Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/192

186 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 star-gazer, 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 some one 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 La Place, 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 a