Part 47

Astronomy--"the perfect science, as we astronomers like to call it." (Jacoby.)

It's my own notion that if, in a real existence, an astronomer could not tell one longitude from another, he'd be sent back to this purgatory of ours until he could meet that simple requirement.

Halley was sent to the Cape of Good Hope to determine its longitude. He got it degrees wrong. He gave to Africa's noble Roman promontory a retrousse twist that would take the pride out of any Kaffir.

We hear everlastingly of Halley's comet. It came back--maybe. But, unless we look the matter up in contemporaneous records, we hear nothing of--the Leonids, for instance. By the same methods as those by which Halley's comet was predicted, the Leonids were predicted. November, 1898--no Leonids. It was explained. They had been perturbed. They would appear in November, 1899. November, 1899--November, 1900--no Leonids.

My notion of astronomic accuracy:

Who could not be a prize marksman, if only his hits be recorded?

As to Halley's comet, of 1910--everybody now swears he saw it. He has to perjure himself: otherwise he'd be accused of having no interest in great, inspiring things that he's never given any attention to.

Regard this:

That there never is a moment when there is not some comet in the sky. Virtually there is no year in which several new comets are not discovered, so plentiful are they. Luminous fleas on a vast black dog--in popular impressions, there is no realization of the extent to which this solar system is flea-bitten.

If a comet have not the orbit that astronomers have predicted--perturbed. If--like Halley's comet--it be late--even a year late--perturbed. When a train is an hour late, we have small opinion of the predictions of timetables. When a comet's a year late, all we ask is--that it be explained. We hear of the inflation and arrogance of astronomers. My own acceptance is not that they are imposing upon us: that they are requiting us. For many of us priests no longer function to give us seeming rapport with Perfection, Infallibility--the Positive Absolute. Astronomers have stepped forward to fill a vacancy--with quasi-phantomosity--but, in our acceptance, with a higher approximation to substantiality than had the attenuations that preceded them. I should say, myself, that all that we call progress is not so much response to "urge" as it is response to a hiatus--or if you want something to grow somewhere, dig out everything else in its area. So I have to accept that the positive assurances of astronomers are necessary to us, or the blunderings, evasions and disguises of astronomers would never be tolerated: that, given such latitude as they are permitted to take, they could not be very disastrously mistaken. Suppose the comet called Halley's had not appeared--

Early in 1910, a far more important comet than the anaemic luminosity said to be Halley's, appeared. It was so brilliant that it was visible in daylight. The astronomers would have been saved anyway. If this other comet did not have the predicted orbit--perturbation. If you're going to Coney Island, and predict there'll be a special kind of a pebble on the beach, I don't see how you can disgrace yourself, if some other pebble will do just as well--because the feeble thing said to have been seen in 1910 was no more in accord with the sensational descriptions given out by astronomers in advance than is a pale pebble with a brick-red boulder.

I predict that next Wednesday, a large Chinaman, in evening clothes, will cross Broadway, at 42nd Street, at 9 P.M. He doesn't, but a tubercular Jap in a sailor's uniform does cross Broadway, at 35th Street, Friday, at noon. Well, a Jap is a perturbed Chinaman, and clothes are clothes.

I remember the terrifying predictions made by the honest and credulous astronomers, who must have been themselves hypnotized, or they could not have hypnotized the rest of us, in 1909. Wills were made. Human life might be swept from this planet. In quasi-existence, which is essentially Hibernian, that would be no reason why wills should not be made. The less excitable of us did expect at least some pretty good fireworks.

I have to admit that it is said that, in New York, a light was seen in the sky.

It was about as terrifying as the scratch of a match on the seat of some breeches half a mile away.

It was not on time.

Though I have heard that a faint nebulosity, which I did not see, myself, though I looked when I was told to look, was seen in the sky, it appeared several days after the time predicted.

A hypnotized host of imbeciles of us: told to look up at the sky: we did--like a lot of pointers hypnotized by a partridge.

The effect:

Almost everybody now swears that he saw Halley's comet, and that it was a glorious spectacle.

An interesting circumstance here is that seemingly we are trying to discredit astronomers because astronomers oppose us--that's not my impression. We shall be in the Brahmin caste of the hell of the Baptists. Almost all our data, in some regiments of this procession, are observations by astronomers, few of them mere amateur astronomers. It is the System that opposes us. It is the System that is suppressing astronomers. I think we pity them in their captivity. Ours is not malice--in a positive sense. It's chivalry--somewhat. Unhappy astronomers looking out from high towers in which they are imprisoned--we appear upon the horizon.

But, as I have said, our data do not relate to some especial other world. I mean very much what a savage upon an ocean island might vaguely think of in his speculations--not upon some other land, but complexes of continents and their phenomena: cities, factories in cities, means of communication--

Now all the other savages would know of a few vessels sailing in their regular routes, passing this island in regularized periodicities. The tendency in these minds would be expression of the universal tendency toward positivism--or Completeness--or conviction that these few regularized vessels constituted all. Now I think of some especial savage who suspects otherwise--because he's very backward and unimaginative and insensible to the beautiful ideals of the others: not piously occupied, like the others, in bowing before impressive-looking sticks of wood; dishonestly taking time for his speculations, while the others are patriotically witch-finding. So the other higher and nobler savages know about the few regularized vessels: know when to expect them; have their periodicities all worked out; just about when vessels will pass, or eclipse each other--explaining that all vagaries were due to atmospheric conditions.

They'd come out strong in explaining.

You can't read a book upon savages without noting what resolute explainers they are.

They'd say that all this mechanism was founded upon the mutual attraction of the vessels--deduced from the fall of a monkey from a palm tree--or, if not that, that devils were pushing the vessels--something of the kind.

Storms.

Debris, not from these vessels, cast up by the waves.