reported by Glaisher, Oct. 4, 1844; bright as Jupiter, "sending out
quick flickering waves of light" (_Year Book of Facts_, 1845-278).
I think that with the object known as Eddie's "comet" passes away the
last of our susceptibility to the common fallacy of personifying. 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 persons, or final
unities, individuals, completenesses, or selves--instead of
indeterminate parts. But, so long as we remain in quasi-existence, we
can cast out illusion only with some other illusion, though the other
illusion may approximate higher to reality. So we personify no more--but
we super-personify. We now take into full acceptance our expression that
Development is an Autocracy of Successive 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 Grahamstown,
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, 90.
In _Nature_, 44-519, Prof. Copeland describes a similar appearance 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. 11, 1891, in Nova Scotia.
But the Old Dominant was a jealous god.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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