Richard A. Proctor

“ There is no wisdom equal unto the belief in God! He created the world, and shall we liken ourselves unto Him in seeking to penetrate into the mysteries of His creation? Shall we say, Behold this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail goeth and cometh in so many years! ”

“ This fact would entitle us to conclude that no such planet exists if its existence had been merely conjectured, or if it had been deduced from any of the laws of planetary distance, or even if Leverrier or Adams had announced it as the probable result of planetary perturbations. If the finest telescopes cannot rediscover a planet which with the small power used by Lescarbault has a visible disc, within so limited an area of which the sun is the centre, or rather within a narrow belt of that circle, we should unhesitatingly declare that no such planet exists. ”

“ It seems not improbable that, under this tremendous and long-continued meteoric hail, his whole surface would be caused to glow as intensely as that small part whose brilliancy was so surprising in the observation made by Carrington and Hodgson. In that case, our sun, seen from some remote star whence ordinarily he is invisible, would shine out as a new sun, for a few days, while all things living on our earth, and whatever other members of the solar system are the abode of life, would inevitably be destroyed. ”

“ Because the only member of the solar system which we can examine closely is inhabited, astronomers infer a certain degree of probability for the belief that the other planets of the system are also inhabited. And because the only sun we know much about is the centre of a system of planets, astronomers infer that probably the stars, those other suns which people space, are also the centres of systems; although no telescope which man can make would show the members of a system like ours, attending on even the nearest of all the stars. ”

“ But if, in the ages of faith, some of the results of modern scientific research had been revealed, as the laws of the solar system, the great principle of the conservation of energy, or the wave theory of light, or if some of the questions which still remain for men of science to solve had been answered in those times, the evidence for the student of science would have been irresistible. ”

“ Every very bright star, when close to the horizon, shows these colours, and so much the more distinctly as the star is the brighter. Sirius, which surpasses the brightest stars of the northern hemisphere full four times in lustre, shows these changes of colour so conspicuously that they were regarded as specially characteristic of this star, insomuch that Homer speaks of Sirius (not by name, but as the 'star of autumn') shining most beautifully 'when laved of ocean's wave'—that is, when close to the horizon. ”

“ To reject the belief that this is possible is to share the folly [Pg 159] of beings such as we have conceived regarding their tiny world as a fit centre whence to measure the universe, while yet, from such a stand-point, this little earth on which we live would be many degrees beyond the limits where for them the inconceivable would begin. To reject the belief that this is not only possible, but real, is to regard the few short steps by which man has advanced towards the unknown as a measurable approach towards limits of space, towards the beginning and the end of all things. ”

“ It may be noticed in passing, that it is by no means certain that the time when the sun is most spotted is the time when he gives out least light. Though at such times his surface is dark where the spots are, yet elsewhere it is probably brighter than usual; at any rate, all the evidence we have tends to show that when the sun is most spotted, his energies are most active. It is then that the coloured flames leap to their greatest height and show their greatest brilliancy, then also that they show the most rapid and remarkable changes of shape. ”

“ Until the evidence became too strong to be resisted, the doctrine that our earth was once a baby world, with many millions of years to pass through before it could be the abode of life, was one which only the professed atheist (so said too many divines) could for a moment entertain; while the doctrine that not the earth alone, but the whole of the solar system, had developed from a condition utterly unlike that through which it is now passing, could have had its origin only in the suggestions of the Evil One. ”

“ Imaginary journeys to the sun, moon, planets, and stars; travels over regions on the earth as yet unexplored; voyages under the sea, through the bowels of the earth, and other such narratives, may, perhaps, be sometimes usefully written and read, so long as certain conditions are fulfilled by the narrator. In the first place, while adopting, to preserve the unities, the tone of one relating facts which actually occurred, he should not suffer even the simplest among his readers to lie under the least misapprehension as to the true nature of the narrative. ”

“ It is true that Sir William Herschel thought the sun might be the abode of living creatures; and Sir John Herschel even suggested the possibility that the vast streaks of light called the solar willow-leaves, objects varying from two hundred to a thousand miles in length, might be living creatures whose intense lustre was the measure of their intense vitality. But modern discoveries had rendered all such theories untenable. The sun is presented to us as a mighty furnace, in whose fires the most stubborn elements are not merely melted but vaporised. ”

“ But there is a great difference between a star which at its brightest shines only as a second-magnitude star, so that it has twenty or thirty companions of equal or greater lustre above the horizon along with it, and a star which surpasses three-fold the splendid Sirius. We have seen that even in Tycho Brahe's day, when probably the stars were not nearly so well known by the community at large, the new star in Cassiopeia had not shone an hour before the country people were gazing at it with wonder. Besides, Cassiopeia and the Whale are constellations very different in position. ”

“ So long as there is room for refusing to admit an important theory advanced by a student of science, it is natural that other students of science should refuse to do so; for in admitting the new theory they are awarding the palm to a rival. In strict principle, of course, this consideration ought to have no influence whatever; as a matter of fact, however, men of science, being always men and not necessarily strengthened by scientific labours against the faults of humanity, the consideration has and must always have influence. ”

“ When we remember that it was not a mere idle fancy which had to be opposed, not mere terrors which had to be calmed, but that the idea of the significance of changes in the heavens had come to be regarded by mankind as a part of their religion, it cannot but be thought a hopeful sign that all reasoning men in our time have abandoned the idea that comets are sent to warn the inhabitants of this small earth. ”

“ For it is an inference of reason that masses so great as the planets are, some of which exceed this earth in magnitude, are not empty bodies, created only to be carried in their motion round the sun, and to shine with their scanty light for the benefit of one earth only; but that they must have a nobler use. He who believes, as every one ought to believe, that the Deity created the universe for no other end than the existence of the human race, and of heaven from it (for the human race is the seminary of heaven) , must also believe that wherever there is an earth there are human inhabitants. ”

“ I have addressed hundreds of audiences in Great Britain and America on the subject of recent solar discoveries, and I have conversed with many hundreds of persons of various capacity and education, from men almost uncultured to men of the highest intellectual power; and my invariable experience has been that solar research derives its chief interest when viewed in relation to the sun's position as the mighty ruler, the steadfast sustainer, the beneficent almoner of the system of worlds to which our earth belongs. ”

“ Recognising in our own world, in many instances, what to our ideas resembles waste—waste seeds, waste lives, waste races, waste regions, waste forces—recognising superfluity and superabundance in all the processes and in all the works of nature, should it not appear at least possible that some, perhaps even a large proportion, of the worlds in the multitudinous systems peopling space, are not only not now supporting life, but never have supported life and never will? ”

“ Is there in our day no undue sacrifice of present good in idle questionings? is there no tendency to trust in a vain fetishism to prevent or remove evils which energy could avert or remedy? The time will come, in my belief, when the waste of those energies which in these days are devoted (not merely with the sanction, but the high approval, of some of the best among us) to idle aims, will be deplored as regretfully—but, alas, as idly—as the wasted speculations and labours of those whom Whewell has justly called the most intelligent and profound reasoners of the 'stationary age' of science. ”

“ Once such a theory has been devised, it takes complete possession of the paradoxist's mind. All the facts of which he thenceforward hears, which bear in the least on his favourite craze, appear to give evidence in its favour, even though in reality they are most obviously opposed to it. He learns to look upon himself as an unappreciated Newton, and to see the bitterest malevolence in those who venture to question his preposterous notions. ”

“ As we find the universe enlarging under the survey of science, our conceptions of the duration of the universe enlarge also. When the earth was supposed to be the most important object in creation, men might reasonably assign to time itself (regarded as the interval between the beginning of the earth and the consummation of all things when the earth should perish) a moderate duration; but it is equally reasonable that, as the insignificance of the earth's domain in space is recognised, men should recognise also the presumable insignificance of the earth's existence in time. ”

“ May we not reasonably suppose, then, that those glorious comets which have not only been visible but conspicuous, shining even in the day-time, and brandishing round tails which, like that of the 'wonder in heaven, the great dragon,' seemed to 'draw the third part of the stars of heaven,' are followed by much denser flights of much more massive meteors? ”

“ The enormous period when the germs only of the sun and planets existed as yet, when the chaotic substance of the system had not yet blossomed into worlds, the mighty period which is to follow the death of the last surviving member of the system, when the whole scheme will remain as the dead trunk of a tree remains after the last leaf has fallen, after the last movement of sap within the trunk—these periods must be infinite compared with those which measure the duration of even the mightiest separate members of the system. ”

“ The flat earth floating tremulously on the sea; the sun moving always over the flat, giving day when near enough, and night when too far off; the self-luminous moon, with a semi-transparent invisible moon created to give her an eclipse now and then; the new law of perspective, by which the vanishing of the hull before the masts, usually thought to prove the earth globular, really proves it flat;—all these and other things are well fitted to form exercises for a person who is learning the elements of astronomy. ”

“ Does this idea differ in kind, however largely to our feeble conceptions it may seem to differ in degree, from the idea of the imagined creatures on a fruit, that some or even many fruits excellently fitted for the support of life might not subserve that purpose? And as those creatures might conceive (as we know) that some fruits, even many, fail to come to the full perfection of fruit life, may not we without irreverence conceive (as higher beings than ourselves may know) that a planet or a sun may fail in the making? ”

“ They have been apt to forget that, as every world in our own system has its period of life, short by comparison with the entire duration of the world, so each solar system, each system of such systems, may have its own life-bearing season, infinitely long according to our conceptions, but very short indeed compared with the entire duration of which the life-bearing season would be only a single era. ”

“ Our earth is very large compared with a tree or an animal, but very small compared with the solar system, a mere point compared with the system of stars to which the sun belongs, and absolutely as nothing compared with the universe of space ”

“ If we examine the relations actually presented by the great pyramid—its geographical position, dimensions, shape, and internal structure—without hampering ourselves with the tenets of the new faith on the one hand, or on the other with any serious anxiety to disprove them, we shall find much to suggest that the builders of the pyramid were ingenious mathematicians, who had made some progress in astronomy, though not so much as they had made in the mastery of mechanical and scientific difficulties. ”

“ All the comfort that science can give the world on that point is that such a course for a comet is only one out of many millions of possible courses, all fully as likely; and that, therefore, the chance of a comet falling upon the sun is only as one in many millions. Still, the comet of 1680 made a very fair shot at the sun, and a very slight modification of its course by Jupiter or Saturn might have brought about the catastrophe which Newton feared. Whether, if a comet actually fell upon the sun, anything very dreadful would happen, is not so clear. ”