| Excerpt from THE HOLY WARS
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We know the conclusion. For sure, it speaks volumes by itself, and yet we wonder on. Although all the road signs point that way, it still appears too fantastic to believe. A cover-up! One employing all the devious forethought that it took, and diligently so, knowingly played out to this end.
Nor can we not verify it beyond the brainstorm it appears to be. For we know exactly where it is. We know the perpetrator's moment in the cross hairs of time and space.
THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
We summon them together. No, not just the Popes, not Mohmet II, nor number one, nor any of the violent murderers. No, we bring together the more insidious, white collar clan,
who, with nicely manicured fingernails unwrote the newsprint we have witnessed in the flesh
We charge the following as committing crimes against human understanding:
Pierre Bayle (1647 - 1706)
Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)
More specifically, we charge them as co-conspirators in
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disengaging the comet from its true place in human history.
Thus we have them before us in this Gastrectszaal in Rotterdam, selected as the place of Pierre Bayle's birth, and preferred domicile. Indeed, we must lean this way, as Edward Gibbon is much more free to travel, if we go back to his itinerary of life, whereby he traveled much in France and Italy, ferreting through old reliquaries for the names and places of human beings.
For sure, we want Bayle to feel at home, where just before his time, the Inquisition were on the loose, burning out the tongues of victims who blasphemed.
I address the empty courtroom that all can hear through this text, "The first charge is a total prejudice against earthly truth. In other words, the backgrounds of both Bayle and Gibbon are unsuited for a historical account.
"FIRST, Bayle attended the Jesuit University at Toulouse. Gibbon became a Roman Catholic in London at the age of fifteen, thus excluding himself from any service in the secular England of his time. He was actually exiled by his father to Switzerland, and was there under the strict influence of a Calvinist pastor.
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"Did you know," I commence, "that a hundred years after your death, Cardinal Newman praised your work at the greatest history ever written?"
Yet, not he, but another gives the rejoinder coming through the cracks, as people do in this species of inquiry.
"'tis argument ad hominem."
"If it walks like a dog…" say I, being cut off by the sight of several suddenly assembled to answer for Gibbon. Preface writers, gainsayers through the ages.
So before I can rephrase, one bespectacled asks, "By whose order?"
Indeed, the judge is not a single person, but all who shall read this spectacle of mismanaged time and information.
"If you will not have argumentum ad hominem," say I, "Let us try coincidence."
It silences them. Bayle, of course, in his treatise is more expert on coincidence, so I direct my question into his expectancy.
"Is it a coincidence that Halley's prediction of the 1682 comet's return, subsequently named after him, parallels your denunciation of comets as having any worth to influence anything?"
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He answers in his Dutchman gutteral, "I speak more to the signs and say," he enlarges himself to full stature, "historians can only prove that comets have appeared, and that there have been disorders in the world, which is far from proving the one of these two things is the cause or the prognostic of the other."
"Hm" I say, while he goes on to enlighten me from the very text he wrote.
"If a woman siting by her window on Fleet Street never puts her head out the window may imagine," he stands more clearly forth to advance his reason, "may imagine…may imagine…"
I hear his rising voice. I listen for the continuation "…may imagine that putting her head out the window is a presage to all the neighborhood that…" he raises his finger in this professorial act, "that coaches will pass!" and booming louder.
"Ah ha!" he says, "she many IMAGINE she is the cause of their passing!"
Not mentioning the flawed analogy, the non sequitur, the rhetoric in place of logic, "You are speaking of coincidence," I respond.
"For sure I am," says he.
"Then," I venture back, "in returning to Halley's prediction,
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that the comet of 1682 would reappear in 1758, since it had the same orbit in 1607, we can take our computation back to 66 A.D, and say…"
"Say what you will," he cuts me off. "I would not give any credence to the belief that the ruin of the Roman Republic was the effect of two or three comets, if others had not confirmed it."
"You mean, the accounts of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio don't exist?"
"Historians, allow me to confirm the fact," he expels a patronizing sigh, "are famous for reporting supernatural accidents. It is seasoning to please the natural taste of mankind. Livy, though a man of good sense and elevated genius is proof of this, his history, otherwise perfect, otherwise full of ridiculous omens."
"Why is it," I move on to what I believe more shakey grounds for him, "that you make no mention of Halley in your entire 65 page text?"
"I devote my praise to Isaac Newton in the forward, as you can read. He is afterall the man to be accounted the same as this Age of Enlightenment itself."
Annoyed, I finally ask direct, "Your varied proof and argu-
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ments, and passion against the comet itself, to say the least, were they not generated by Halley's prediction, which could easily be read into the substance of Biblical prophecy itself? Certainly, the two words, prophecy and prediction, have very little distinction in lexicography"
"There is all the distinction in the world," he answers swiftly. "It is indeed the Age of Enlightenment's beginning, to place the comet in the realm of scientific study, unupholstered by ridiculous omens and prognostications."
Surely, there is more to say. But in any event, we will each repeat ourselves, so I turn away to you, the World, both judge and jury in this Time Travel Court in Rotterdam, and ask the consideration of one more piece of evidence from Bayle's treatise.
The Bayle Summation
These are Bayle's very words," I say, "as indeed all his answers to my questions heretofore."
I read: "Comets have no influence upon events and every thing that would have happened would have happened just as it did if not comet had occurred.
- end of quote from text -
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Research Substantiation - Bayle's position, and likewise authentication of all aspects of the book's rationale is substantiated through the Dossier, pages 97 - 135. The following extracts refers back to the text you have just read:
PAGE 69. (lines 20-21) Pierre Bayle, A DISSERTATION ON COMETS (London, undated), p. 27. Prior to his all-inclusive statement he covers the major possibilities from flood to plague, concluding that it is "superstition" to think comets can influence anything.
The work was first published in French in 1682, which is the year the comet returned, as Halley had predicted.
Gibbon's HISTORY contains a curious description of Bayle's achievements, considering there is no mention of the DISSERTATION. He refers to Bayle as thje "philosopher of Rotterdam," and concludes by stating what he be believes is Bayle's motto: "I am a Protestant; for I protest indifferently against all systems and sects." See vol. I, pp. 92-3.
PAGE 72 (lines 10 - 15) BAYLE, p. 11-12. His view of historians (maybe Gibbon felt himself included?): "Whether they believe their Histories would be too simple, without Prodigies, and supernatural Accidents; or they hope by this sort of Seasoning to please the natural Taste of Mankind, and to keep the Reader always in Breath; or that they imagine their miraculous Strokes will signalize their Histories in future Times; it is certain that Historians take great Delight in the wonderful Class. Livy, tho' a Man of good sense and elevated Genius, is eminent proof of this; and his History, otherwise almost perfect, is full of ridiculous Omens."
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