Myths and Marvels of Astronomy
saw both these stars, and must confess had I had so much the common
notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look upon them as
the forerunners and warnings of God's judgments, and especially when,
the Plague having followed the first, I yet saw another of the same
kind, I could not but say, God had not yet sufficiently scourged the
city' [London].
The comets of 1680 and 1682, though they did not bring plagues or
conflagrations immediately, yet were not supposed to have been
altogether without influence. The convenient fiction, indeed, that some
comets operate quickly and others slowly, made it very difficult for a
comet to appear to which some evil effects could not be ascribed. If any
one can find a single date, since the records of history have been
carefully kept, which was so fortunately placed that, during no time
following it within five years, no prince, king, emperor, or pope died,
no war was begun, or ended disastrously for one side or the other
engaged in it, no revolution was effected, neither plague nor pestilence
occurred, neither droughts nor floods afflicted any nation, no great
hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic outbursts, or other trouble was
recorded, he will then have shown the bare possibility that a comet
might have appeared which seemed to presage neither abrupt nor
slow-moving calamities. But it is not possible to name such a date, nor
even a date which was not followed within two years at the utmost by a
calamity such as superstition might assign to a comet. And so closely
have such calamities usually followed, that scarce a comet could appear
which might not be regarded as the precursor of very quickly approaching
calamity. Even if a comet had come which seemed to bring no trouble,
nay, if many such comets had come, men would still have overlooked the
absence of any apparent fulfilment of the predicted troubles. Henry IV.
well remarked, when he was told that astrologers predicted his death
because a certain comet had been observed: 'One of these days they will
predict it truly, and people will remember better the single occasion
when the prediction will be fulfilled than the many other occasions when
it has been falsified by the event.'
The troubles connected with the comets of 1680 and 1682 were removed
farther from the dates of the events themselves than usual, at least so
far as the English interpretation of the comets was concerned. 'The
great comet in 1680,' says one, 'followed by a lesser comet in 1682, was
evidently the forerunner of all those remarkable and disastrous events
that ended in the revolution of 1688. It also evidently presaged the
revocation of the edict of Nantes, and the cruel persecution of the
Protestants, by the French king Louis XIV., afterwards followed by those
terrible wars which, with little intermission, continued to ravage the
finest parts of Europe for nearly twenty-four years.'
If in some respects the fears inspired by comets have been reduced by
modern scientific discoveries respecting these bodies, yet in other
respects the very confidence engendered by the exactness of modern
astronomical computations has proved a source of terror. There is
nothing more remarkable, for instance, in the whole history of cometary
superstition, than the panic which spread over France in the year 1773,
in consequence of a rumour that the mathematician Lalande had predicted
the occurrence of a collision between a comet and the earth, and that
disastrous effects would inevitably follow. The foundation of the rumour
was slight enough in all conscience. It had simply been announced that
Lalande would read before the Academy of Sciences a paper entitled
'Reflections on those Comets which can approach the Earth.' That was
absolutely all; yet, from that one fact, not only were vague rumours of
approaching cometic troubles spread abroad, but the statement was
definitely made that on May 20 or 21, 1773, 'a comet would encounter the
earth.'[43] So great was the fear thus excited, that, in order to calm
it, Lalande inserted in the 'Gazette de France' of May 7, 1773, the
following advertisement:--'M. Lalande had not time to read his memoir
upon comets which may approach the earth and cause changes in her
motions; but he would observe that it is impossible to assign the epochs
of such events. The next comet whose return is expected is the one which
should return in eighteen years; but it is not one of those which can
hurt the earth.'
This note had not the slightest effect in restoring peace to the minds
of unscientific Frenchmen. M. Lalande's study was crowded with anxious
persons who came to inquire about his memoir. Certain devout folk, 'as
ignorant as they were imbecile,' says a contemporary journal, begged the
Archbishop of Paris to appoint forty hours' prayer to avert the danger
and prevent the terrible deluge. For this was the particular form most
men agreed that the danger would take. That prelate was on the point,
indeed, of complying with their request, and would have done so, but
that some members of the Academy explained to him that by so doing he
would excite ridicule.
Far more effective, and, to say truth, far better judged, was the irony
of Voltaire, in his deservedly celebrated 'Letter on the Pretended
Comet.' It ran as follows:--
'Grenoble, May 17, 1773.
'Certain Parisians who are not philosophers, and who, if we are to
believe them, will not have time to become such, have informed me that
the end of the world approaches, and will occur without fail on the 20th
of this present month of May. They expect, that day, a comet, which is
to take our little globe from behind and reduce it to impalpable powder,
according to a certain prediction of the Academy of Sciences which has
not yet been made.
'Nothing is more likely than this event; for James Bernouilli, in his
"Treatise upon the Comet" of 1680, predicted expressly that the famous
comet of 1680 would return with terrible uproar (_fracas_) on May 19,
1719; he assured us that in truth its perruque would signify nothing
mischievous, but that its tail would be an infallible sign of the wrath
of heaven. If James Bernouilli mistook, it is, after all, but a matter
of fifty-four years and three days.
'Now, so small an error as this being regarded by all geometricians as
of little moment in the immensity of ages, it is manifest that nothing
can be more reasonable than to hope (_sic, esperer_) for the end of the
world on the 20th of this present month of May 1773, or in some other
year. If the thing should not come to pass, "omittance is no quittance"
(_ce qui est differe, n'est pas perdu_).
'There is certainly no reason for laughing at M. Trissotin, triple
idiot though he is (_tout Trissotin qu'il est_), when he says to Madame
Philaminte (Moliere's "Femmes Savantes," acte iv. scene 3),
'Nous l'avons en dormant, madame, echappe belle;
Un monde pres de nous a passe tout du long,
Est chu tout au travers de notre tourbillon;
Et, s'il eut en chemin rencontre notre terre,
Elle eut ete brisee en morceaux comme verre.
'A comet coursing along its parabolic orbit may come full tilt against
our earth. But then, what will happen? Either that comet will have a
force equal to that of our earth, or greater, or less. If equal, we
shall do the comet as much harm as it will do us, action and reaction
being equal; if greater, the comet will bear us away with it; if less,
we shall bear away the comet.
'This great event may occur in a thousand ways, and no one can affirm
that our earth and the other planets have not experienced more than one
revolution, through the mischance of encountering a comet on their path.
'The Parisians will not desert their city on the 20th inst.; they will
sing songs, and the play of "The Comet and the World's End" will be
performed at the Opera Comique.'
The last touch is as fine in its way as Sydney Smith's remark that, if
London were destroyed by an earthquake, the surviving citizens would
celebrate the event by a public dinner among the ruins. Voltaire's
prediction was not fulfilled exactly to the letter, but what actually
happened was even funnier than what his lively imagination had
suggested. It was stated by a Parisian Professor in 1832 (as a reason
why the Academy of Sciences should refute an assertion then rife to the
effect that Biela's comet would encounter the earth that year) that
during the cometic panic of 1773 'there were not wanting people who
knew too well the art of turning to their advantage the alarm inspired
by the approaching comet, and _places in Paradise were sold at a very
high rate_.[44] The announcement of the comet of 1832 may produce
similar effects,' he said, 'unless the authority of the Academy apply a
prompt remedy; and this salutary intervention is at this moment implored
by many benevolent persons.'
In recent years the effects produced on the minds of men by comets have
been less marked than of yore, and appear to have depended a good deal
on circumstances. The comet of the year 1858 (called Donati's), for
example, occasioned no special fears, at least until Napoleon III. made
his famous New-Year's day speech, after which many began to think the
comet had meant mischief. But the comet of 1861, though less
conspicuous, occasioned more serious fears. It was held by many in Italy
to presage a very great misfortune indeed, viz. the restoration of
Francis II. to the throne of the Two Sicilies. Others thought that the
downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy and the death of Pope Pius
IX. were signified. I have not heard that any very serious consequences
were expected to follow the appearance of Coggia's comet in 1874. The
great heat which prevailed during parts of the summer of 1876 was held
by many to be connected in some way with a comet which some very
unskilful telescopist constructed in his imagination out of the glare of
Jupiter in the object-glass of his telescope. Another benighted person,
seeing the Pleiades low down through a fog, turned them into a comet,
about the same time. Possibly the idea was, that since comets are
supposed to cause great heats, great heats may be supposed to indicate a
comet somewhere; and with minds thus prepared, it was not wonderful,
perhaps, that telescopic glare, or an imperfect view of our old friends
the Pleiades, should have been mistaken for a vision of the
heat-producing comet.
It should be a noteworthy circumstance to those who still continue to
look on comets as signs of great catastrophes, that a war more
remarkable in many respects than any which has ever yet been waged
between two great nations--a war swift in its operations and decisive in
its effects--a war in which three armies, each larger than all the
forces commanded by Napoleon I. during the campaign of 1813, were
captured bodily--should have been begun and carried on to its
termination without the appearance of any great comet. The civil war in
America, a still more terrible calamity to that great nation than the
success of Moltke's operations to the French, may be regarded by
believers as presignified by the great comet of 1861. But it so chances
that the war between France and Germany occurred near the middle of one
of the longest intervals recorded in astronomical annals as unmarked by
a single conspicuous comet--the interval between the years 1862 and
1874.
If the progress of just ideas respecting comets has been slow, it must
nevertheless be regarded as on the whole satisfactory. When we remember
that it was not a mere idle fancy which had to be opposed, not mere
terrors which had to be calmed, but that the idea of the significance of
changes in the heavens had come to be regarded by mankind as a part of
their religion, it cannot but be thought a hopeful sign that all