In Praise of Idleness, Chapter Fourteen

“On Comets,” pages 168-169

Comets have an honored history of foretelling events such as the death of Caesar, and hence our astronomical visitors were accorded respect by our forebears. Highly educated people such as the Venerable Bede and John Knox were cognizant of the prophetic nature of comets. The American colonists recognized the role of comets in the deaths of notables, and in providing warnings about indulgence in vice. Alas, the work of Halley and Newton revealed that comets were orderly in their travels, and this knowledge, though suppressed, eventually became general.

“In our day, it is difficult to imagine a world in which everybody, high and low, educated and uneducated, was preoccupied with comets, and filled with terror whenever one appeared [p. 169].” Now, thanks largely to artificial lighting, we don’t even notice comets or the rest of the cosmos, either. Our man-made environmental cocoon offers safety, but also makes us self-centered and unaware of deeper matters. The appearance of a comet now, if it were noticed, would probably not stir us enough to forgo our own indulgence in vice.