That the test of that which is not accidental is ability to do it again—
That it is within the power of anybody, who does not know a hyperbola from a cosine, to find out whether the astronomers are led by a cloud of rubbish by day and a pillar of bosh by night—
If, by the magic of his mathematics, any astronomer could have pointed to the position of Neptune, let him point to the planet past Neptune. According to the same reasoning by which a planet past Uranus was supposed to be, a Trans-Neptunian planet may be supposed to be. Neptune shows perturbations similar to those of Uranus.
According to Prof. Todd there is such a planet, and it revolves around the sun once in 375 years. There are two, according to Prof. Forbes, one revolving once in 1,000 years, and the other once in 5,000 years. See Macpherson’s A Century’s Progress in Astronomy. It exists, according to Dr. Eric Doolittle, and revolves once in 283 years (Sci. Amer., 122-641). According to Mr. Hind it revolves once in 1,600 years (Smithson. Miscell. Cols., 20-20).
So then we have found out some things, and, relatively to the oppressions that we felt from our opposition, they are reassuring. But also are they depressing. Because, if, in this existence of ours, there is no prestige higher than that of astronomic science, and, if that seeming of substantial renown has been achieved by a composition of bubbles, what of anything like soundness must there be to all lesser reputes and achievements?
Let three bodies inter-act. There is no calculus by which their inter-actions can be formulated. But there are a thousand inter-acting bodies in this solar system—or supposed solar system—and we find that the highest prestige in our existence is built upon the tangled assertions that there are magicians who can compute in a thousand quantities, though they can not compute in three.
Then all other so-called human triumphs, or moderate successes, products of anybody’s reasoning processes and labors—and what are they, if higher than them all, more academic, austere, rigorous, exact are the methods and the processes of the astron-
