Short Studies on Great Subjects | Page 6

the loves and wars of the Pantheon, so long there was no
science of Astronomy. There was fancy, imagination, poetry, perhaps
reverence, but no science. As soon, however, as it was observed that
the stars retained their relative places--that the times of their rising and
setting varied with the seasons--that sun, moon, and planets moved
among them in a plane, and the belt of the Zodiac was marked out and
divided, then a new order of things began. Traces of the earlier stage
remained in the names of the signs and constellations, just as the
Scandinavian mythology survives now in the names of the days of the
week: but for all that, the understanding was now at work on the thing;
Science had begun, and the first triumph of it was the power of
foretelling the future. Eclipses were perceived to recur in cycles of
nineteen years, and philosophers were able to say when an eclipse was
to be looked for. The periods of the planets were determined. Theories
were invented to account for their eccentricities; and, false as those
theories might be, the position of the planets could be calculated with
moderate certainty by them. The very first result of the science, in its
most imperfect stage, was a power of foresight; and this was possible
before any one true astronomical law had been discovered.
We should not therefore question the possibility of a science of history,
because the explanations of its phenomena were rudimentary or
imperfect: that they might be, and might long continue to be, and yet
enough might be done to show that there was such a thing, and that it
was not entirely without use. But how was it that in those rude days,

with small knowledge of mathematics, and with no better instruments
than flat walls and dial plates, those first astronomers made progress so
considerable? Because, I suppose, the phenomena which they were
observing recurred, for the most part, within moderate intervals; so that
they could collect large experience within the compass of their natural
lives: because days and months and years were measurable periods, and
within them the more simple phenomena perpetually repeated
themselves.
But how would it have been if, instead of turning on its axis once in
twenty-four hours, the earth had taken a year about it; if the year had
been nearly four hundred years; if man's life had been no longer than it
is, and for the initial steps of astronomy there had been nothing to
depend upon except observations recorded in history? How many ages
would have passed, had this been our condition, before it would have
occurred to any one, that, in what they saw night after night, there was
any kind of order at all?
We can see to some extent how it would have been, by the present state
of those parts of the science which in fact depend on remote recorded
observations. The movements of the comets are still extremely
uncertain. The times of their return can be calculated only with the
greatest vagueness.
And yet such a hypothesis as I have suggested would but inadequately
express the position in which we are in fact placed towards history.
There the phenomena never repeat themselves. There we are dependent
wholly on the record of things said to have happened once, but which
never happen or can happen a second time. There no experiment is
possible; we can watch for no recurring fact to test the worth of our
conjectures. It has been suggested, fancifully, that if we consider the
universe to be infinite, time is the same as eternity, and the past is
perpetually present. Light takes nine years to come to us from Sirius;
those rays which we may see to-night when we leave this place, left
Sirius nine years ago; and could the inhabitants of Sirius see the earth
at this moment, they would see the English army in the trenches before
Sebastopol; Florence Nightingale watching at Scutari over the wounded

at Inkermann; and the peace of England undisturbed by 'Essays and
Reviews.'
As the stars recede into distance, so time recedes with them, and there
may be, and probably are, stars from which Noah might be seen
stepping into the ark, Eve listening to the temptation of the serpent, or
that older race, eating the oysters and leaving the shell-heaps behind
them, when the Baltic was an open sea.
Could we but compare notes, something might be done; but of this
there is no present hope, and without it there will be no science of
history. Eclipses, recorded in ancient books, can be verified by
calculation, and lost dates can be recovered by them, and we can
foresee by the laws which they follow when there will be eclipses again.
Will a time