276 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



I think that with the object known as Eddie's "comet," passes 

 away the last of our susceptibility to the common fallacy of per- 

 sonifying. It is one of the most deep-rooted of positivist illusions 

 that people are persons. We have been guilty too often of spleens 

 and spites and ridicules against astronomers, as if they were per- 

 sons, or final unities, individuals, completenesses, or selves instead 

 of indeterminate parts. But, so long as we remain in quasi-ex- 

 istence, we can cast out illusion only with some other illusion, though 

 the other illusion may approximate higher to reality. So we per- 

 sonify no more but we super-personify. We now take into full 

 acceptance our expression that Development is an Autocracy of Suc- 

 cessive Dominants which are not final but which approximate 

 higher to individuality or self-ness, than do the human tropisms that 

 irresponsibly correlate to them. 



Eddie reported a celestial object, from the Observatory at Gra- 

 hamstown, South Africa. It was in 1890. The New Dominant was 

 only heir presumptive then, or heir apparent but not obvious. The 

 thing that Eddie reported might as well have been reported by a 

 night watchman, who had looked up through an unplaced sewer 

 pipe. 



It did not correlate. 



The thing was not admitted to Monthly Notices. I think myself 

 that if the Editor had attempted to let it in earthquake or a 

 mysterious fire in his publishing house. 



The Dominants are jealous gods. 



In Nature, presumably a vassal of the new god, though of course 

 also plausibly rendering homage to the old, is reported a comet- 

 like body, of Oct. 27, 1890, observed at Grahamstown, by Eddie. 

 It may have looked comet-like, but it moved 100 degrees while 

 visible, or one hundred degrees in three-quarters of an hour. See 

 Nature, 43-89* 9- 



In Nature, 44-519, Prof. Copeland describes a similar appear- 

 ance that he had seen, Sept. 10, 1891. Dreyer says (Nature, 44- 

 541) that he had seen this object at the Armagh Observatory. 

 He likens it to the object that was reported by Eddie. It was seen 

 by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, Sept. u, 1891, in Nova Scotia. 



But the Old Dominant was a jealous god. 



So there were different observations upon something that was 

 seen in November, 1883. These observations were Philistines in 

 1883. In the Amer. Met. Jour., i-no, a correspondent reports 

 having seen an object like a comet, with two tails, one up and one 



