seemed for a long time satisfactory. A similar explanation, that is to
say, by partial eruptions of gas from volcanic craters, was assigned
to the kind of black dotted appearance observed on the surface of the
solar disc, and which is exactly reproduced in the two figures here
given.
The brilliant spots scattered over the surface of the sun, which
touched here and there with points of intense luminosity, are called
_faculæ_. These brilliant points are said to proceed from local
accidents, which cause an escape of light and heat from certain parts
of the solar atmosphere.
Thus, according to this theory, the sun would be a solid body, opaque
and dark like the planets, surrounded by an atmospheric layer, which
would prevent any heat in the nucleus. Outside that layer would be a
second atmosphere, the _photosphere_, which only would be luminous,
and capable of emitting light and heat. Dark nucleus, dark atmosphere,
luminous photosphere, such would be the constituent elements of the
sun, according to Wilson, William Herschel, Humboldt, and Arago. To
any who hold this theory, it is not impossible to believe that the
sun may be inhabited by beings who differ but slightly to man, or who
are endowed with an organization similar to that of the inhabitants of
the earth. If the body of the sun be preserved by the interposition of
a cold, and but slightly conducting atmosphere from the rays of the
photosphere which burns at an immense distance, we can believe that
creatures organized almost like ourselves could live within it. The
heat of the burning photosphere can reach it through the thickness of
the lower atmosphere with only the degree of heat necessary to maintain
life. The light thus filtered is brilliant, but not dazzling, and
admits of the existence of beings of organization similar to those who
live on the earth.
To this conclusion Arago came:
"If I were asked," said the astronomer, "is the sun inhabited? I
must reply that I do not know. But, if I were asked whether the
sun can be inhabited by beings of organization similar to that of
dwellers upon our globe, I should not hesitate to reply in the
affirmative."
At the present day Arago would hesitate, for science has made a great
advance in the question of the physical constitution of the sun. The
new method invented by MM. Kirchhoff and Bunsen, and known as analysis
of the luminous spectrum, being applied to the solar rays, has given
rise to an entirely new conception of the nature of the sun. We have
returned to the opinion of the physicists of the middle ages, who
regarded the sun as a globe of fire, a sort of gigantic torch.
It would be impossible to enter into the details of the optical
experiments which rendered accurate analysis of the solar rays
possible, and enabled us to deduce a new theory of the constitution of
the sun from their properties. We shall confine ourselves to explaining
this theory, as it evolves itself from the experiments of M. Kirchhoff.
According to the German philosopher, the sun is not, as it has hitherto
been supposed, a cold, dark, and solid body, surrounded by a burning
atmosphere; it is a globe, a sphere, probably liquid, which burns
throughout its whole mass, and in all its parts. This incandescent
globe is surrounded by a very heavy atmosphere, formed of the vapours
which proceed from the incandescent globe, and which are themselves
kept burning in consequence of the high temperature of all those masses
of fire.
How are the spots on the sun to be explained according to this
theory? M. Kirchhoff admits that, owing to unknown causes, a cooling
process may take place in the vaporous atmosphere which surrounds
the body of the sun. This cooling process would form at certain
points condensations of vapour analogous to the condensation of the
vapour of water, which on our globe produces clouds and rain. These
agglomerations of condensed vapours would form a species of cloud in
the atmosphere of the sun, and those clouds, which would intercept
the light of the solar disc from us, would produce the effect of a
spot on this disc. The cloud, once formed, cools portions of the
neighbouring vapours, and, by provoking a partial condensation, gives
rise to the _penumbra_ which surround the _umbra_. Thus, according
to M. Kirchhoff, the solar spots are clouds suspended in the sun's
atmosphere. Galileo had previously propounded an analogous hypothesis.
Without abandoning M. Kirchhoff's theory we may mention another
explanation of the spots. A German physicist considers the spots, not
as clouds in the sun's atmosphere, but as partial solidifications of
the liquid matter which forms the body of the sun; a kind of scoria,
analogous to those which may be observed in crucibles containing
matters in a state of fusion, and which come from particles of metal
not yet melted, or which are beginning to solidify. The penumbra of
the spots would be the half-molten, and consequently, half-transparent
pollicule which always surrounds the edges of metallic scoria with a
semi-liquid ring.
M. Faye, a French astronomer, has propounded a theory, which somewhat
modifies that of M. Kirchhoff. He thinks that the nucleus of the sun
is neither solid nor liquid, but entirely gaseous. The solar spot, he,
like M. Kirchhoff, takes to be an opening made accidentally in the
sun's atmosphere by the condensation of vapours on certain points of
that atmosphere. According to M. Faye, the spots are due to vertical
currents of vapour ascending and descending, and the interception of
the light of the sun's atmosphere by the predominant intensity of the
ascending current.[7]
The new theory, the result of the optical experiments of the German
physicists, appears to explain all the facts which have been observed,
and it has therefore been generally accepted. Some divergences exist
on questions of detail, but astronomers are nowadays almost unanimous
in regarding the sun as a great body, incandescent in all its parts, as
a globe in a state of fusion, surrounded by a burning atmosphere, or,
as M. Faye states it, a simple agglomeration of incandescent gases.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Quoted by Flammarion in his "_Pluralité des mondes habités_."
[7] See "_Le Soleil_," by M. A. Guillemin, pp. 194-208.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THE NINTH.
THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN ARE PURELY SPIRITUAL BEINGS.--THE SOLAR RAYS
ARE EMANATIONS FROM THE SPIRITUAL BEINGS WHO LIVE IN THE SUN.--THESE
BEINGS THUS PRODUCE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE UPON THE EARTH.--THE
CONTINUITY OF SOLAR RADIATION, INEXPLICABLE BY PHYSICISTS, EXPLAINED
BY THE EMANATION FROM THE SOULS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE SUN.--THE
WORSHIP OF FIRE, AND THE ADORATION OF THE SUN AMONG DIFFERENT PEOPLES,
ANCIENT AND MODERN.
FROM the discussion of physical astronomy contained in the preceding
chapters, we have concluded, with MM. Kirchhoff and Faye, that the
sun is a mass of burning gases. But, our readers will ask, if this be
so--if the sun is a gaseous incandescent mass, or a globe of matter in
a state of fusion, surrounded by an atmosphere of burning gas, where do
you place its inhabitants, and under what form do you picture them?
We have already said, that at each step of their promotion in the
hierarchy, the creatures who live in the planetary spaces and have
succeeded to the superhuman being, grow in perfection, their senses
are multiplied, their intellectual power is considerably extended.
In proportion as the creature, who in the beginning was human, is
raised by successive deaths and resurrections in the scale of
inter-planetary being, the material substance, which, united to its
spiritual principle, formed its radiant individuality, is diminished.
In further exposition of our system, we must state our belief that this
superior being, when he has been sufficiently perfected and exalted, by
his different incarnations, by the multiplied stages in the immensity
of the heavens, finally becomes pure spirit. When he attains the
sun, he is free from all material substance, from all carnal alloy.
He is a flame, a breath; all is intelligence, sentiment, thought, in
him; nothing impure is mingled with his perfect essence. He is an
absolute soul, a soul without a body. The gaseous and burning mass of
which the sun is composed is, therefore, appropriate to receive these
quintessential beings. A throne of fire is a fitting throne for souls.
We might even go further, and maintain that not only is the sun the
asylum and receptacle of souls which have finished the course of their
peregrinations in this world, but that it is nothing else than a
collection of those souls which have come to it from the other planets,
after having passed through the intermediate states which we have
described. The sun may be only an aggregation of souls.
Since the sun is the first cause of life on our globe, since he is,
as we have proved, the origin of life, feeling, and thought, since he
is the determining cause of the existence of everything possessing
organization upon the earth, why may we not hold that the rays which
the sun pours upon the earth and the other planets are nothing else
than the emanations from these souls? that they are emissions from the
pure spirits dwelling in the central star, directed towards us, and the
other planets, under the visible form of rays?
If this hypothesis were accepted, what magnificent, what sublime
relations existing between the sun and the globes which gravitate
around him, would be revealed to us! A continual exchange would be
established between the sun and the surrounding planets, an unbroken
circle, an inexhaustible communion, radiant emanations which should
generate and maintain activity and motion, thought and sentiment, which
should keep the flame of life burning everywhere! Let us think of the
emanations from souls dwelling in the sun descending upon the earth in
solar rays. Light gives existence to plants, and produces vegetable
life, accompanied by sensibility. Plants, having received this sensible
germ from the sun, communicate it, aided by heat likewise emanating
from the sun, to animals. Let us think of the germs of souls, placed
in the breasts of animals, developing themselves, becoming perfected
by degrees, from one animal to another, and finishing by becoming
incarnate in a human body. Let us think, then, of the superhuman being
succeeding to man, springing up into the vast plains of ether, and
beginning the series of numerous transmigrations which, from one step
to another, will lead him to the summit of the scale of spiritual
perfection, from which every material substance has been eliminated,
and where the soul, thus exalted to the purest degree of its essence,
penetrates into the supreme abode of happiness, and of intellectual and
moral power--the sun.
Such may be this endless circle, such this unbroken chain, binding
together all beings in nature, and passing from the visible to the
invisible world.
To those persons who may declaim with severity against the system which
we have ventured to put forward, we shall put a question which cannot
fail to embarrass them, for science has never been able to solve it.
We shall ask them how the light of the sun, and the heat which results
from it, are maintained? It is evident that the enormous quantities of
heat and light which the sun sends out in torrents into space, must
come from a source which cannot be inexhaustible, which has need of
renewal, otherwise the sun would become extinct. As there is no effect
without a cause, it is plain that the inconceivable quantity of forces
which the sun distributes by his burning rays, must be derived from
some place. M. Guillemin, in his work on the sun, passes in review the
different theories which have been adopted, up to the present day, to
explain solar radiation. The following is an analysis of a chapter of
M. Guillemin's work on the "Maintenance of Solar Radiation."
Pouillet has calculated that if the sun were not supplied with
something to make up for the losses he sustains, he must cool at the
rate of one degree in a century. But this calculation falls short of
the truth. Pouillet supposed that the specific heat of the sun is the
greatest which can be conceived. The specific heat of the sun is, it is
true, unknown, but instead of placing it at the maximum power, which it
is not proved to be, we might suppose it, by an allowable hypothesis,
to be equal to that of water, which is well known. Now if we grant to
the sun the specific heat of water, we rectify Pouillet's calculation,
and we arrive at the conclusion that the sun, if not furnished with any
resources from which to repair his losses, would be entirely extinct at
the end of 10,000 years. Professor Tyndall, whose experiments are more
recent than those of Pouillet, and inspire greater confidence, says:
"If the sun were a block of coal, and it were supplied with sufficient
oxygen to enable it to burn at the degree of heat proper to that star,
it would be entirely consumed at the end of 5000 years." Now the sun
has existed for millions of years, for the transition periods of our
globe, in which the first living beings were manifested, are traced
back to millions of years. And yet his heat has not sensibly diminished
since those distant ages. The proof that it has not diminished, is that
the climates of the globe at the present time are the same as they were
in the tertiary or quaternary epoch. In the tertiary or quaternary
strata the same plants and the same animals which exist at present are
found. Speaking of times nearer to our own, we may observe that the
productions of the soil remain unchanged during the 2000 or 3000 years,
whose traditions and historical archives we possess.
The sun has lost none of his heat during millions of years. Where has
he gotten this heat from? Where does he get it from now? By what means
is that unquenched fire kept up.
To this question neither astronomy nor physics has ever furnished a
satisfactory reply. Treatises, whether astronomical or physical, give
us nothing but hypotheses, which we cannot accept.
At first it was said that the sun, turning on his axis in twenty-five
days, produced by this movement a perpetual friction of his surface
against the element in which he moves, in other words, against the
ether. But if that were the case, this friction ought to engender a
similar heat on the surface of the planets, whose rotatory motion, and
especially the motion of translation in their orbit, is much more rapid
than that of the sun turning on his axis. Besides, if we calculate the
elevation of the temperature which would result from the friction of
the sun against the ether, we shall find that the heat would hardly
suffice to maintain the radiation of the solar star during one century.
This hypothesis is therefore untenable.
Another theory, better supported, has been put forward by the
physicists Mayer, Watterston, and Thompson; it explains the maintenance
of the solar heat by a constant fall of meteors on the surface of the
solar star.
A multitude of corpuscles gravitate round the sun, and approach him
with sufficient nearness to be attracted by his surface, and fall upon
it. These are _asteroids_, which turn in whirling swarms around the
sun. A shower of corpuscles, of meteorolites, may be always falling on
his surface. Their fall would cause a great development of caloric,
in consequence of the transformation of their enormous speed into
heat, and this caloric would suffice, according to the authors of this
theory, for the maintenance of solar radiation. Let us quote Professor
Tyndall on this point:
"It is easy to calculate both the maximum and the minimum velocity
imparted by the sun's attraction to an asteroid circulating round
him. The maximum is generated when the body approaches from an
infinite distance, the _entire pull_ of the sun being then exerted
upon it. The minimum is that velocity which would barely enable
the body to revolve round the sun close to its surface. The final
velocity of the former, just before striking the sun, would be
390 miles a second, that of the latter 276 miles a second. The
asteroid, on striking the sun with the former velocity, would
develop more than 9000 times the heat generated by the combustion
of an equal asteroid of solid coal; while the shock, in the latter
case, would generate heat equal to that of the combustion of
upwards of 4000 such asteroids. It matters not therefore whether
the substances falling into the sun be combustible or not; their
being combustible would not add sensibly to the tremendous heat
produced by their mechanical collision. Here then we have an agency
competent to restore his lost energy to the sun, and to maintain
a temperature at his surface which transcends all terrestrial
combustion.
"The very quality of the solar rays--their incomparably penetrative
power--enables us to infer that the temperature of their origin
must be enormous; but in the fall of asteroids we find the means of
producing such a temperature."--P. 423.
The fall of these asteroids on the surface of the sun would be followed
by an increase in the bulk of that star, and there has been no such
increase since the earliest period of its observation. Also, the
augmentation of the sun's bulk by these foreign bodies, would have
produced an accelerant motion in the orbits of all the stars, which,
however slight, would be distinctly perceptible; whereas, for the 2000
years of celestial observation, whose records we possess, unbroken and
perfect regularity in the progression of the stars of our solar world
is registered.
There is another objection to this hypothesis. It is that it
presupposes a solid and resistant medium in the sun. This medium does
not exist, according to the new solar theory, which considers this star
to be formed of vapour and of gas, or, at most, of a liquid sphere.
Another proof that this resistant medium does not exist, is to be found
in the fact that several comets, among others those of 1680, and of
1843, have passed so close to the sun at their perihelion, that their
movements must have been greatly disturbed by the resistance of a dense
medium. The movements of these comets, were, however, quite unaffected
by this cause; they were observed to reappear at the moment indicated
by the regular curve of their orbit.
The absence of a resistant medium in the sun has been regarded as so
grave an objection by one of the authors of this theory, Mr. Thompson,
that he has abandoned it, as incompatible with facts.
Another hypothesis has been proposed, for explaining the maintenance of
solar heat. The substances which now form the sun have not always been
collected together in their present state of aggregation. At first,
his molecules were, relatively, extremely distant from one another,
and formed a _chaotic_, or confused mass. Under the influence of
attraction, they drew together by degrees, and agglomerated themselves
into a nucleus, which has become the centre of attraction of the whole
mass. This simply amounts to saying that the sun began by being in the
state of nebulosity, and passed at a later period into the condition of
adherent and continuous matter.
"The molecules of solar nebulosity," says Balfour Stewart,
"precipitating themselves upon one another, produced heat; as, when
a stone is thrown with force from the top of a precipice, heat is
also the ultimate form into which the potential energy of the stone
is converted."
This system of explanation of the primary origin of the planets is in
general favour. Having drawn themselves together to form a continuous
whole, the elements of the sun would have changed their physical
condition, and the result of this change would have been an enormous
escape of heat, sufficient to explain the origin of the solar focus.
We know, in fact, that condensation of matter always accompanies an
escape of heat; and it has been calculated that a diminution of only
a thousandth part from the actual bulk of the sun would suffice to
maintain the solar heat for 20,000 years.
M. Helmholtz, the author of this ingenious theory, has also calculated
that "the mechanical force equivalent to the mutual gravitation of
the particles of the nebulous mass would have been originally equal
to 454 times the quantity of mechanical force actually disposable
in our system," 453/454 of the force coming from the conatus to the
gravitation would therefore have been already expended. The author adds
that the 1/454 which remains of this original heat, would suffice to
raise the temperature of a mass of water equal to the combined birth of
the sun and the planets, to 28,000,000 of degrees centigrade; this is
a quantity of heat equal to 2500 times that which would be engendered
by the combustion of the entire solar system, supposing it to be turned
into a mass of coal.
These calculations are, doubtless, most interesting, but their defect
is that they rest upon the conception of the sun's nebulosity, an
hypothesis which requires closer examination before it ought to be
accepted as the basis of so important a deduction. Besides, if the sun
were warmed by a physical cause not in action at the present time,
his heat, however great it may be estimated to be, must necessarily
have been diminishing as long as the sun has been in existence. Now,
we repeat that it does not appear that the heat of the sun has ever
suffered any diminution. The theory of nebulosity is therefore no more
securely founded in principle than the other hypotheses which have
preceded it.
Thus, we find that neither astronomy nor physical science offers us
any satisfactory explanation of the constant maintenance of solar
radiation. Common sense tells us that this furnace, constantly in
activity, must be as unceasingly fed; but science is as yet unable to
discover the nature and source of its aliment.
There, where science places nothing, we venture to place something. In
our belief solar radiation is maintained by the continuous, unbroken
succession of souls, in the sun. These pure and burning spirits are
perpetually replacing the emanations perpetually sent through space
by the sun, to the globes which surround him. Thus we complete that
uninterrupted circle of which we have previously spoken, which binds
together all the creatures of nature by the links of a common chain,
and attaches the visible to the invisible world. We may venture to put
forward this explanation of the maintenance of solar radiation with
some confidence, since science can give us no exact information upon
the point, and philosophy in this case only fills up the void left by
astronomy and physics.
In short, the sun, the centre of the planetary aggregation, the
constant source of light and heat, which sends forth motion, sensation,
and life upon the earth, is, in our belief, the final sojourn of
purified perfected souls, which have attained their most exquisite
subtlety. They are entirely devoid of material alloy, they are pure
spirits who dwell in the midst of the blazing atmosphere and the
burning masses which compose the sun. That star, whose size far
surpasses the bulk of all the others put together, is sufficiently
vast to contain them. From their throne of fire, these souls, all
intelligence and activity, behold the marvellous spectacle of the march
of all the planetary globes which compose the solar world, through
space. Placed in the centre of this vast world, understanding the
secrets of nature, and all the mysteries of the universe, they are in
possession of perfect happiness, of absolute wisdom, and of illimitable
knowledge.
The Genoese naturalist, Charles Bonnet, was the first to bring forward
general ideas upon the philosophy of the universe, in the same
order as those which we have just developed. In his _Palingénésie
Philosophique_, published in 1771, he introduces the doctrine of divers
existences for the human soul, outside that of the earth. In a chapter
appended to that work, and entitled, "Conjectures on the blessings to
come," he draws a picture of the perfect happiness which we shall enjoy
in that abode, and dwells, in the following eloquent words, on the
transcendent knowledge which we shall possess, which will unfold to our
view all the secrets of the physical and moral worlds:--