CONCLUSION. THE HARMONY OF NATURE'S LAWS AND OPERATIONS.
We have passed before us the different orders of celestial phenomena;
we have called down the denizens of the starry skies and placed them
on the witness stand, and we have interrogated them in the light of
the evidence which they have given before; we have compared their
different statements, and have found that in their testimony they
all finally agree. Instead of confusion, we find order; instead of
complexity, simplicity; instead of discord, harmony; and through all
we see the orderly progress of nature with uniform step, from stage
to stage, higher and higher, until at last she stands triumphant,
the handmaid of creative power, in the very center of the arch of
the universe. We have taken the simplest operations which we find
in progress around us, and have extended them to larger operations,
constantly keeping in view their relevancy and the facts which form
their sole support. Mere speculation has been excluded, and theory
has found its every step based on an established fact. In this way
we may hope to make place for further investigation in this field
by abler minds, and that the conclusions of science may then become
so well understood and so firmly established that to go back to the
"dead-and-dying" theories of solar energies will be like going back
to Ptolemy and Tycho for our astronomy.
We have considered the hypothesis which bases the energy of our
sun upon his inherent heat, upon combustion, upon the accretion
of meteoric streams, and upon his slow and gradual condensation
of volume; and have found that all these hypotheses, singly or
combined, fail to account for his energy through the vistas of the
past, during which we know he must have shone as he now shines,
and fail to account for more than a slow but inevitable decline,
in the relatively near future, into eternal darkness and death. We
have found that all these theories are alike, in that they recognize
the sun itself as the only source of his energy, that his enormous
emission of light and heat is almost entirely wasted in empty space,
and that this will go on with the same frightful waste until he has
squandered his whole patrimony and ends his melancholy career in the
poor-house or the dungeon. We have, however, seen that even this will
not save the wretched client, for he has already spent far more than
he ever could have received originally by inheritance, and far more
than he could have gained by gifts pitched in in bulk--like the poor
colored brother's potatoes--through the window.
We have therefore gone over the case anew, and have learned that
enormous electrical currents are constantly passing between the earth
and the sun, with practically no resistance, and this irrespective of
any hypothesis, actual or possible; and these facts have solved at the
outset one of the greatest conceivable difficulties,--to wit, that of
the transmission through space of such essential currents. Turning
our attention to the more recent advances in electricity and the
arts of electrical construction, we have found that induction
machines, as contradistinguished from the older friction machines,
operate in a manner strongly suggestive of the rotation of a planet
through space, and we learn that the electrical potential of the air
overhead increases constantly by an enormous multiplying number as we
ascend, proving great electrical action in the regions immediately
surrounding the earth, and which we have called the terrestrial
electrosphere. We have also found that sun-spots and solar storms
and other disturbances are at once reflected in our earth-currents,
and are followed immediately by great electrical disturbances here
and by extensive auroral displays at night. Experiment shows that
similar auroral displays may be produced with an electrical machine by
interruption of the current leading to its principal condenser, thus
demonstrating that the currents are from the earth to the sun, and not
the converse. We have also found that while the solar atmosphere is
largely composed of hydrogen gas, that of the earth and other planets
is largely composed of oxygen, and that these gases, the constituents
of water, are separately disengaged at the opposite electrical
poles by the electrolytic action of a powerful current of electricity
applied to the decomposition of aqueous vapors, in accordance with the
established electrical law that any fluid which will transmit a current
may be decomposed by it; hence we learn that our interplanetary space
contains attenuated aqueous vapors, which we have also learned to be
true from other sources. As our other planets, as well as the earth,
are found to be surrounded with an atmosphere of dilute oxygen, and
with aqueous vapors suspended in it, we know that their action upon
the sun must be similar to that of the earth, and that the congeries
of planets thus unite in their supply of electricity to the sun in
constant and enormous currents. Examining now the effects of passing
powerful electrical currents through a compressed envelope of hydrogen
gas surrounding a conductor, we find that great heat ensues, that the
hydrogen becomes highly incandescent, and that the metallic nucleus
within is raised to an extremely high temperature, and we also observe
the same effects when the current is transmitted through the separated
carbons of an electrical arc light. We have thus accounted for the
constant supply of the energy which, transformed into light and heat,
as in the last-mentioned experiments, the sun pours forth perpetually
into space. We have also learned that electrical induction machines
derive their electrical currents from the surrounding air, and also
that no electricity can be generated in, or transmitted through,
a vacuum, and hence we learn that the planets, by the rotation of
their electrospheres in contact with the attenuated vapors of space,
generate these powerful electrical currents with which the sun is
supplied, and that the sun merely restores to the ocean from which,
in another form, it was abstracted the light and heat which he emits,
and that, instead of all being wasted except that which falls upon the
planets, in fact that is the only part which actually, in one sense
at least, is wasted: all the rest is deposited in bank, but that is
"spent." The important generalization is thus arrived at, that the
true source of solar energy is to be found in the attenuated vapors of
space, and that the mode is that of the generation of electricity by
the rotating planetary electrospheres, its transference through the
aqueous vapors of interplanetary space to the sun, its passage under
resistance through the compressed hydrogen envelope, its transformation
there into light and heat, and its final emission or backpouring into
space again. The molecular motions which give rise to light and heat
in their passage through the vast distances of space are finally
retarded by and disappear as radiated energy in the restoration
or increase of the intermolecular tension of the vapors of space,
and these processes continue, and must continue, to all eternity,
if the sun exists and his planets continue to revolve in orderly
circuit around him. If there be any permanent degradation of energy,
it must be with reference to the total volume of infinite, or at least
indefinite, space, and not with reference to the relatively minute
spark of fire which we call the sun. We have also learned that the
moon's electrosphere is repelled by that of its neighbor, the earth,
and that whatever vapor and atmosphere it may have can exist only on
its opposite side; and we have also learned that, by reason of the
moon's peculiar axial rotation with reference to the earth, any other
arrangement of the lunar moisture and air, even if such were possible,
would have absolutely prohibited all life on that subordinate planet
at any stage of its existence whatever. We have applied the above
principles to the fixed stars, and have learned that, by the same law,
the resplendent star itself is proof conclusive that it, too, must
have planets rotating around it, and that these planets must have an
oxygen atmosphere and clouds of aqueous vapor like our own. We have
interpreted the double and multiple stars, and, by an extension of
the same law, explained their frequently contrasted or complementary
colors. The new stars which blaze up in sudden conflagration and
then die out have no secrets when this new light is turned upon them;
they, too, are but the faithful followers of the law; and the temporary
and variable stars likewise fall into their appropriate categories and
obediently move on with the procession. The comets,--the banner-bearers
of the sidereal hosts,--which from the earliest ages have defied
science to read their cabalistic legend, find it now "writ large"
and in plain English. Even the meteorites, the cosmical dust, the
unorganized débris of space, are found to be amenable to the same
law. When we turn in wider gaze to spy out the fantastic nebulæ on the
very outer fringe of visible things, after we have separated out the
star-clusters and organized galaxies of suns, we apply our touchstone
to the irresolvable gaseous nebulæ, and lo! their mystery dissolves
at a touch. We have even been able to picture the processes of the
creation of solar systems and whole galaxies of suns in which the
same law finds scope, and by its infinite and harmonious extension we
learn that nature moves with a comprehensive plan, and is uniform in
her infinite variety and eternal in her ceaseless activity. We have
been told that--
"The poem of the universe
No rhythm has nor rhyme;
Some god recites the wondrous song,
A stanza at a time."
But it is all a mistake; the loftiest strains which ever inspired
the soul of Mozart or of Beethoven had not the ineffable harmony,
nor the sweetest songs of the greatest poets the perfect rhyme,
ever repeated and ever varied, of the universe. Its orderly progress
is like the onward movement of a mighty army, and there is but one
grand commander, "but one God," and Nature, that showeth forth his
handiwork, "is his prophet." We have found that the "course of nature,"
the eternally youthful mother, is the same, whether in spinning a
tendril in the garden, in weaving a whirlwind in the atmosphere, or
in elaborating from the universal vapors of primordial space a solar
system or a galaxy. And it is not a convulsive, spasmodic nature that
we find; we do not love to associate great explosions, cataclysms,
the destruction of worlds, or the extinction of suns with our ideas
of nature. These seem not to be of nature. The nature we love is
the gentle mother, uniform in her operations, kindly in her ways,
beneficent in her results; the nature of the rain, the sunshine,
seed-time and harvest and the sprouting seed again; ever patient,
ever responsive, but in all as firm and steadfast as the foundations
of eternity itself. So we have found her. We have assumed nothing; we
have observed and endeavored to deduce from observation her systematic
plan, for this is the voice of her law, "the same yesterday, to-day,
and forever." To quote the words of Matthew Arnold, from out the
darkness of the past we seem to hear her say,--
"Will ye claim for your great ones the gift
To have rendered the gleam of my skies?
Race after race, man after man,
Have thought that my secret was theirs,
--They are dust, they are changed, they are gone!
I remain."