NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 733 



sion of England, and which was anathematized by Pope Calixtus as 

 portending evil to Christendom four centuries later, was found to be, 

 as Seneca had prophesied, a heavenly body obeying the great laws of 

 the universe, and coming at regular periods. Thenceforth the whole 

 ponderous enginery of superstition, with its citations of proof-texts 

 regarding " signs in the heavens," its theological reasoning to show 

 the moral necessity of cometary warnings, and its ecclesiastical ful- 

 minations against the " atheism, godlessness, and infidelity " of scien- 

 tific investigation, was seen by all thinking men to be as weak against 

 the scientific method as Indian arrows against needle-guns. Coper- 

 nicus, Galileo, Newton, Cassini, Doerfel, Halley, and Clairaut had 

 gained the victory.* 



And still even good men looked longingly back to the old belief. 

 It was so hard for them to give up the doctrine of " signs in the heav- 

 ens," seemingly based upon Scripture, and exercising such a healthful 

 moral tendency ! As is always the case under such circumstances, 

 votaries of "sacred science" appeared, and these exerted the greatest 

 ingenuity in averting the new doctrine ; but their voices gradually 

 died into silence, though far within our own century Joseph de Mais- 

 tre echoed them in declaring his belief that comets are special warn- 

 ings of evil. 



There did, indeed, still linger one little cloud-patch of superstition, 

 arising from the supposed fact that comets had really been followed 

 by a marked rise in temperature. Even this poor basis for the belief 

 that comets might, after all, affect earthly affairs was swept away. 

 Science won here another victory, for Arago, by thermometric rec- 

 ords carefully kept at Paris from 1735 to 1781, proved that comets 

 had produced no effect upon temperature. Among multitudes of 

 similar examples he showed that, in some years when several comets 

 appeared, the temperature was lower than in other years when few or 

 none appeared. In 1737 there were two comets, and the weather was 

 cool ; in 1765 there was no comet, and the weather was hot ; through 

 the whole fifty years it was shown that comets were sometimes fol- 

 lowed by hot weather, sometimes by cool, and that no rule was dedu- 

 cible. The victory of science was complete at every point, f 



But in this whole history there was one little exhibition so curious 

 as to be worthy of notice, though its permanent effect upon thought 

 was small. Whiston and Burnet, so devoted to what they considered 

 sacred science, had determined that in some way comets must be in- 

 struments of divine wrath. One of them maintained that the deluge 

 was caused by the tail of a comet striking the earth ; the other 



* See Madler, as above ; also, Guillemin, Walson, and Grant's " History of Astrono- 

 my " ; also, Delambre, Proctor, article " Astronomy " in " Encyclopaedia Britannica," and 

 others. 



f For the writings of several on both sides, and especially those who sought to save, 

 as far as possible, the sacred theory of comets, see Madler, ii, p. 384, et seq. 



