Part 68

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--

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--