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As soon as he was installed on the Boulevard Malesherbes he asked Leverrier, the astronomer, to continue with him the astronomical studies with which at Versailles he had indulged himself in brief moments of leisure, remarking that he had seen a good deal of the perversity of mankind, and that he now wished to refresh himself with the orderly works of God.
The pseudo-planet, indeed, was detected shortly afterwards on the Greenwich photographs, and was found to have been seen by M. Ventosa at Madrid in its true character of a sun-spot without penumbra; but Leverrier had meantime undertaken the investigation of a list of twenty similar dubious appearances, collected by Haase, and republished by Wolf in 1872.
The calculus has not been invented which can deal with such complexities. We are in the same position as that in which Leverrier and Adams would have been, if, observing the irregularities of Uranus, which led to the discovery of Neptune, they had known nothing but the first six books of Euclid and a little algebra. There has never been any reformation as yet without dogma and supernaturalism.
Secondly, Leverrier was mistaken in considering that a planet such as Vulcan might have escaped detection when off the sun's face. Thirdly, that Vulcan would certainly have been seen during total solar eclipses, if the planet had a real objective existence.
Another man coming after Aristotle and following the same method may succeed better. This has actually been the case. Leverrier without ever looking into a telescope discovered Neptune, and told the observers in what part of the heavens they should look for the new planet. Substitute Maimonides's principle, and death to science! Why do the heavenly bodies move as they do?
M. Leverrier showed me the transit instrument and the mural circle. He has, like Mr. Airy, made the transit instrument incapable of mechanical change for its corrections of error, so that it depends for accuracy upon its faults being known and corrected in the computations. "All the early observatories of Europe seem to have been built as temples to Urania, and not as working-chambers of science.
Still later, Leverrier made it 91,759,000. Airy and Stone, by another method, made it 91,400,000; Stone alone, by a revision of the old observations, 91,730,000; and finally, Foucault and Fizeau, from physical experiments, determining the velocity of light, and therefore in their nature altogether differing from transit observations, 91,400,000.
"Except Leverrier, no one of them spoke to me. The ladies all did, and all spoke French. The two children were present again the little girl five years old played on the piano, and the boy of nine played and sang like a public performer. He promenaded about the room with his hands in his pockets, like a man.
'Without saying positively that he believed or disbelieved in the existence of the planet, proceeds the report, 'Sir G. Airy thought, since M. Leverrier was so confident, that the opportunity ought not to be neglected by anybody who professed to take an interest in the progress of planetary astronomy. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that observations were made as requested.
If repute was correct, Leverrier was not distinguished for those amiable qualities that commonly mark the man of science and learning. His attitude toward Adams had always been hostile. Under these conditions chance afforded the latter a splendid opportunity of showing his superiority to all personal feeling.
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