers, if we have observations of long duration and estimates of size up to hundreds of miles. As to the body that was seen by Brooks, there is a note from the Dutch astronomer, Muller, in the _Scientific American_, 75-251, that, upon April 4, 1892, he had seen a similar phenomenon. In _Science Gossip_, n.s., 3-135, are more details of the Brooks object--apparent diameter about one-thirtieth of the moon's--moon's disk crossed in three or four seconds. The writer, in _Science Gossip_, says that, on June 27, 1896, at one o'clock in the morning, he was looking at the moon with a 2-inch achromatic, power 44, when a long black object sailed past, from west to east, the transit occupying 3 or 4 seconds. He believed this object to be a bird--there was, however, no fluttering motion observable in it.

In the _Astronomische Nachrichten_, No. 3477, Dr. Brendel, of Griefswald, Pomerania, writes that Postmaster Ziegler and other observers had seen a body about 6 feet in diameter crossing the sun's disk. The duration here indicates something far from the earth, and also far from the sun. This thing was seen a quarter of an hour before it reached the sun. Time in crossing the sun was about an hour. After leaving the sun it was visible an hour.

I think he's a vast, black vampire that sometimes broods over this earth and other bodies.

Communication from Dr. F.B. Harris (_Popular Astronomy_, 20-398):

That, upon the evening of Jan. 27, 1912, Dr. Harris saw, upon the moon, "an intensely black object." He estimated it to be 250 miles long and 50 miles wide. "The object resembled a crow poised, as near as anything." Clouds then cut off observation.

Dr. Harris writes:

"I cannot but think that a very interesting and curious phenomenon happened."

15

Short chapter coming now, and it's the worst of them all. I think it's speculative. It's a lapse from our usual pseudo-standards. I think it must mean that the preceding chapter was very efficiently done, and that now by the rhythm of all quasi-things--which can't be real things, if they're rhythms, because a rhythm is an appearance that turns into its own opposite and then back again--but now, to pay up, we're what we weren't. Short chapter, and I think we'll fill in with several points in Intermediatism.

A puzzle:

If it is our acceptance that, out of the Negative Absolute, the Positive Absolute is generating itself, recruiting, or maintaining, itself, via a third state, or our own quasi-state, it would seem that we're trying to conceive of Universalness manufacturing more Universalness from Nothingness. Take that up yourself, if you're willing to run the risk of disappearing with such velocity that you'll leave an incandescent train behind, and risk being infinitely happy forever, whereas you probably don't want to be happy--I'll sidestep that myself, and try to be intelligible by regarding the Positive Absolute from the aspect of Realness instead of Universalness, recalling that by both Realness and Universalness we mean the same state, or that which does not merge away into something else, because there is nothing else. So the idea is that out of Unrealness, instead of Nothingness, Realness, instead of Universalness, is, via our own quasi-state, manufacturing more Realness. Just so, but in relative terms, of course, all imaginings that materialize into machines or statues, buildings, dollars, paintings or books in paper and ink are graduations from unrealness to realness--in relative terms. It would seem then that Intermediateness is a relation between the Positive Absolute and the Negative Absolute. But the absolute cannot be the related--of course a confession that we can't really think of it at all, if here we think of a limit to the unlimited. Doing the best we can, and encouraged by the reflection that we can't do worse than has been done by metaphysicians in the past, we accept that the absolute can't be the related. So then that our quasi-state is not a real relation, if nothing in it is real. On the other hand, it is not an unreal relation, if nothing in it is unreal. It seems thinkable that the Positive Absolute can, by means of Intermediateness, have a quasi-relation, or be only quasi-related, or be the unrelated, in final terms, or, at least, not be the related, in final terms.

As to free will and Intermediatism--same answer as to everything else. By free will we mean Independence--or that which does not merge away into something else--so, in Intermediateness, neither free-will nor slave-will--but a different approximation for every so-called person toward one or the other of the extremes. The hackneyed way of expressing this seems to me to be the acceptable way, if in Intermediateness, there is only the paradoxical: that we're free to do what we have to do.

I am not convinced that we make a fetish of the preposterous. I think our feeling is that in first gropings there's no knowing what will afterward be the acceptable. I think that if an early biologist heard of birds that grow on trees, he should record that he had heard of birds that grow on trees: then let sorting over of data occur afterward. The one thing that we try to tone down but that is to a great degree unavoidable is having our data all mixed up like Long Island and Florida in the minds of early American explorers. My own notion is that this whole book is very much like a map of North America in which the Hudson River is set down as a passage leading to Siberia. We think of Monstrator and Melanicus and of a world that is now in communication with this earth: if so, secretly, with certain esoteric ones upon this earth. Whether that world's Monstrator and Monstrator's Melanicus--must be the subject of later inquiry. It would be a gross thing to do: solve up everything now and leave nothing to our disciples.

I have been very much struck with phenomena of "cup marks."

They look to me like symbols of communication.

But they do not look to me like means of communication between some of the inhabitants of this earth and other inhabitants of this earth.

My own impression is that some external force has marked, with symbols, rocks of this earth, from far away.

I do not think that cup marks are inscribed communications among different inhabitants of this earth, because it seems too unacceptable that inhabitants of China, Scotland, and America should all have conceived of the same system.

Cup marks are strings of cup-like impressions in rocks. Sometimes there are rings around them, and sometimes they have only semi-circles. Great Britain, America, France, Algeria, Circassia, Palestine: they're virtually everywhere--except in the far north, I think. In China, cliffs are dotted with them. Upon a cliff near Lake Como, there is a maze of these markings. In Italy and Spain and India they occur in enormous numbers.

Given that a force, say, like electric force, could, from a distance, mark such a substance as rocks, as, from a distance of hundreds of miles, selenium can be marked by telephotographers--but I am of two minds--

The Lost Explorers from Somewhere, and an attempt, from Somewhere, to communicate with them: so a frenzy of showering of messages toward this earth, in the hope that some of them would mark rocks near the lost explorers--

Or that somewhere upon this earth, there is an especial rocky surface, or receptor, or polar construction, or a steep, conical hill, upon which for ages have been received messages from some other world; but that at times messages go astray and mark substances perhaps thousands of miles from the receptor:

That perhaps forces behind the history of this earth have left upon the rocks of Palestine and England and India and China records that may some day be deciphered, of their misdirected instructions to certain esoteric ones--Order of the Freemasons--the Jesuits--

I emphasize the row-formation of cup marks:

Prof. Douglas (_Saturday Review_, Nov. 24, 1883):

"Whatever may have been their motive, the cup-markers showed a decided liking for arranging their sculpturings in regularly spaced rows."

That cup marks are an archaic form of inscription was first suggested by Canon Greenwell many years ago. But more specifically adumbratory to our own expression are the observations of Rivett-Carnac (_Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc._, 1903-515):

That the Braille system of raised dots is an inverted arrangement of cup marks: also that there are strong resemblances to the Morse code. But no tame and systematized archaeologist can do more than casually point out resemblances, and merely suggest that strings of cup marks look like messages, because--China, Switzerland, Algeria, America--if messages they be, there seems to be no escape from attributing one origin to them--then, if messages they be, I accept one external origin, to which the whole surface of this earth was accessible, for them.

Something else that we emphasize:

That rows of cup marks have often been likened to footprints.

But, in this similitude, their unilinear arrangement must be disregarded--of course often they're mixed up in every way, but arrangement in single lines is very common. It is odd that they should so often be likened to footprints: I suppose there are exceptional cases, but unless it's something that hops on one foot, or a cat going along a narrow fence-top, I don't think of anything that makes footprints one directly ahead of another--Cop, in a station house, walking a chalk line, perhaps.

Upon the Witch's Stone, near Ratho, Scotland, there are twenty-four cups, varying in size from one and a half to three inches in diameter, arranged in approximately straight lines. Locally it is explained that these are tracks of dogs' feet (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotland_, 2-4-79). Similar marks are scattered bewilderingly all around the Witch's Stone--like a frenzy of telegraphing, or like messages repeating and repeating, trying to localize differently.

In Inverness-shire, cup marks are called "fairies' footmarks." At Valna's church, Norway, and St. Peter's, Ambleteuse, there are such marks, said to be horses' hoofprints. The rocks of Clare, Ireland, are marked with prints supposed to have been made by a mythical cow (_Folklore_, 21-184).

We now have such a ghost of a thing that I'd not like to be interpreted as offering it as a datum: it simply illustrates what I mean by the notion of symbols, like cups, or like footprints, which, if like those of horses or cows, are the reverse of, or the negatives of, cups--of symbols that are regularly received somewhere upon this earth--steep, conical hill, somewhere, I think--but that have often alighted in wrong places--considerably to the mystification of persons waking up some morning to find them upon formerly blank spaces.

An ancient record--still worse, an ancient Chinese record--of a courtyard of a palace--dwellers of the palace waking up one morning, finding the courtyard marked with tracks like the footprints of an ox--supposed that the devil did it. (_Notes and Queries_, 9-6-225.)

16.

Angels.

Hordes upon hordes of them.

Beings massed like the clouds of souls, or the commingling whiffs of spirituality, or the exhalations of souls that Dore pictured so often.

It may be that the Milky Way is a composition of stiff, frozen, finally-static, absolute angels. We shall have data of little Milky Ways, moving swiftly; or data of hosts of angels, not absolute, or still dynamic. I suspect, myself, that the fixed stars are really fixed, and that the minute motions said to have been detected in them are illusions. I think that the fixed stars are absolutes. Their twinkling is only the interpretation by an intermediatist state of them. I think that soon after Leverrier died, a new fixed star was discovered--that, if Dr. Gray had stuck to his story of the thousands of fishes from one pail of water, had written upon it, lectured upon it, taken to street corners, to convince the world that, whether conceivable or not, his explanation was the only true explanation: had thought of nothing but this last thing at night and first thing in the morning--his obituary--another "nova" reported in _Monthly Notices_.

I think that Milky Ways, of an inferior, or dynamic, order, have often been seen by astronomers. Of course it may be that the phenomena that we shall now consider are not angels at all. We are simply feeling around, trying to find out what we can accept. Some of our data indicate hosts of rotund and complacent tourists in inter-planetary space--but then data of long, lean, hungry ones. I think that there are, out in inter-planetary space, Super Tamerlanes at the head of hosts of celestial ravagers--which have come here and pounced upon civilizations of the past, cleaning them up all but their bones, or temples and monuments--for which later historians have invented exclusionist histories. But if something now has a legal right to us, and can enforce its proprietorship, they've been warned off. It's the way of all exploitation. I should say that we're now under cultivation: that we're conscious of it, but have the impertinence to attribute it all to our own nobler and higher instincts.

Against these notions is the same sense of finality that opposes all advance. It's why we rate acceptance as a better adaptation than belief. Opposing us is the strong belief that, as to inter-planetary phenomena, virtually everything has been found out. Sense of finality and illusion of homogeneity. But that what is called advancing knowledge is violation of the sense of blankness.

A drop of water. Once upon a time water was considered so homogeneous that it was thought of as an element. The microscope--and not only that the supposititiously elementary was seen to be of infinite diversity, but that in its protoplasmic life there were new orders of beings.

Or the year 1491--and a European looking westward over the ocean--his feeling that that suave western droop was unbreakable; that gods of regularity would not permit that smooth horizon to be disturbed by coasts or spotted with islands. The unpleasantness of even contemplating such a state--wide, smooth west, so clean against the sky--spotted with islands--geographic leprosy.

But coasts and islands and Indians and bison, in the seemingly vacant west: lakes, mountains, rivers--

One looks up at the sky: the relative homogeneity of the relatively unexplored: one thinks of only a few kinds of phenomena. But the acceptance is forced upon me that there are modes and modes and modes of inter-planetary existence: things as different from planets and comets and meteors as Indians are from bison and prairie dogs: a super-geography--or celestiography--of vast stagnant regions, but also of Super-Niagaras and Ultra-Mississippis: and a super-sociology--voyagers and tourists and ravagers: the hunted and the hunting: the super-mercantile, the super-piratic, the super-evangelical.

Sense of homogeneity, or our positivist illusion of the unknown--and the fate of all positivism.

Astronomy and the academic.

Ethics and the abstract.

The universal attempt to formulate or to regularize--an attempt that can be made only by disregarding or denying.

Or all things disregard or deny that which will eventually invade and destroy them--

Until comes the day when some one thing shall say, and enforce upon Infinitude:

"Thus far shalt thou go: here is absolute demarcation."

The final utterance:

"There is only I."

In the _Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 11-48, there is a letter from the Rev. W. Read:

That, upon the 4th of September, 1851, at 9:30 A.M., he had seen a host of self-luminous bodies, passing the field of his telescope, some slowly and some rapidly. They appeared to occupy a zone several degrees in breadth. The direction of most of them was due east to west, but some moved from north to south. The numbers were tremendous. They were observed for six hours.

Editor's note:

"May not these appearances be attributed to an abnormal state of the optic nerves of the observer?"

In _Monthly Notices_, 12-38, Mr. Read answers that he had been a diligent observer, with instruments of a superior order, for about 28 years--"but I have never witnessed such an appearance before." As to illusion he says that two other members of his family had seen the objects.

The Editor withdraws his suggestion.

We know what to expect. Almost absolutely--in an existence that is essentially Hibernian--we can predict the past--that is, look over something of this kind, written in 1851, and know what to expect from the Exclusionists later. If Mr. Read saw a migration of dissatisfied angels, numbering millions, they must merge away, at least subjectively, with commonplace terrestrial phenomena--of course disregarding Mr. Read's probable familiarity, of 28 years' duration, with the commonplaces of terrestrial phenomena.

_Monthly Notices_, 12-183:

Letter from Rev. W.R. Dawes:

That he had seen similar objects--and in the month of September--that they were nothing but seeds floating in the air.

In the _Report of the British Association_, 1852-235, there is a communication from Mr. Read to Prof. Baden-Powell:

That the objects that had been seen by him and by Mr. Dawes were not similar. He denies that he had seen seeds floating in the air. There had been little wind, and that had come from the sea, where seeds would not be likely to have origin. The objects that he had seen were round and sharply defined, and with none of the feathery appearance of thistledown. He then quotes from a letter from C.B. Chalmers, F.R.A.S., who had seen a similar stream, a procession, or migration, except that some of the bodies were more elongated--or lean and hungry--than globular.

He might have argued for sixty-five years. He'd have impressed nobody--of importance. The super-motif, or dominant, of his era, was Exclusionism, and the notion of seeds in the air assimilates--with due disregards--with that dominant.

Or pageantries here upon our earth, and things looking down upon us--and the Crusades were only dust clouds, and glints of the sun on shining armor were only particles of mica in dust clouds. I think it was a Crusade that Read saw--but that it was right, relatively to the year 1851, to say that it was only seeds in the wind, whether the wind blew from the sea or not. I think of things that were luminous with religious zeal, mixed up, like everything else in Intermediateness, with black marauders and from gray to brown beings of little personal ambitions. There may have been a Richard Coeur de Lion, on his way to right wrongs in Jupiter. It was right, relatively to 1851, to say that he was a seed of a cabbage.

Prof. Coffin, U.S.N. (_Jour. Frank. Inst._, 88-151):

That, during the eclipse of August, 1869, he had noted the passage, across his telescope, of several bright flakes resembling thistleblows, floating in the sunlight. But the telescope was so focused that, if these things were distinct, they must have been so far away from this earth that the difficulties of orthodoxy remain as great, one way or another, no matter what we think they were--

They were "well-defined," says Prof. Coffin.

Henry Waldner (_Nature_, 5-304):

That, April 27, 1863, he had seen great numbers of small, shining bodies passing from west to east. He had notified Dr. Wolf, of the Observatory of Zurich, who "had convinced himself of this strange phenomenon." Dr. Wolf had told him that similar bodies had been seen by Sig. Capocci, of the Capodimonte Observatory, at Naples, May 11, 1845.

The shapes were of great diversity--or different aspects of similar shapes?

Appendages were seen upon some of them.

We are told that some were star-shaped, with transparent appendages.

I think, myself, it was a Mohammed and his Hegira. May have been only his harem. Astonishing sensation: afloat in space with ten million wives around one. Anyway, it would seem that we have considerable advantage here, inasmuch as seeds are not in season in April--but the pulling back to earth, the bedraggling by those sincere but dull ones of some time ago. We have the same stupidity--necessary, functioning stupidity--of attribution of something that was so rare that an astronomer notes only one instance between 1845 and 1863, to an every-day occurrence--

Or Mr. Waldner's assimilative opinion that he had seen only ice crystals.

Whether they were not very exclusive veils of a super-harem, or planes of a very light material, we have an impression of star-shaped things with transparent appendages that have been seen in the sky.

Hosts of small bodies--black, this time--that were seen by the astronomers Herrick, Buys-Ballot, and De Cuppis (_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1860-25); vast numbers of bodies that were seen by M. Lamey, to cross the moon (_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1874-62); another instance of dark ones; prodigious number of dark, spherical bodies reported by Messier, June 17, 1777 (Arago, _OEuvres_, 9-38); considerable number of luminous bodies which appeared to move out from the sun, in diverse directions; seen at Havana, during eclipse of the sun, May 15, 1836, by Prof. Auber (Poey); M. Poey cites a similar instance, of Aug. 3, 1886; M. Lotard's opinion that they were birds (_L'Astronomie_, 1886-391); large number of small bodies crossing disk of the sun, some swiftly, some slowly; most of them globular, but some seemingly triangular, and some of more complicated structure; seen by M. Trouvelet, who, whether seeds, insects, birds, or other commonplace things, had never seen anything resembling these forms (_L'Annee Scientifique_, 1885-8); report from the Rio de Janeiro Observatory, of vast numbers of bodies crossing the sun, some of them luminous and some of them dark, from some time in December, 1875, until Jan. 22, 1876 (_La Nature_, 1876-384).

Of course, at a distance, any form is likely to look round or roundish: but we point out that we have notes upon the seeming of more complex forms. In _L'Astronomie_, 1886-70, is recorded M. Briguiere's observation, at Marseilles, April 15 and April 25, 1883, upon the crossing of the sun by bodies that were irregular in form. Some of them moved as if in alignment.

Letter from Sir Robert Inglis to Col. Sabine (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1849-17):

That, at 3 P.M., Aug. 8, 1849, at Gais, Switzerland, Inglis had seen thousands and thousands of brilliant white objects, like snowflakes in a cloudless sky. Though this display lasted about twenty-five minutes, not one of these seeming snowflakes was seen to fall. Inglis says that his servant "fancied" that he had seen something like wings on these--whatever they were. Upon page 18, of the _Report_, Sir John Herschel says that, in 1845 or 1846, his attention had been attracted by objects of considerable size, in the air, seemingly not far away. He had looked at them through a telescope. He says that they were masses of hay, not less than a yard or two in diameter. Still there are some circumstances that interest me. He says that, though no less than a whirlwind could have sustained these masses, the air about him was calm. "No doubt wind prevailed at the spot, but there was no roaring noise." None of these masses fell within his observation or knowledge. To walk a few fields away and find out more would seem not much to expect from a man of science, but it is one of our superstitions, that such a seeming trifle is just what--by the Spirit of an Era, we'll call it--one is not permitted to do. If those things were not masses of hay, and if Herschel had walked a little and found out, and had reported that he had seen strange objects in the air--that report, in 1846, would have been as misplaced as the appearance of a tail upon an embryo still in its gastrula era. I have noticed this inhibition in my own case many times. Looking back--why didn't I do this or that little thing that would have cost so little and have meant so much? Didn't belong to that era of my own development.

_Nature_, 22-64:

That, at Kattenau, Germany, about half an hour before sunrise, March 22, 1880, "an enormous number of luminous bodies rose from the horizon, and passed in a horizontal direction from east to west." They are described as having appeared in a zone or belt. "They shone with a remarkably brilliant light."

So they've thrown lassos over our data to bring them back to earth. But they're lassos that cannot tighten. We can't pull out of them: we may step out of them, or lift them off. Some of us used to have an impression of Science sitting in calm, just judgment: some of us now feel that a good many of our data have been lynched. If a Crusade, perhaps from Mars to Jupiter, occur in the autumn--"seeds." If a Crusade or outpouring of celestial vandals is seen from this earth in the spring--"ice crystals." If we have record of a race of aerial beings, perhaps with no substantial habitat, seen by someone in India--"locusts."

This will be disregarded:

If locusts fly high, they freeze and fall in thousands.

_Nature_, 47-581:

Locusts that were seen in the mountains of India, at a height of 12,750 feet--"in swarms and dying by thousands."

But no matter whether they fly high or fly low, no one ever wonders what's in the air when locusts are passing overhead, because of the falling of stragglers. I have especially looked this matter up--no mystery when locusts are flying overhead--constant falling of stragglers.

_Monthly Notices_, 30-135:

"An unusual phenomenon noticed by Lieut. Herschel, Oct. 17 and 18, 1870, while observing the sun, at Bangalore, India."

Lieut. Herschel had noticed dark shadows crossing the sun--but away from the sun there were luminous, moving images. For two days bodies passed in a continuous stream, varying in size and velocity.

The Lieutenant tries to explain, as we shall see, but he says:

"As it was, the continuous flight, for two whole days, in such numbers, in the upper regions of the air, of beasts that left no stragglers, is a wonder of natural history, if not of astronomy."

He tried different focusing--he saw wings--perhaps he saw planes. He says that he saw upon the objects either wings or phantom-like appendages.

Then he saw something that was so bizarre that, in the fullness of his nineteenth-centuriness, he writes:

"There was no longer doubt: they were locusts or flies of some sort."

One of them had paused.

It had hovered.

Then it had whisked off.

The Editor says that at that time "countless locusts had descended upon certain parts of India."

We now have an instance that is extraordinary in several respects--super-voyagers or super-ravagers; angels, ragamuffins, crusaders, emigrants, aeronauts, or aerial elephants, or bison or dinosaurs--except that I think the thing had planes or wings--one of them has been photographed. It may be that in the history of photography no more extraordinary picture than this has ever been taken.

_L'Astronomie_, 1885-347:

That, at the Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico, Aug. 12, 1883, about 2,500 meters above sea level, were seen a large number of small luminous bodies, entering upon the disk of the sun. M. Bonilla telegraphed to the Observatories of the City of Mexico and of Puebla. Word came back that the bodies were not visible there. Because of this parallax, M. Bonilla placed the bodies "relatively near the earth." But when we find out what he called "relatively near the earth"--birds or bugs or hosts of a Super-Tamerlane or army of a celestial Richard Coeur de Lion--our heresies rejoice anyway. His estimate is "less distance than the moon."

One of them was photographed. See _L'Astronomie_, 1885-349. The photograph shows a long body surrounded by indefinite structures, or by the haze of wings or planes in motion.

_L'Astronomie_, 1887-66;

Signer Ricco, of the Observatory of Palermo, writes that, Nov. 30, 1880, at 8:30 o'clock in the morning, he was watching the sun, when he saw, slowly traversing its disk, bodies in two long, parallel lines, and a shorter, parallel line. The bodies looked winged to him. But so large were they that he had to think of large birds. He thought of cranes.

He consulted ornithologists, and learned that the configuration of parallel lines agrees with the flight-formation of cranes. This was in 1880: anybody now living in New York City, for instance, would tell him that also it is a familiar formation of aeroplanes. But, because of data of focus and subtended angles, these beings or objects must have been high.

Sig. Ricco argues that condors have been known to fly three or four miles high, and that heights reached by other birds have been estimated at two or three miles. He says that cranes have been known to fly so high that they have been lost to view.

Our own acceptance, in conventional terms, is that there is not a bird of this earth that would not freeze to death at a height of more than four miles: that if condors fly three or four miles high, they are birds that are especially adapted to such altitudes.

Sig. Ricco's estimate is that these objects or beings or cranes must have been at least five and a half miles high.

17

The vast dark thing that looked like a poised crow of unholy dimensions. Assuming that I shall ever have any readers, let him, or both of them, if I shall ever have such popularity as that, note how dim that bold black datum is at the distance of only two chapters.

The question:

Was it a thing or the shadow of a thing?

Acceptance either way calls not for mere revision but revolution in the science of astronomy. But the dimness of the datum of only two chapters ago. The carved stone disk of Tarbes, and the rain that fell every afternoon for twenty--if I haven't forgotten, myself, whether it was twenty-three or twenty-five days!--upon one small area. We are all Thomsons, with brains that have smooth and slippery, though corrugated, surfaces--or that all intellection is associative--or that we remember that which correlates with a dominant--and a few chapters go by, and there's scarcely an impression that hasn't slid off our smooth and slippery brains, of Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan." There are two ways by which irreconcilables can be remembered--if they can be correlated in a system more nearly real than the system that rejects them--and by repetition and repetition and repetition.

Vast black thing like a crow poised over the moon.

The datum is so important to us, because it enforces, in another field, our acceptance that dark bodies of planetary size traverse this solar system.

Our position:

That the things have been seen:

Also that their shadows have been seen.

Vast black thing poised like a crow over the moon. So far it is a single instance. By a single instance, we mean the negligible.

In _Popular Science_, 34-158, Serviss tells of a shadow that Schroeter saw, in 1788, in the lunar Alps. First he saw a light. But then, when this region was illuminated, he saw a round shadow where the light had been.

Our own expression:

That he saw a luminous object near the moon: that that part of the moon became illuminated, and the object was lost to view; but that then its shadow underneath was seen.

Serviss explains, of course. Otherwise he'd not be Prof. Serviss. It's a little contest in relative approximations to realness. Prof. Serviss thinks that what Schroeter saw was the "round" shadow of a mountain--in the region that had become lighted. He assumes that Schroeter never looked again to see whether the shadow could be attributed to a mountain. That's the crux: conceivably a mountain could cast a round--and that means detached--shadow, in the lighted part of the moon. Prof. Serviss could, of course, explain why he disregards the light in the first place--maybe it had always been there "in the first place." If he couldn't explain, he'd still be an amateur.

We have another datum. I think it is more extraordinary than--

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.

But now they're negatives, or they're out of harmony--

If we are in harmony with a new dominant, or the spirit of a new era, in which Exclusionism must be overthrown; if we have data of many obscurations that have occurred, not only upon the moon, but upon our own earth, as convincing of vast intervening bodies, usually invisible, as is any regularized, predicted eclipse.

One looks up at the sky.

It seems incredible that, say, at the distance of the moon, there could be, but be invisible, a solid body, say, the size of the moon.

One looks up at the moon, at a time when only a crescent of it is visible. The tendency is to build up the rest of it in one's mind; but the unillumined part looks as vacant as the rest of the sky, and it's of the same blueness as the rest of the sky. There's a vast area of solid substance before one's eyes. It's indistinguishable from the sky.

In some of our little lessons upon the beauties of modesty and humility, we have picked out basic arrogances--tail of a peacock, horns of a stag, dollars of a capitalist--eclipses of astronomers. Though I have no desire for the job, I'd engage to list hundreds of instances in which the report upon an expected eclipse has been "sky overcast" or "weather unfavorable." In our Super-Hibernia, the unfavorable has been construed as the favorable. Some time ago, when we were lost, because we had not recognized our own dominant, when we were still of the unchosen and likely to be more malicious than we now are--because we have noted a steady tolerance creeping into our attitude--if astronomers are not to blame, but are only correlates to a dominant--we advertised a predicted eclipse that did not occur at all. Now, without any especial feeling, except that of recognition of the fate of all attempted absolutism, we give the instance, noting that, though such an evil thing to orthodoxy, it was orthodoxy that recorded the non-event.

_Monthly Notices of the R.A.S._, 8-132:

"Remarkable appearances during the total eclipse of the moon on March 19, 1848":

In an extract from a letter from Mr. Forster, of Bruges, it is said that, according to the writer's observations at the time of the predicted total eclipse, the moon shone with about three times the intensity of the mean illumination of an eclipsed lunar disk: that the British Consul, at Ghent, who did not know of the predicted eclipse, had written enquiring as to the "blood-red" color of the moon.

This is not very satisfactory to what used to be our malices. But there follows another letter, from another astronomer, Walkey, who had made observations at Clyst St. Lawrence: that, instead of an eclipse, the moon became--as is printed in italics--"most beautifully illuminated" ... "rather tinged with a deep red"... "the moon being as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever."

I note that Chambers, in his work upon eclipses, gives Forster's letter in full--and not a mention of Walkey's letter.

There is no attempt in _Monthly Notices_ to explain upon the notion of greater distance of the moon, and the earth's shadow falling short, which would make as much trouble for astronomers, if that were not foreseen, as no eclipse at all. Also there is no refuge in saying that virtually never, even in total eclipses, is the moon totally dark--"as perfect with light as if there had been no eclipse whatever." It is said that at the time there had been an aurora borealis, which might have caused the luminosity, without a datum that such an effect, by an aurora, had ever been observed upon the moon.

But single instances--so an observation by Scott, in the Antarctic. The force of this datum lies in my own acceptance, based upon especially looking up this point, that an eclipse nine-tenths of totality has great effect, even though the sky be clouded.

Scott (_Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. ii, p. 215):

"There may have been an eclipse of the sun, Sept. 21, 1903, as the almanac said, but we should, none of us, have liked to swear to the fact."

This eclipse had been set down at nine-tenths of totality. The sky was overcast at the time.

So it is not only that many eclipses unrecognized by astronomers as eclipses have occurred, but that intermediatism, or impositivism, breaks into their own seemingly regularized eclipses.

Our data of unregularized eclipses, as profound as those that are conventionally--or officially?--recognized, that have occurred relatively to this earth:

In _Notes and Queries_ there are several allusions to intense darknesses that have occurred upon this earth, quite as eclipses occur, but that are not referable to any known eclipsing body. Of course there is no suggestion here that these darknesses may have been eclipses. My own acceptance is that if in the nineteenth century anyone had uttered such a thought as that, he'd have felt the blight of a Dominant; that Materialistic Science was a jealous god, excluding, as works of the devil, all utterances against the seemingly uniform, regular, periodic; that to defy him would have brought on--withering by ridicule--shrinking away by publishers--contempt of friends and family--justifiable grounds for divorce--that one who would so defy would feel what unbelievers in relics of saints felt in an earlier age; what befell virgins who forgot to keep fires burning, in a still earlier age--but that, if he'd almost absolutely hold out, just the same--new fixed star reported in _Monthly Notices_. Altogether, the point in Positivism here is that by Dominants and their correlates, quasi-existence strives for the positive state, aggregating, around a nucleus, or dominant, systematized members of a religion, a science, a society--but that "individuals" who do not surrender and submerge may of themselves highly approximate to positiveness--the fixed, the real, the absolute.

In _Notes and Queries_, 2-4-139, there is an account of a darkness in Holland, in the midst of a bright day, so intense and terrifying that many panic-stricken persons lost their lives stumbling into the canals.

_Gentleman's Magazine_, 33-414:

A darkness that came upon London, Aug. 19, 1763, "greater than at the great eclipse of 1748."

However, our preference is not to go so far back for data. For a list of historic "dark days," see Humboldt, _Cosmos_, 1-120.

_Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1886-79:

That, according to the _La Crosse Daily Republican_, of March 20, 1886, darkness suddenly settled upon the city of Oshkosh, Wis., at 3 P.M., March 19. In five minutes the darkness equaled that of midnight.

Consternation.

I think that some of us are likely to overdo our own superiority and the absurd fears of the Middle Ages--

Oshkosh.

People in the streets rushing in all directions--horses running away--women and children running into cellars--little modern touch after all: gas meters instead of images and relics of saints.

This darkness, which lasted from eight to ten minutes, occurred in a day that had been "light but cloudy." It passed from west to east, and brightness followed: then came reports from towns to the west of Oshkosh: that the same phenomenon had already occurred there. A "wave of total darkness" had passed from west to east.