“. The memoir of M. de Lalande has appeared. He says that it is his opinion that, of the sixty known comets, eight, by their near approach to the Earth, might produce a pressure such that the sea would leave its bed and cover a part of the world.”
In time, the excitement died away. The fear of comets assumed a new form. They were no longer regarded as indications of the anger of God, but their collision with the Earth was discussed from a scientific point of view, and these collisions were not considered free of danger. At the close of the last century, Laplace stated his views on this question, in the forcible language which we have quoted in Chapter II.
In this century, predictions concerning the end of the world have several times been associated with the appearance of comets. It was announced that the comet of Biela, for example, would intersect the Earth’s orbit on , which it did, as predicted. There was great excitement. Once more the end of things was declared at hand. Humanity was threatened. What was going to happen?
The orbit, that is to say the path, of the Earth had been confounded with the Earth itself. The latter was not to reach that point of its orbit traversed by the comet until , more than a month after the comet’s passage, and the latter was at no time to be within 20,000,000 leagues of us. Once more we got off with a fright.
It was the same in . Some prophet of ill omen had declared that the famous comet of Charles V, whose periodic time was thought to be three centuries, would return on the of that year. More than one timid soul was rendered anxious, and the confessionals of Paris were more than usually crowded with penitents. Another prediction was made public in , in the name of an astronomer, who, however, was not responsible for it—M. Plantamour, director of the Geneva observatory.
As in the case of comets, so with other unusual phenomena, such as total solar eclipses, mysterious suns appearing suddenly in the skies, showers of shooting stars, great volcanic eruptions accompanied with the darkness of night and seeming to threaten the burial of the world in ashes, earthquakes overthrowing and engulfing houses and cities—all these grand and terrible events have been connected with the fear of an immediate and universal end of men and things.
The history of eclipses alone would suffice to fill a volume, no less interesting than the history of comets. Confining our attention to a modern example, one of the last total eclipses of the Sun, visible in France, that of , had been foretold by astronomers, and its announcement had produced great alarm. For some it meant the overthrow of states and the fall of Rome; for others it signified a new deluge; there were those who believed that nothing less than the destruction of the world by fire was inevitable; while the more collected anticipated the poisoning of the atmosphere. Belief in these dreaded results were so widespread, that, in order to escape them, and by the express order of physicians, many terrified people shut themselves up in closed cellars, warmed and perfumed. We refer the reader, especially, to the second evening of Les Mondes of Fontenelle. Another writer of the same century, Petit, to whom we referred a moment ago, in his Dissertation on the Nature of Comets says, that the consternation steadily increased up to the fatal day, and that a country curate, unable to confess all who believed their last hour was at hand, at sermon time told his parishioners not to be in such haste, for the eclipse had been put off for a fortnight; and these good people were as ready to believe in the postponement of the eclipse as they had been in its malign influence.
At the time of the last total solar eclipses visible in France, namely, those of ; , and , as also of the partial ones of ; ; ; , and , there was more or less apprehension on the part of the timid; at least, we know, from trustworthy sources, that in each of these cases these natural phenomena were interpreted by a certain class in Europe as possible signs of divine wrath, and in several religious educational establishments the pupils were requested to offer up prayers as the time of the eclipse drew near. This mystical interpretation of the order of nature is slowly disappearing among enlightened nations, and the next total eclipse of the Sun, visible in southern France on , will probably inspire no fear on the French side of the Pyrenees; but it might be premature to make the same statement regarding those who will observe it from the Spanish side of the mountains.
Among uncivilized people these phenomena excite today the same terror which they once did among us. This fact is frequently attested by travellers, especially in Africa. During the eclipse of , in Algeria, men and women resorted to prayer or fled affrighted to their homes. During the eclipse of , which was total in the United States,
