We may be answered that the personal beliefs of some pious Astronomers, however great they may be as scientific characters, are no proofs of the actual existence and presence in space of intelligent supramundane Beings, of either Gods or Angels. It is the behaviour of the stars and planets themselves that has to be analysed and inferences must be drawn therefrom. Renan asserts that nothing that we know of the sidereal bodies warrants the idea of the presence of any Intelligence, whether internal or external to them.
Let us see, says Reynaud, if this is a fact, or only one more empty scientific assumption.
The orbits traversed by the planets are far from being immutable. They are, on the contrary, subject to perpetual mutation in position, as in form. Elongations, contractions, and orbital widenings, oscillations from right to left, slackening and quickening of speed ... and all this on a plane which seems to vacillate.[412]
As is very pertinently observed by des Mousseux:
Here is a path having little of the mathematical and mechanical precision claimed for it; for we know of no clock which, having gone slow for several minutes should catch up the right time of itself and without a turn of the key.
So much for blind law and force. As for the physical impossibility—a miracle indeed in the sight of Science—of a stone raised in the air against the law of gravitation, this is what Babinet—the deadliest [pg 221] enemy and opponent of the phenomena of levitation—(cited by Arago) says:
Everyone knows the theory of bolides [meteors] and aerolithes.... In Connecticut an immense aerolith was seen [413]
Thus we find in both of the cases above cited—that of self-correcting planets and of meteors of gigantic size flying back into the air—a “blind force” regulating and resisting the natural tendencies of “blind matter,” and even occasionally repairing its mistakes and correcting its failures. This is far more miraculous and even “extravagant,” one would say, than any “Angel-guided” Element.
Bold is he who laughs at the idea of Von Haller, who declares that:
The stars are perhaps an abode of glorious Spirits; as here Vice reigns, there is Virtue master.[414]