Page:New lands - (IA newlands00fort).pdf/40

 the hydrogenic anguishes of the sun—and there must be astronomers for the sake of relaxations.

It will be important to us that the astronomers shall not be less unfortunate in their pronouncements upon motions of the stars than they have turned out to be in other respects. Especially disagreeable to us is the doctrine that stars are variable because dark companies revolve around them; also we prefer to find that nothing fit for somewhat matured minds has been determined as to stars with light companions that encircle them, or revolve with them. If silence be the only true philosophy, and if every positive assertion be a myth, we should easily find requital for our negative preferences.

Prof. Otto Struve was one of the highest of astronomic authorities, and the faithful attribute triumphs to him. Upon March 19, 1873, Prof. Struve announced that he had discovered a companion to the star Procyon. That was an interesting observation, but the mere observation was not the triumph. Some time before, Prof. Auwers, as credulous, if not jocular, as Newton and Leverrier and Adams, had computed the orbit of a hypothetic companion of Procyon’s. Upon a chart of the stars, he had drawn a circle around Procyon. This orbit was calculated in gravitational terms, and a general theme of ours is that all such calculations are only ideal, and relate no more to stars and planets or anything else than do the spotless theories of uplifters to events that occur as spots in the one wide daub of existence. Specifically we wish to discredit this “triumph” of Struve’s and Auwers’, but in general we continue our expression that all uses of the calculus of celestial mechanics are false applications, and that this subject is for æsthetic enjoyment only, and has no place in the science of astronomy, if anybody can think that there is such a science. So, after great labor, or after considerable enjoyment, Auwers drew a circle around Procyon, and announced that that was the orbit of a companion-star. Exactly at the point in this circle where it “should” be, upon March 19, 1873, Struve saw the point of light which, it may be accepted, sooner or later someone would see. According to Agnes Clerke (System of the Stars, p. 173) over and over Struve watched the point of light, and convinced himself that it moved as it “should” move,