Book of the Damned — Chapter 14-a

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--