i88 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



supposed to be, but only transference of state from one hypnotic 

 to another 



If you be of the masses that the astronomers have hypnotized, 

 you will not be able even to remember. Ten pages from here, and 

 Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan" will have fallen from your 

 mind, like beans from a magnet, or like data of cold meteorites from 

 the mind of a Thomson. 



Leverrier and the "planet Vulcan." 



And much the good it will do us to repeat. 



But at least temporarily we shall have an impression of a his- 

 toric fiasco, such as, in our acceptance, could occur only in a quasi- 

 existence. 



In 1859, Dr. Lescarbault, an amateur astronomer, of Orgeres, 

 France, announced that, upon March 26, of that year, he had seen 

 a body of planetary size cross the sun. We are in a subject that is 

 now as unholy to the present system as ever were its own subjects 

 to the system that preceded it, or as ever were slanders against 

 miracles to the preceding system. Nevertheless few text-books go 

 so far as quite to disregard this tragedy. The method of the sys- 

 tematists is slightingly to give a few instances of the unholy, and 

 dispose of the few. If it were desirable to them to deny that there 

 are mountains upon this earth, they would record a few observa- 

 tions upon some slight eminences near Orange, N. J., but say that 

 commuters, though estimable persons in several ways, are likely to 

 have their observations mixed. The text-books casually mention 

 a few of the "supposed" observations upon "Vulcan," and then 

 pass on. 



Dr. Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier, who hastened to Orgeres 



Because this announcement assimilated with his own calculations 

 upon a planet between Mercury and the sun 



Because this solar system itself has never attained positiveness 

 in the aspect of Regularity: there are to Mercury, as there are to 

 Neptune, phenomena irrecoricilible with the formulas, or motions 

 that betray influence by something else. 



We are told that Leverrier "satisfied himself as to the substantial 

 accuracy of the reported observation." The story of this investi- 

 gation is told in Monthly Notices, 20-98. It seems too bad to 

 threaten the naive little thing with our rude sophistications, but it 

 is amusingly of the ingenuousness of the age from which present 

 dogmas have survived. Lescarbault wrote to Leverrier. Lever- 

 rier hastened to Orgeres. But he was careful not to tell Lescarbault 



