I offer the following sketch of the main argument which is worked out
more fully in the essay I published in January, 1870, under the above
title, hoping that many who hesitate to plunge into a presumptuous
speculative work of more than 200 octavo pages may read this article,
and reflect upon the subject.
The book has been handled in a most courteous and indulgent spirit
by all the reviewers who have noticed it, but none have ventured
to grapple with the argument it contains, although every possible
opportunity and provocation for doing so is designedly afforded. It all
rests upon the question which is discussed in the first three chapters,
viz., whether the atmosphere which surrounds our earth is limited or
unlimited in extent? If my reasoning upon this fundamental question
is refuted, all that follows necessarily falls to the ground. If I am
right, all our standard treatises on pneumatics and meteorology, which
repeat the arguments contained in Dr. Wollaston’s celebrated paper,
must be remodeled. At the outset, I reprint that paper, and point out a
very curious and monstrous fallacy which, for half a century, remained
undetected, and had been continually repeated.
As the main point of issue between myself and Dr. Wollaston is merely
a question of very simple arithmetic and geometry, nothing can be
easier than to set me right if I am wrong; and, as the philosophical
consequences depending upon this issue are of vast and fundamental
importance, the question cannot be ignored by those who stand before
the world as scientific authorities, without a practical abdication
of their philosophical responsibilities. Any man who publishes an
astronomical or meteorological treatise without discussing this
question, which stands before him at the threshold of his subject,
is unfit for the task he has undertaken, and unworthy of public
confidence. This may appear a strong conclusion just now, but a
few years will be sufficient to graft it firmly into the growth of
scientific public opinion.[1]
“The Fuel of the Sun” is simply an attempt to trace some of the
consequences which must of necessity result from the existence of an
universal atmosphere, and it differs from other attempts to explain
the great solar mystery, by making no demands whatever upon the
imagination, _inventing_ nothing,—no outside meteors, no new forces
or materials. It supposes nothing whatever to exist but the known
facts of the laboratory—the familiar materials of the earth and its
atmosphere. It is shown that these materials and the forces residing
within them must of necessity produce a sun, and manifest eternally all
the observed solar phenomena, provided only they are aggregated in the
quantities which our own central luminary presents, and are surrounded
by attendant planets, such as his. Nothing is assumed or taken for
granted beyond the simple fundamental hypothesis that the laws of
nature are uniform throughout the universe. The argument thus conducted
leads us step by step to a natural and connected explanation of the
following important phenomena:—