Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
John Stuart Mill · en
"'The orbits of these satellites present peculiarities altogether
unexpected and exceptional, contrary to the general laws which govern
the other bodies of the solar system. The planes of their orbits are
almost perpendicular to the ecliptic, making an angle of 70 deg. 58',[16]
and they travel with a retrograde movement; that is to say, their
revolution about the centre of their planet takes place from east to
west in place of following the inverse course.'
"When Laplace broached his theory that the sun and all the planets
were formed at the expense of a nebulous matter, these satellites were
an enigma to him.
"Admiral Smyth mentions in his _Celestial Cycle_ that the movement of
these satellites, to the stupefaction of all astronomers, is
retrograde, contrary to that of all the other bodies observed up to
that time.
"All the astronomical works published before 1860 contain the same
reasoning on the subject of the satellites of Uranus. For my part, I
did not find any explanation for this peculiarity: to me it was a
mystery as much as for the writers whom I have cited.
"In 1858 I had as a guest in my house a lady who was a medium, and we
arranged daily seances. One evening she said to me that she saw at my
side a spirit who claimed to have been an astronomer during his life
on earth.
"I asked this person if he was wiser at present than when he lived on
the earth. 'Much wiser,' he said. I had the idea of asking this
so-called spirit a question the object of which was to test his
knowledge. 'Can you tell me,' I asked him, 'why the satellites of
Uranus make their revolution from east to west and not from west to
east?' I received at once the following reply:
"'The satellites of Uranus do not move in their orbits from east to
west: they circle about their planet from west to east, in the same
way that the moon moves around the earth. The error comes from the
fact that the south pole of Uranus was turned toward the earth at the
moment of the discovery of this planet. In the same way that the sun,
seen from our southern hemisphere, seems to run its daily course from
right to left and not from left to right, so the satellites of Uranus
were moving at that time from left to right, though this does not mean
they were moving in their orbit from east to west.'