68 



until it falls into another solar system, the process repeating: 

 itself as long as any ot the substance of the comet remains.. 



From remote times astronomers have observed multi- 

 tudes of comets, have followed their movements and b} r 

 their parabolic lines, which could be measured, formed 

 the plan of their ellipse, the path of which occupied, by 

 their calculations, tens and in cases even hundreds of 

 years. These calculations were rarely successful. In the 

 great majority of instances these comets passed on their 

 way leaving their imaginory parabolical lines and ellipses 

 on the astronomical charts without troubling to fulfil 

 these astronomical predictions. This fact explains itself 

 very simply. A comet having passed tover the solar 

 disc can never receive a contrary course, because cosmic life 

 is an eternal forward movement. If then certain comets seemed 

 to justify astronomical prophecy, this is merely owing to 

 a scientific blunder, founded on the confusion of a comet 

 body which happened by coincidence to appear at a given 

 time, with some other comet, the supposed ellipse of which 

 had led astronomers to foretell its reappearance at that time. 



Cloudspots and comets pass across the solar disc every 

 year. In 1891 for example, no fewer than three comets 

 and four cloudspots were remarked. The fact that some 

 single comet shoald now and then pursue the course of 

 some other comet which passed through our system ten. 

 twenty or a hundred years ago can hardly excite surprise. 

 From the year 1 of the Christian Era to the present time more 

 than 4000 comets and cloudspots have passed towards the 

 sun. Two hundred and eighty of these have been examined 

 tkrough the telescope and their supposed orbits have been 

 defined, but of such calculations only 12 received apparent 

 confirmation ; the rest were complete failures, the comets 

 whose reappearance was foretold disappearing finally. The 

 ridiculously small percentage of cases in which comets have 

 seemed to reappear and justify predictions, speaks incontro- 

 vertibly in lavour of the idea that such instances present 

 merely an accidental coincidence. 



