i86 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



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 ipth 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 Abso- 

 lute oh, well 



What I emphasize here is that our damned data are observations 

 by astronomers of the highest standing, excommunicated by as- 

 tronomers 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 pontifica- 

 tions of single scientists of eminence. This is only a convenience," 

 because it seems necessary to personify. If we look over Philosophi- 

 cal Transactions, or the publications of the Royal Astronomical So- 

 ciety, for instance, we see that Herschel, for instance, was as pow- 

 erless as any boy star-gazer, to enforce acceptance of any observa- 

 tion 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 ap- 

 pearances 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 i8th 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 Sun- 

 day 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 



