It hardly need be said that as a philosopher in his science, he had then no rival, as he has had none since. His only associates even, were Michell and Wilson.[15]
Without depreciating the abilities of the astronomers of England, his cotemporaries, we may fairly say that Herschel stood a great man among a group of small ones.
Let us endeavor to appreciate the change effected in the state of astronomy not only in England but in the whole world, simply by the discovery of Uranus. Suppose, for example, that the last planet in our system had been Saturn. No doubt Herschel would have gone on. In spite of one and another difficulty, he would have made his ten-foot, his twenty-foot telescopes. His forty-foot would never have been built, and the two satellites which he found with it might not have been discovered. Certainly Mimas would not have been. His researches on the construction of the heavens would have been made; those were in his brain, and must have been ultimated. The mass of observations of Saturn, of Jupiter, of Mars, of Venus, would have been made and published. The researches on the sun, on the "invisible rays" of heat, on comets and nebulæ—all these might have been made, printed, and read.
But these would have gone into the Philosophical Transactions as the work of an amateur astronomer, "Mr. Herschel, of Bath." They would have been praised, and they would have been doubted. It would have taken a whole generation to have appreciated them. They would have been severely tried, entirely on their merits, and finally they would have stood where they stand to-day—unrivalled. But through what increased labors these successes would have been gained! It is not merely that the patronage of the king, the subsidies for the forty-foot telescope (£4,000), the comparative ease of Herschel's life would have been lacking. It is more than this. It would have been necessary for him to have created the audience to which he appealed, and to have conquered the most persistent of enemies—indifference.
Certainly, if Herschel's mind had been other than it was, the discovery of Uranus, which brought him honors from every scientific society in the world, and which gave him authority, might have had a hurtful effect. But, as he was, there was nothing which could have aided his career more than this startling discovery. It was needed for him. It completed the solar system far more by affording a free play to a profoundly philosophical mind, than by occupying the vacant spaces beyond Saturn.
His opportunities would have been profoundly modified, though his personal worth would have been the same.
"The Star that from the zenith darts its beams,
Visible though it be to half the earth,
Though half a sphere be conscious of its brightness,
Is yet of no diviner origin,
No purer essence, than the One that burns
Like an untended watchfire, on the ridge
Of some dark mountain; or than those that seem
Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps,
Among the branches of the leafless trees."
To show how completely unknown the private astronomer of Bath was at this time, I transcribe a sentence from Bode's account of the discovery of Uranus.
"In the Gazette Littéraire of June, 1781, this worthy man is called Mersthel; in Julius' Journal Encyclopédique, Hertschel; in a letter from Mr. Maskelyne to M. Messier, Herthel; in another letter of Maskelyne's to Herr Mayer, at Mannheim, Herrschell; M. Darquier calls him Hermstel. What may his name be? He must have been born a German."[16]
This obscurity did not long continue. The news spread quickly from fashionable Bath to London. On the 6th of December, 1781, Herschel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, to which he was formally "admitted" May 30, 1782. He was forty-three years old.