CHAPTER FIVE
SMUGNESS and falseness and sequences of re-adjusting fatalities—and yet so great is the hypnotic power of astronomic science that it can outlive its “mortal” blows by the simple process of forgetting them, and, in general, simply by denying that it can make mistakes. Upon page 245, Old and New Astronomy, Richard Proctor says—“The ideas of astronomers in these questions of distance have not changed, and, in the present position of astronomy, based (in such respects) on absolute demonstration, they can not change.”
Sounds that have roared in the sky, and their vibrations have shaken down villages—if these be the voices of Development, commanding that opinions shall change, we shall learn what will become of the Proctors and their “absolute demonstrations.” Lights that have appeared in the sky—that they are gleams upon the armament of Marching Organization. “There can be only one explanation of meteors”—I think it is that they are shining spearpoints of slayers of dogmas. I point to the sky over a little town in Perthshire, Scotland—there may be a new San Salvador—it may be a new Plymouth Rock. I point to the crater Aristarchus, of the moon—there, for more than a century, a lighthouse may have been signalling. Whether out of profound meditations, or farrago and bewilderment, I point, directly, or miscellaneously, and, if only a few of a multitude of data be accepted, unformulable perturbations rack an absolute sureness, and the coils of our little horizons relax their constrictions.
I indicate that, in these pages, which are banners in a cosmic procession, I do feel a sense of responsibility, but how to maintain any great seriousness I do not know, because still is our subject astronomical “triumphs.”
Once upon a time there was a young man, aged eighteen, whose name was Jeremiah Horrox. He was no astronomer. He was interested in astronomic subjects, but it may be that we shall agree
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