I. LAYING PLANS
[Ts`ao Kung, in defining the meaning of the Chinese for the
title of this chapter, says it refers to the deliberations in the
temple selected by the general for his temporary use, or as we
should say, in his tent. See. ss. 26.]
1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to
the State.
2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to
safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on
no account be neglected.
3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant
factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when
seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth;
(4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline.
[It appears from what follows that Sun Tzu means by "Moral
Law" a principle of harmony, not unlike the Tao of Lao Tzu in its
moral aspect. One might be tempted to render it by "morale,"
were it not considered as an attribute of the ruler in ss. 13.]
5, 6. The MORAL LAW causes the people to be in complete
accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless
of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
[Tu Yu quotes Wang Tzu as saying: "Without constant
practice, the officers will be nervous and undecided when
mustering for battle; without constant practice, the general will
be wavering and irresolute when the crisis is at hand."]
7. HEAVEN signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and
seasons.
[The commentators, I think, make an unnecessary mystery of
two words here. Meng Shih refers to "the hard and the soft,
waxing and waning" of Heaven. Wang Hsi, however, may be right in
saying that what is meant is "the general economy of Heaven,"
including the five elements, the four seasons, wind and clouds,
and other phenomena.]
8. EARTH comprises distances, great and small; danger and
security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and
death.
9. The COMMANDER stands for the virtues of wisdom,
sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness.
[The five cardinal virtues of the Chinese are (1) humanity
or benevolence; (2) uprightness of mind; (3) self-respect, self-
control, or "proper feeling;" (4) wisdom; (5) sincerity or good
faith. Here "wisdom" and "sincerity" are put before "humanity or
benevolence," and the two military virtues of "courage" and
"strictness" substituted for "uprightness of mind" and "self-
respect, self-control, or 'proper feeling.'"]
10. By METHOD AND DISCIPLINE are to be understood the
marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the
graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads
by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military
expenditure.
11. These five heads should be familiar to every general:
he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them not will
fail.
12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to
determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of
a comparison, in this wise: --
13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the
Moral law?
[I.e., "is in harmony with his subjects." Cf. ss. 5.]
(2) Which of the two generals has most ability?
(3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and
Earth?
[See ss. 7,8]
(4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced?
[Tu Mu alludes to the remarkable story of Ts`ao Ts`ao (A.D.
155-220), who was such a strict disciplinarian that once, in
accordance with his own severe regulations against injury to
standing crops, he condemned himself to death for having allowed
him horse to shy into a field of corn! However, in lieu of
losing his head, he was persuaded to satisfy his sense of justice
by cutting off his hair. Ts`ao Ts`ao's own comment on the
present passage is characteristically curt: "when you lay down a
law, see that it is not disobeyed; if it is disobeyed the
offender must be put to death."]
(5) Which army is stronger?
[Morally as well as physically. As Mei Yao-ch`en puts it,
freely rendered, "ESPIRIT DE CORPS and 'big battalions.'"]
(6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained?
[Tu Yu quotes Wang Tzu as saying: "Without constant
practice, the officers will be nervous and undecided when
mustering for battle; without constant practice, the general will
be wavering and irresolute when the crisis is at hand."]
(7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in
reward and punishment?
[On which side is there the most absolute certainty that
merit will be properly rewarded and misdeeds summarily punished?]
14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast
victory or defeat.
15. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon
it, will conquer: --let such a one be retained in command! The
general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will
suffer defeat: --let such a one be dismissed!
[The form of this paragraph reminds us that Sun Tzu's
treatise was composed expressly for the benefit of his patron Ho
Lu, king of the Wu State.]
16. While heading the profit of my counsel, avail yourself
also of any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary
rules.
17. According as circumstances are favorable, one should
modify one's plans.
[Sun Tzu, as a practical soldier, will have none of the
"bookish theoric." He cautions us here not to pin our faith to
abstract principles; "for," as Chang Yu puts it, "while the main
laws of strategy can be stated clearly enough for the benefit of
all and sundry, you must be guided by the actions of the enemy in
attempting to secure a favorable position in actual warfare." On
the eve of the battle of Waterloo, Lord Uxbridge, commanding the
cavalry, went to the Duke of Wellington in order to learn what
his plans and calculations were for the morrow, because, as he
explained, he might suddenly find himself Commander-in-chief and
would be unable to frame new plans in a critical moment. The
Duke listened quietly and then said: "Who will attack the first
tomorrow -- I or Bonaparte?" "Bonaparte," replied Lord Uxbridge.
"Well," continued the Duke, "Bonaparte has not given me any idea
of his projects; and as my plans will depend upon his, how can
you expect me to tell you what mine are?" [1] ]
18. All warfare is based on deception.
[The truth of this pithy and profound saying will be
admitted by every soldier. Col. Henderson tells us that
Wellington, great in so many military qualities, was especially
distinguished by "the extraordinary skill with which he concealed
his movements and deceived both friend and foe."]
19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when
using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we
must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we
must make him believe we are near.
20. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder,
and crush him.
[All commentators, except Chang Yu, say, "When he is in
disorder, crush him." It is more natural to suppose that Sun Tzu
is still illustrating the uses of deception in war.]
21. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If
he is in superior strength, evade him.
22. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
[Wang Tzu, quoted by Tu Yu, says that the good tactician
plays with his adversary as a cat plays with a mouse, first
feigning weakness and immobility, and then suddenly pouncing upon
him.]
23. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
[This is probably the meaning though Mei Yao-ch`en has the
note: "while we are taking our ease, wait for the enemy to tire
himself out." The YU LAN has "Lure him on and tire him out."]
If his forces are united, separate them.
[Less plausible is the interpretation favored by most of the
commentators: "If sovereign and subject are in accord, put
division between them."]
24. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are
not expected.
25. These military devices, leading to victory, must not be
divulged beforehand.
26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many
calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.
[Chang Yu tells us that in ancient times it was customary
for a temple to be set apart for the use of a general who was
about to take the field, in order that he might there elaborate
his plan of campaign.]
The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations
beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few
calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It
is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to
win or lose.
[1] "Words on Wellington," by Sir. W. Fraser.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Our Day, by W. A. Spicer
THE BOOK THAT SPEAKS TO OUR DAY
Man may write a true book, but only God, the source of life, can write a
living book. "The word of God ... liveth and abideth forever." 1 Peter
1:23. The Bible is the living word of God. We look at the volume; we
hold it in our hands. It is like other books in form and printer's art.
But the voice of God speaks from these pages, and the word spoken is
alive. It is able to do in the heart that receives it what can be done
only by divine power.
The Book That Talks
Far in the heart of Africa a missionary read to the people in their own
language from the translated Word of God. "See!" they cried; "see! the
book talks! The white man has a book that talks!" With that simplicity
of speech so common to children of nature, they had exactly described
it. This is a book that talks. What the wise man says of its counsels
through parents to children, is true of all the book: "When thou goest,
it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when
thou awakest, it shall talk with thee." Prov. 6:22.
Here is companionship, faithful and true, a blessed guide and guardian
and friend.
"Holy Bible! book divine!
Precious treasure, thou art mine!"
God Its Author
The sixty-six books of Holy Scripture were written by many penmen, over
a space of fifteen centuries; yet it is one book, and one voice speaks
through all its pages. Spurgeon once said of his experience with this
book:
"When I see it, I seem to hear a voice springing up from it,
saying, 'I am the book of God; man, read me. I am God's
writing; open my leaf, for I was penned by God; read it, for He
is my author.'"
This book declares of itself: "All scripture is given by inspiration of
God." 2 Tim. 3:16. "The prophecy came not in old time by the will of
man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2
Peter 1:21. As the rugged verse of the old hymn puts it:
"Let all the heathen writers join
To form one perfect book:
Great God, if once compared with Thine,
How mean their writings look!
"Not the most perfect rules they gave
Could show one sin forgiven,
Nor lead a step beyond the grave;
But Thine conducts to heaven."
It is the voice of the Almighty. Very different it is from the sacred
books of the non-Christian religions. In those writings it is man
speaking about God; in the Holy Scriptures it is God speaking to man.
The difference is as great as heaven is higher than earth. Here it is
not man groping in the darkness after God. In this book of God's
revelation we see the divine arm reaching down to save the lost, and
hear the voice of the loving Father calling to His children, every one
and everywhere. "Incline your ear," He calls; "hear, and your soul shall
live." Isa. 55:3.
The Word That Creates
We must have something more than instruction; we must have a word of
power that is able to tell of sins forgiven, and to conduct us beyond
the grave to heaven. One of the greatest of China's sages, Mencius,
said, "Instruction can impart information, but not the power to
execute." That touches the crucial point. We must have instruction that
can come with power divine to execute. We have it only in God's words.
Christ said: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth
nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are
life." John 6:63.
The words of God are living words. When God spoke in the beginning, "Let
there be light," lo, the light sprang out of the darkness. There was
power in the word spoken to bring forth. "Let the earth bring forth
grass," was the word of the Lord: and the earth was carpeted with its
first rich greensward. So through all the work of creation, the creative
power was in the word spoken.
"By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them
by the breath of His mouth." "He spake, and it was done; He commanded,
and it stood fast." Ps. 33:6, 9.
Even so, when this word speaks instruction to man, there is creative
power in the word, if received, to work mightily in the soul that is
dead in trespasses and sins. Man must be born again, be re-created. That
we know; for Christ says, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man
be born again ["from above," margin], he cannot see the kingdom of God."
John 3:3.
And the word of God--the Bible from heaven--received by faith, is the
agency by which this new birth "from above" is wrought. This is the
declaration of our text: "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever."
1 Peter 1:23.
[Illustration: HEALING THE CENTURION'S SERVANT
"Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed." Matt. 8:8.]
The Word That Works Within
Not only does the word of God give the new birth, making the believer a
new man,--the past forgiven and a new heart within,--but the word that
re-creates abides in the believing heart that studies it and clings to
it, to work in the life with actual power that is not of the man
himself. To the Thessalonians, who had "turned to God from idols to
serve the living and true God," the apostle wrote:
"For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye
received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the
word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually
worketh also in you that believe." 1 Thess. 2:13.
The word itself works within, and works effectually. There is nothing
mechanical about it. The mere letter profits nothing. The Bible on the
center table, unstudied and unloved, has no magic power. But God
promises to abide by His Spirit of power in the heart that listens to
His voice and trembles at His word. Jesus Himself tells us the secret of
this power of the word to work in the believing heart:
"If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him,
and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." John 14:23.
No wonder, then, that believing and receiving the word brings divine
power into the life, making it possible for transformations of character
to be wrought, for victories to be won and obedience rendered to every
command of God.
Simply believing God's word touches the current of everlasting power,
even as the trolley arm of the electric car reaches up and touches the
current of power flowing through the wire overhead. The faith that
takes the living word brings the power divine into the heart to move all
the spiritual mechanism of life's service.
The Word Our Safety and Defense
When Christ came to live as our example in the flesh, and to give His
life a sacrifice for sin, He, the divine Son of God, made Himself like
unto His brethren. "I can of Mine own self do nothing," He said. John
5:30. Tempted and tried, He found His defense in the Holy Scriptures.
When Satan came to tempt Him to sin, the Saviour said, "It is written."
He clung to the sure defense. Again the tempter came. He was met with
the word, "It is written again." The third time it was the same weapon
of defense, "It is written." Matt. 4:1-11.
Christ found safety only in the Scriptures of truth. So the Bible is the
Christian's shield against the enemy's attacks. As Jesus studied the
Scriptures and kept the words ever in His heart for a defense against
temptation, so must every Christian study and meditate upon God's Holy
Word if its counsels and precepts are to be his defense in the moment of
sudden temptation to sin. "Thy word have I hid in mine heart," said the
psalmist, "that I might not sin against Thee." Ps. 119:11. It was the
only way for Christ, our Pattern; it is the only way for us.
The Bread of Life
The word of God is the daily food for the soul. "It is written, Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God." Matt. 4:4.
Who has not, in hurried times, missed a meal, working on through the
day, never thinking of the prolonged fast? But after a time there came a
sense of weakening force, a lack of physical power. What was the
trouble? At once the reason was evident--one had not taken food, and
the system was calling for a renewal of its forces. Just so the
spiritual life must needs be fed by the word of God.
[Illustration: CHRIST'S WEAPON OF DEFENSE--THE WORD OF GOD
"Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." Matt. 4:10.]
Do we at times feel a sense of weakening of the spiritual power, a
letting down of the vital forces of the soul? Ah, in the hurry of life
we have neglected to feed upon the living bread. We can no more sustain
spiritual vigor and health without feeding daily upon God's Holy Word
than we can maintain physical power without eating our daily bread. Eat
of the life-giving word. The taste for it grows with the partaking.
There is life in "every word." The psalmist found the Lord's testimonies
"sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb," or, as the marginal reading
has it, than "the dropping of honeycombs." Ps. 19:10. We get the picture
of the honeycomb inverted, the cell caps broken open, the sweetness
dripping down. Just so every word of the Lord is a cell full of
sweetness and life for the soul that feasts upon the Holy Scriptures.
The Source of All Doctrine
The Bible is the complete and perfect rule of faith and doctrine. Here
every doctrine of salvation is found. Inspiration has declared it in the
words of the apostle Paul to Timothy:
"From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to
make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good
works." 2 Tim. 3:15-17.
The divine command is, "Study." For every generation there has been a
message borne by this living word, making call to reformation of life,
or giving warning and comfort. "The Bible is not a collection of truths
formulated in propositions," said Dr. Samuel Harris, of Yale, "but
God's majestic march through history, redeeming men from sin."
In every age God has been ruling and overruling, witnessing by His
Spirit through the living word. The experiences recorded of past ages
have their special lesson for the present time:
"Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,
that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope."
Rom. 15:4.
"Let vs therfore all with feruent desyre," as the Old English of 1549
spelled the exhortation of Erasmus, "thyrste after these spirituall
sprynges.... Let vs kisse these swete wordes of Christ with a pure
affeccion. Let vs be newe transformed into them, for soche are oure
maners as oure studies be."
The Book for All Mankind
It speaks in every tongue to the human heart. Its power to transform has
been shown through all the centuries in every clime and among every
race. One of the Gospels was put into the Chiluba tongue of Central
Africa. After a time a Garenganze chief came to Dan Crawford, the
missionary, changed from the spirit of a fierce, wicked barbarian to
that of a teachable child. Explaining his conversion, the chief said: "I
was startled to find that Christ could speak Chiluba. I heard him speak
to me out of the printed page, and what he said was, 'Follow me!'"
Of the Bible's universal speech to all mankind, Dr. Henry van Dyke has
said:
"Born in the East, and clothed in Oriental form and imagery,
the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet,
and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has
learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man.
It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is the
servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the
peasant that he is the son of God. Children listen to its
stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder them as
parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of
peril, a word of comfort for the day of calamity, a word of
light for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the
assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear
of the lonely. The wise and the proud tremble at its warnings,
but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother's voice....
"Its great words grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn
near the heart. No man is poor or desolate who has this
treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens and the
trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named the Shadow, he is
not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in
his hand; he says to friend and comrade, 'Good-by, we shall
meet again,' and comforted by that support, he goes toward the
lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into
light."--_The Century Magazine._
[Illustration: RAISING JARIUS'S DAUGHTER
"In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." John 1:4.]
In the days of His life on earth, Jesus was a welcome guest in humble
homes in Judea and Galilee. "The common people heard Him gladly." His
presence brought peace and comfort to the home. He is no longer with us
in bodily presence; but He is the same Saviour still--"Jesus Christ the
same yesterday, and today, and forever." Heb. 13:8. By His Spirit,
through the living word of Holy Scripture, He enters the home where
faith receives Him, and speaks again the gracious salutation, "Peace be
to this house."
Christ the Central Theme
All the Bible bears witness of Christ as the Saviour of the world. He
Himself said of the Scriptures, "They are they which testify of Me."
John 5:39. "To Him give all the prophets witness." Acts 10:43. We see
Him as the coming Messiah in promise and prophecy, in type and shadow.
His is the divine, living personality standing out in every book that
makes up the Sacred Volume. As we read with loving heart, the Author
seems near in every page.
"Reading, methinks I bend
Before the cross
Where died my King, my Friend.
The whole world's loss
For love of Him is gain."
And having beheld Him giving His life as the divine sacrifice, and
rising in triumph over death to be our great High Priest in the heavenly
temple, as we read these Sacred Scriptures yet again, in every book,
from Genesis to Revelation, we see Him as the coming King of kings,
coming to take His children to the eternal home of the saved. The whole
book is a bright window through which we gaze on coming glory.
"And yet again I stand
Where the seer stood,
Gazing across the strand,
Beyond the flood:
The gates of pearl afar,
The streets of gold,
The bright and morning Star
Mine eyes behold."
"The Word of God ... liveth and abideth forever." 1 Peter 1:23. "Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away." Matt.
24:35.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS
"Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all
the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." Luke 24:27.]
[Illustration: THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
"I am God,... declaring ... from ancient times the things that are not
yet done." Isa. 46:9, 10.]
Man may write a true book, but only God, the source of life, can write a
living book. "The word of God ... liveth and abideth forever." 1 Peter
1:23. The Bible is the living word of God. We look at the volume; we
hold it in our hands. It is like other books in form and printer's art.
But the voice of God speaks from these pages, and the word spoken is
alive. It is able to do in the heart that receives it what can be done
only by divine power.
The Book That Talks
Far in the heart of Africa a missionary read to the people in their own
language from the translated Word of God. "See!" they cried; "see! the
book talks! The white man has a book that talks!" With that simplicity
of speech so common to children of nature, they had exactly described
it. This is a book that talks. What the wise man says of its counsels
through parents to children, is true of all the book: "When thou goest,
it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when
thou awakest, it shall talk with thee." Prov. 6:22.
Here is companionship, faithful and true, a blessed guide and guardian
and friend.
"Holy Bible! book divine!
Precious treasure, thou art mine!"
God Its Author
The sixty-six books of Holy Scripture were written by many penmen, over
a space of fifteen centuries; yet it is one book, and one voice speaks
through all its pages. Spurgeon once said of his experience with this
book:
"When I see it, I seem to hear a voice springing up from it,
saying, 'I am the book of God; man, read me. I am God's
writing; open my leaf, for I was penned by God; read it, for He
is my author.'"
This book declares of itself: "All scripture is given by inspiration of
God." 2 Tim. 3:16. "The prophecy came not in old time by the will of
man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2
Peter 1:21. As the rugged verse of the old hymn puts it:
"Let all the heathen writers join
To form one perfect book:
Great God, if once compared with Thine,
How mean their writings look!
"Not the most perfect rules they gave
Could show one sin forgiven,
Nor lead a step beyond the grave;
But Thine conducts to heaven."
It is the voice of the Almighty. Very different it is from the sacred
books of the non-Christian religions. In those writings it is man
speaking about God; in the Holy Scriptures it is God speaking to man.
The difference is as great as heaven is higher than earth. Here it is
not man groping in the darkness after God. In this book of God's
revelation we see the divine arm reaching down to save the lost, and
hear the voice of the loving Father calling to His children, every one
and everywhere. "Incline your ear," He calls; "hear, and your soul shall
live." Isa. 55:3.
The Word That Creates
We must have something more than instruction; we must have a word of
power that is able to tell of sins forgiven, and to conduct us beyond
the grave to heaven. One of the greatest of China's sages, Mencius,
said, "Instruction can impart information, but not the power to
execute." That touches the crucial point. We must have instruction that
can come with power divine to execute. We have it only in God's words.
Christ said: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth
nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are
life." John 6:63.
The words of God are living words. When God spoke in the beginning, "Let
there be light," lo, the light sprang out of the darkness. There was
power in the word spoken to bring forth. "Let the earth bring forth
grass," was the word of the Lord: and the earth was carpeted with its
first rich greensward. So through all the work of creation, the creative
power was in the word spoken.
"By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them
by the breath of His mouth." "He spake, and it was done; He commanded,
and it stood fast." Ps. 33:6, 9.
Even so, when this word speaks instruction to man, there is creative
power in the word, if received, to work mightily in the soul that is
dead in trespasses and sins. Man must be born again, be re-created. That
we know; for Christ says, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man
be born again ["from above," margin], he cannot see the kingdom of God."
John 3:3.
And the word of God--the Bible from heaven--received by faith, is the
agency by which this new birth "from above" is wrought. This is the
declaration of our text: "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever."
1 Peter 1:23.
[Illustration: HEALING THE CENTURION'S SERVANT
"Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed." Matt. 8:8.]
The Word That Works Within
Not only does the word of God give the new birth, making the believer a
new man,--the past forgiven and a new heart within,--but the word that
re-creates abides in the believing heart that studies it and clings to
it, to work in the life with actual power that is not of the man
himself. To the Thessalonians, who had "turned to God from idols to
serve the living and true God," the apostle wrote:
"For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye
received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the
word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually
worketh also in you that believe." 1 Thess. 2:13.
The word itself works within, and works effectually. There is nothing
mechanical about it. The mere letter profits nothing. The Bible on the
center table, unstudied and unloved, has no magic power. But God
promises to abide by His Spirit of power in the heart that listens to
His voice and trembles at His word. Jesus Himself tells us the secret of
this power of the word to work in the believing heart:
"If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him,
and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." John 14:23.
No wonder, then, that believing and receiving the word brings divine
power into the life, making it possible for transformations of character
to be wrought, for victories to be won and obedience rendered to every
command of God.
Simply believing God's word touches the current of everlasting power,
even as the trolley arm of the electric car reaches up and touches the
current of power flowing through the wire overhead. The faith that
takes the living word brings the power divine into the heart to move all
the spiritual mechanism of life's service.
The Word Our Safety and Defense
When Christ came to live as our example in the flesh, and to give His
life a sacrifice for sin, He, the divine Son of God, made Himself like
unto His brethren. "I can of Mine own self do nothing," He said. John
5:30. Tempted and tried, He found His defense in the Holy Scriptures.
When Satan came to tempt Him to sin, the Saviour said, "It is written."
He clung to the sure defense. Again the tempter came. He was met with
the word, "It is written again." The third time it was the same weapon
of defense, "It is written." Matt. 4:1-11.
Christ found safety only in the Scriptures of truth. So the Bible is the
Christian's shield against the enemy's attacks. As Jesus studied the
Scriptures and kept the words ever in His heart for a defense against
temptation, so must every Christian study and meditate upon God's Holy
Word if its counsels and precepts are to be his defense in the moment of
sudden temptation to sin. "Thy word have I hid in mine heart," said the
psalmist, "that I might not sin against Thee." Ps. 119:11. It was the
only way for Christ, our Pattern; it is the only way for us.
The Bread of Life
The word of God is the daily food for the soul. "It is written, Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God." Matt. 4:4.
Who has not, in hurried times, missed a meal, working on through the
day, never thinking of the prolonged fast? But after a time there came a
sense of weakening force, a lack of physical power. What was the
trouble? At once the reason was evident--one had not taken food, and
the system was calling for a renewal of its forces. Just so the
spiritual life must needs be fed by the word of God.
[Illustration: CHRIST'S WEAPON OF DEFENSE--THE WORD OF GOD
"Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." Matt. 4:10.]
Do we at times feel a sense of weakening of the spiritual power, a
letting down of the vital forces of the soul? Ah, in the hurry of life
we have neglected to feed upon the living bread. We can no more sustain
spiritual vigor and health without feeding daily upon God's Holy Word
than we can maintain physical power without eating our daily bread. Eat
of the life-giving word. The taste for it grows with the partaking.
There is life in "every word." The psalmist found the Lord's testimonies
"sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb," or, as the marginal reading
has it, than "the dropping of honeycombs." Ps. 19:10. We get the picture
of the honeycomb inverted, the cell caps broken open, the sweetness
dripping down. Just so every word of the Lord is a cell full of
sweetness and life for the soul that feasts upon the Holy Scriptures.
The Source of All Doctrine
The Bible is the complete and perfect rule of faith and doctrine. Here
every doctrine of salvation is found. Inspiration has declared it in the
words of the apostle Paul to Timothy:
"From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to
make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good
works." 2 Tim. 3:15-17.
The divine command is, "Study." For every generation there has been a
message borne by this living word, making call to reformation of life,
or giving warning and comfort. "The Bible is not a collection of truths
formulated in propositions," said Dr. Samuel Harris, of Yale, "but
God's majestic march through history, redeeming men from sin."
In every age God has been ruling and overruling, witnessing by His
Spirit through the living word. The experiences recorded of past ages
have their special lesson for the present time:
"Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,
that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope."
Rom. 15:4.
"Let vs therfore all with feruent desyre," as the Old English of 1549
spelled the exhortation of Erasmus, "thyrste after these spirituall
sprynges.... Let vs kisse these swete wordes of Christ with a pure
affeccion. Let vs be newe transformed into them, for soche are oure
maners as oure studies be."
The Book for All Mankind
It speaks in every tongue to the human heart. Its power to transform has
been shown through all the centuries in every clime and among every
race. One of the Gospels was put into the Chiluba tongue of Central
Africa. After a time a Garenganze chief came to Dan Crawford, the
missionary, changed from the spirit of a fierce, wicked barbarian to
that of a teachable child. Explaining his conversion, the chief said: "I
was startled to find that Christ could speak Chiluba. I heard him speak
to me out of the printed page, and what he said was, 'Follow me!'"
Of the Bible's universal speech to all mankind, Dr. Henry van Dyke has
said:
"Born in the East, and clothed in Oriental form and imagery,
the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet,
and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has
learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man.
It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is the
servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the
peasant that he is the son of God. Children listen to its
stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder them as
parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of
peril, a word of comfort for the day of calamity, a word of
light for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the
assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear
of the lonely. The wise and the proud tremble at its warnings,
but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother's voice....
"Its great words grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn
near the heart. No man is poor or desolate who has this
treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens and the
trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named the Shadow, he is
not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in
his hand; he says to friend and comrade, 'Good-by, we shall
meet again,' and comforted by that support, he goes toward the
lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into
light."--_The Century Magazine._
[Illustration: RAISING JARIUS'S DAUGHTER
"In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." John 1:4.]
In the days of His life on earth, Jesus was a welcome guest in humble
homes in Judea and Galilee. "The common people heard Him gladly." His
presence brought peace and comfort to the home. He is no longer with us
in bodily presence; but He is the same Saviour still--"Jesus Christ the
same yesterday, and today, and forever." Heb. 13:8. By His Spirit,
through the living word of Holy Scripture, He enters the home where
faith receives Him, and speaks again the gracious salutation, "Peace be
to this house."
Christ the Central Theme
All the Bible bears witness of Christ as the Saviour of the world. He
Himself said of the Scriptures, "They are they which testify of Me."
John 5:39. "To Him give all the prophets witness." Acts 10:43. We see
Him as the coming Messiah in promise and prophecy, in type and shadow.
His is the divine, living personality standing out in every book that
makes up the Sacred Volume. As we read with loving heart, the Author
seems near in every page.
"Reading, methinks I bend
Before the cross
Where died my King, my Friend.
The whole world's loss
For love of Him is gain."
And having beheld Him giving His life as the divine sacrifice, and
rising in triumph over death to be our great High Priest in the heavenly
temple, as we read these Sacred Scriptures yet again, in every book,
from Genesis to Revelation, we see Him as the coming King of kings,
coming to take His children to the eternal home of the saved. The whole
book is a bright window through which we gaze on coming glory.
"And yet again I stand
Where the seer stood,
Gazing across the strand,
Beyond the flood:
The gates of pearl afar,
The streets of gold,
The bright and morning Star
Mine eyes behold."
"The Word of God ... liveth and abideth forever." 1 Peter 1:23. "Heaven
and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away." Matt.
24:35.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS
"Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all
the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." Luke 24:27.]
[Illustration: THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
"I am God,... declaring ... from ancient times the things that are not
yet done." Isa. 46:9, 10.]
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
CHAPTER I. Down the Rabbit-Hole
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the
bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the
book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in
it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or
conversation?'
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the
hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure
of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and
picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran
close by her.
There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so
VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear!
Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it
occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time
it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH
OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT-POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on,
Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had
never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch
to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field
after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large
rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how
in the world she was to get out again.
The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then
dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think
about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep
well.
Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had
plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was
going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what
she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she
looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with
cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures
hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as
she passed; it was labelled 'ORANGE MARMALADE', but to her great
disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear
of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as
she fell past it.
'Well!' thought Alice to herself, 'after such a fall as this, I shall
think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at
home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top
of the house!' (Which was very likely true.)
Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end! 'I wonder how
many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. 'I must be getting
somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four
thousand miles down, I think--' (for, you see, Alice had learnt several
things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this
was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there
was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over)
'--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude
or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or
Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)
Presently she began again. 'I wonder if I shall fall right THROUGH the
earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with
their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad
there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the
right word) '--but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country
is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?' (and
she tried to curtsey as she spoke--fancy CURTSEYING as you're falling
through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) 'And what an
ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to
ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.'
Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began
talking again. 'Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I should think!'
(Dinah was the cat.) 'I hope they'll remember her saucer of milk at
tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no
mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very
like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?' And here Alice
began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy
sort of way, 'Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, 'Do
bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question,
it didn't much matter which way she put it. She felt that she was dozing
off, and had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with
Dinah, and saying to her very earnestly, 'Now, Dinah, tell me the truth:
did you ever eat a bat?' when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon
a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.
Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment:
she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another
long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it.
There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and
was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, 'Oh my ears
and whiskers, how late it's getting!' She was close behind it when she
turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found
herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging
from the roof.
There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when
Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every
door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to
get out again.
Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid
glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice's
first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall;
but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small,
but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second
time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and
behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the
little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not
much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage
into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of
that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and
those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the
doorway; 'and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, 'it
would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could
shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.'
For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately,
that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really
impossible.
There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went
back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at
any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this
time she found a little bottle on it, ('which certainly was not here
before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper
label, with the words 'DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large
letters.
It was all very well to say 'Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was
not going to do THAT in a hurry. 'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and
see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice
little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild
beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember
the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot
poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your
finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never
forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is
almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked 'poison,' so Alice ventured to taste
it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour
of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot
buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
'What a curious feeling!' said Alice; 'I must be shutting up like a
telescope.'
And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face
brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going
through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she
waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further:
she felt a little nervous about this; 'for it might end, you know,' said
Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder
what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a
candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember
ever having seen such a thing.
After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided on going
into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the
door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she
went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach
it: she could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her
best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery;
and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor little thing
sat down and cried.
'Come, there's no use in crying like that!' said Alice to herself,
rather sharply; 'I advise you to leave off this minute!' She generally
gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it),
and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into
her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having
cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself,
for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.
'But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, 'to pretend to be two people!
Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable person!'
Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table:
she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words
'EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. 'Well, I'll eat it,' said
Alice, 'and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it
makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll
get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, 'Which way? Which
way?', holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was
growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same
size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice
had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way
things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on
in the common way.
So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the
bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the
book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in
it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or
conversation?'
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the
hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure
of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and
picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran
close by her.
There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so
VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear!
Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it
occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time
it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH
OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT-POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on,
Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had
never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch
to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field
after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large
rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how
in the world she was to get out again.
The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then
dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think
about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep
well.
Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had
plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was
going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what
she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she
looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with
cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures
hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as
she passed; it was labelled 'ORANGE MARMALADE', but to her great
disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear
of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as
she fell past it.
'Well!' thought Alice to herself, 'after such a fall as this, I shall
think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at
home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top
of the house!' (Which was very likely true.)
Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end! 'I wonder how
many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. 'I must be getting
somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four
thousand miles down, I think--' (for, you see, Alice had learnt several
things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this
was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there
was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over)
'--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude
or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or
Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)
Presently she began again. 'I wonder if I shall fall right THROUGH the
earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with
their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad
there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the
right word) '--but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country
is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?' (and
she tried to curtsey as she spoke--fancy CURTSEYING as you're falling
through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) 'And what an
ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to
ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.'
Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began
talking again. 'Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I should think!'
(Dinah was the cat.) 'I hope they'll remember her saucer of milk at
tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no
mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very
like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?' And here Alice
began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy
sort of way, 'Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, 'Do
bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question,
it didn't much matter which way she put it. She felt that she was dozing
off, and had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with
Dinah, and saying to her very earnestly, 'Now, Dinah, tell me the truth:
did you ever eat a bat?' when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon
a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.
Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment:
she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another
long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it.
There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and
was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, 'Oh my ears
and whiskers, how late it's getting!' She was close behind it when she
turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found
herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging
from the roof.
There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when
Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every
door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to
get out again.
Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid
glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice's
first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall;
but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small,
but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second
time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and
behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the
little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not
much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage
into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of
that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and
those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the
doorway; 'and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, 'it
would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could
shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.'
For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately,
that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really
impossible.
There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went
back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at
any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this
time she found a little bottle on it, ('which certainly was not here
before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper
label, with the words 'DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large
letters.
It was all very well to say 'Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was
not going to do THAT in a hurry. 'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and
see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice
little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild
beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember
the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot
poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your
finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never
forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is
almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked 'poison,' so Alice ventured to taste
it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour
of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot
buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * * *
'What a curious feeling!' said Alice; 'I must be shutting up like a
telescope.'
And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face
brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going
through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she
waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further:
she felt a little nervous about this; 'for it might end, you know,' said
Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder
what I should be like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a
candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember
ever having seen such a thing.
After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided on going
into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the
door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she
went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach
it: she could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her
best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery;
and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor little thing
sat down and cried.
'Come, there's no use in crying like that!' said Alice to herself,
rather sharply; 'I advise you to leave off this minute!' She generally
gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it),
and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into
her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having
cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself,
for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.
'But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, 'to pretend to be two people!
Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable person!'
Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table:
she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words
'EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. 'Well, I'll eat it,' said
Alice, 'and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it
makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll
get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, 'Which way? Which
way?', holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was
growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same
size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice
had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way
things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on
in the common way.
So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
Searchlights on Health by B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY.
1. The old maxim, that "Knowledge is power," is a true one, but there
is still a greater truth: "KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY." Safety amid physical
ills that beset mankind, and safety amid the moral pitfalls that
surround so many young people, is the great crying demand of the age.
2. CRITICISM.--This work, though plain and to some extent startling,
is chaste, practical and to the point, and will be a boon and a
blessing to thousands who consult its pages. The world is full of
ignorance, and the ignorant will always criticise, because they live
to suffer ills, for they know no better. New light is fast falling
upon the dark corners, and the eyes of many are being opened.
3. RESEARCHES OF SCIENCE.--The researches of science in the past few
years have thrown light on many facts relating to the physiology
of man and woman, and the diseases to which they are subject, and
consequently many reformations have taken place in the treatment and
prevention of diseases peculiar to the sexes.
4. LOCK AND KEY.--Any information bearing upon the diseases of mankind
should not be kept under lock and key. The physician is frequently
called upon to speak in plain language to his patients upon some
private and startling disease contracted on account of ignorance. The
better plan, however, is to so educate and enlighten old and young
upon the important subjects of health, so that the necessity to call a
physician may occur less frequently.
5. PROGRESSION.--A large, respectable, though diminishing class in
every community, maintain that nothing that relates exclusively to
either sex should become the subject of popular medical instruction.
But such an opinion is radically wrong; ignorance is no more the
mother of purity than it is of religion. Enlightenment can never work
injustice to him who investigates.
6. AN EXAMPLE.--The men and women who study and practice medicine are
not the worse, but the better for such knowledge; so it would be to
the community in general if all would be properly instructed on the
laws of health which relate to the sexes.
7. CRIME AND DEGRADATION.--Had every person a sound understanding on
the relation of the sexes, one of the most fertile sources of crime
and degradation would be removed. Physicians know too well what sad
consequences are constantly occurring from a lack of proper knowledge
on these important subjects.
8. A CONSISTENT CONSIDERATION.--Let the reader of this work study its
pages carefully and be able to give safe counsel and advice to others,
and remember that purity of purpose and purity of character are the
brightest jewels in the crown of immortality.
1. The old maxim, that "Knowledge is power," is a true one, but there
is still a greater truth: "KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY." Safety amid physical
ills that beset mankind, and safety amid the moral pitfalls that
surround so many young people, is the great crying demand of the age.
2. CRITICISM.--This work, though plain and to some extent startling,
is chaste, practical and to the point, and will be a boon and a
blessing to thousands who consult its pages. The world is full of
ignorance, and the ignorant will always criticise, because they live
to suffer ills, for they know no better. New light is fast falling
upon the dark corners, and the eyes of many are being opened.
3. RESEARCHES OF SCIENCE.--The researches of science in the past few
years have thrown light on many facts relating to the physiology
of man and woman, and the diseases to which they are subject, and
consequently many reformations have taken place in the treatment and
prevention of diseases peculiar to the sexes.
4. LOCK AND KEY.--Any information bearing upon the diseases of mankind
should not be kept under lock and key. The physician is frequently
called upon to speak in plain language to his patients upon some
private and startling disease contracted on account of ignorance. The
better plan, however, is to so educate and enlighten old and young
upon the important subjects of health, so that the necessity to call a
physician may occur less frequently.
5. PROGRESSION.--A large, respectable, though diminishing class in
every community, maintain that nothing that relates exclusively to
either sex should become the subject of popular medical instruction.
But such an opinion is radically wrong; ignorance is no more the
mother of purity than it is of religion. Enlightenment can never work
injustice to him who investigates.
6. AN EXAMPLE.--The men and women who study and practice medicine are
not the worse, but the better for such knowledge; so it would be to
the community in general if all would be properly instructed on the
laws of health which relate to the sexes.
7. CRIME AND DEGRADATION.--Had every person a sound understanding on
the relation of the sexes, one of the most fertile sources of crime
and degradation would be removed. Physicians know too well what sad
consequences are constantly occurring from a lack of proper knowledge
on these important subjects.
8. A CONSISTENT CONSIDERATION.--Let the reader of this work study its
pages carefully and be able to give safe counsel and advice to others,
and remember that purity of purpose and purity of character are the
brightest jewels in the crown of immortality.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Chapter 1
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his
first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds
of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property
of some one or other of their daughters.
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that
Netherfield Park is let at last?"
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she
told me all about it."
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.
"_You_ want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."
This was invitation enough.
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken
by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came
down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much
delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he
is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to
be in the house by the end of next week."
"What is his name?"
"Bingley."
"Is he married or single?"
"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or
five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? How can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You
must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?"
"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he
_may_ fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as
soon as he comes."
"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send
them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are
as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the
party."
"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly _have_ had my share of beauty, but
I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five
grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty."
"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of."
"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into
the neighbourhood."
"It is more than I engage for, I assure you."
"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would
be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to
go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no
newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for _us_ to
visit him if you do not."
"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very
glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my
hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though
I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."
"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the
others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so
good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving _her_ the preference."
"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he; "they are
all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of
quickness than her sisters."
"Mr. Bennet, how _can_ you abuse your own children in such a way? You
take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves."
"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They
are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration
these last twenty years at least."
"Ah, you do not know what I suffer."
"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four
thousand a year come into the neighbourhood."
"It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not
visit them."
"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them
all."
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour,
reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had
been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. _Her_ mind
was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding,
little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented,
she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her
daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his
first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds
of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property
of some one or other of their daughters.
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that
Netherfield Park is let at last?"
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she
told me all about it."
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.
"_You_ want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."
This was invitation enough.
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken
by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came
down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much
delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he
is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to
be in the house by the end of next week."
"What is his name?"
"Bingley."
"Is he married or single?"
"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or
five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? How can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You
must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?"
"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he
_may_ fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as
soon as he comes."
"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send
them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are
as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the
party."
"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly _have_ had my share of beauty, but
I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five
grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty."
"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of."
"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into
the neighbourhood."
"It is more than I engage for, I assure you."
"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would
be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to
go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no
newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for _us_ to
visit him if you do not."
"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very
glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my
hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though
I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."
"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the
others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so
good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving _her_ the preference."
"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he; "they are
all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of
quickness than her sisters."
"Mr. Bennet, how _can_ you abuse your own children in such a way? You
take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves."
"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They
are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration
these last twenty years at least."
"Ah, you do not know what I suffer."
"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four
thousand a year come into the neighbourhood."
"It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not
visit them."
"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them
all."
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour,
reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had
been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. _Her_ mind
was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding,
little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented,
she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her
daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.
Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period, by Paul Lacroix
Condition of Persons and Lands.
Disorganization of the West at the Beginning of the Middle
Ages.--Mixture of Roman, Germanic, and Gallic Institutions.--Fusion
organized under Charlemagne.--Royal Authority.--Position of the Great
Feudalists.--Division of the Territory and Prerogatives attached to
Landed Possessions.--Freemen and Tenants.--The Læti, the Colon, the
Serf, and the Labourer, who may be called the Origin of the Modern Lower
Classes.--Formation of Communities.--Right of Mortmain.
The period known as the Middle Ages, says the learned Benjamin Guérard, is
the produce of Pagan civilisation, of Germanic barbarism, and of
Christianity. It began in 476, on the fall of Agustulus, and ended in
1453, at the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II., and consequently the
fall of two empires, that of the West and that of the East, marks its
duration. Its first act, which was due to the Germans, was the destruction
of political unity, and this was destined to be afterwards replaced by
religions unity. Then we find a multitude of scattered and disorderly
influences growing on the ruins of central power. The yoke of imperial
dominion was broken by the barbarians; but the populace, far from
acquiring liberty, fell to the lowest degrees of servitude. Instead of one
despot, it found thousands of tyrants, and it was but slowly and with
much trouble that it succeeded in freeing itself from feudalism. Nothing
could be more strangely troubled than the West at the time of the
dissolution of the Empire of the Caesars; nothing more diverse or more
discordant than the interests, the institutions, and the state of society,
which were delivered to the Germans (Figs. 1 and 2). In fact, it would be
impossible in the whole pages of history to find a society formed of more
heterogeneous or incompatible elements. On the one side might be placed
the Goths, Burgundians, Vandals, Germans, Franks, Saxons, and Lombards,
nations, or more strictly hordes, accustomed to rough and successful
warfare, and, on the other, the Romans, including those people who by long
servitude to Roman dominion had become closely allied with their
conquerors (Fig. 3). There were, on both sides, freemen, freedmen, colons,
and slaves; different ranks and degrees being, however, observable both in
freedom and servitude. This hierarchical principle applied itself even to
the land, which was divided into freeholds, tributary lands, lands of the
nobility, and servile lands, thus constituting the freeholds, the
benefices, the fiefs, and the tenures. It may be added that the customs,
and to a certain degree the laws, varied according to the masters of the
country, so that it can hardly be wondered at that everywhere diversity
and inequality were to be found, and, as a consequence, that anarchy and
confusion ruled supreme.
[Illustration: Figs. 1 and 2.--Costumes of the Franks from the Fourth to
the Eighth Centuries, collected by H. de Vielcastel, from original
Documents in the great Libraries of Europe.]
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Costumes of Roman Soldiers. Fig. 4.--Costume of
German Soldiers. From Miniatures on different Manuscripts, from the Sixth
to the Twelfth Centuries.]
The Germans (Fig. 4) had brought with them over the Rhine none of the
heroic virtues attributed to them by Tacitus when he wrote their history,
with the evident intention of making a satire on his countrymen. Amongst
the degenerate Romans whom those ferocious Germans had subjugated,
civilisation was reconstituted on the ruins of vices common in the early
history of a new society by the adoption of a series of loose and
dissolute habits, both by the conquerors and the conquered.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Costumes of Slaves or Serfs, from the Sixth to the
Twelfth Centuries, collected by H. de Vielcastel, from original Documents
in the great Libraries of Europe.]
In fact, the conquerors contributed the worse share (Fig. 5); for, whilst
exercising the low and debasing instincts of their former barbarism, they
undertook the work of social reconstruction with a sort of natural and
innate servitude. To them, liberty, the desire for which caused them to
brave the greatest dangers, was simply the right of doing evil--of obeying
their ardent thirst for plunder. Long ago, in the depths of their forests,
they had adopted the curious institution of vassalage. When they came to
the West to create States, instead of reducing personal power, every step
in their social edifice, from the top to the bottom, was made to depend on
individual superiority. To bow to a superior was their first political
principle; and on that principle feudalism was one day to find its base.
Servitude was in fact to be found in all conditions and ranks, equally in
the palace of the sovereign as in the dwellings of his subjects. The
vassal who was waited on at his own table by a varlet, himself served at
the table of his lord; the nobles treated each other likewise, according
to their rank; and all the exactions which each submitted to from his
superiors, and required to be paid to him by those below him, were looked
upon not as onerous duties, but as rights and honours. The sentiment of
dignity and of personal independence, which has become, so to say, the
soul of modern society, did not exist at all, or at least but very
slightly, amongst the Germans. If we could doubt the fact, we have but to
remember that these men, so proud, so indifferent to suffering or death,
would often think little of staking their liberty in gambling, in the hope
that if successful their gain might afford them the means of gratifying
some brutal passion.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--King or Chief of Franks armed with the Seramasax,
from a Miniature of the Ninth Century, drawn by H. de Vielcastel.]
When the Franks took root in Gaul, their dress and institutions were
adopted by the Roman society (Fig. 6). This had the most disastrous
influence in every point of view, and it is easy to prove that
civilisation did not emerge from this chaos until by degrees the Teutonic
spirit disappeared from the world. As long as this spirit reigned, neither
private nor public liberty existed. Individual patriotism only extended as
far as the border of a man's family, and the nation became broken up into
clans. Gaul soon found itself parcelled off into domains which were
almost independent of one another. It was thus that Germanic genius became
developed.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--The King of the Franks, in the midst of the
Military Chiefs who formed his _Treuste_, or armed Court, dictates the
Salic Law (Code of the Barbaric Laws).--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the
"Chronicles of St. Denis," a Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Library
of the Arsenal).]
The advantages of acting together for mutual protection first established
itself in families. If any one suffered from an act of violence, he laid
the matter before his relatives for them jointly to seek reparation. The
question was then settled between the families of the offended person and
the offender, all of whom were equally associated in the object of
vindicating a cause which interested them alone, without recognising any
established authority, and without appealing to the law. If the parties
had sought the protection or advice of men of power, the quarrel might at
once take a wider scope, and tend to kindle a feud between two nobles. In
any case the King only interfered when the safety of his person or the
interests of his dominions were threatened.
Penalties and punishments were almost always to be averted by a money
payment. A son, for instance, instead of avenging the death of his
father, received from the murderer a certain indemnity in specie,
according to legal tariff; and the law was thus satisfied.
The tariff of indemnities or compensations to be paid for each crime
formed the basis of the code of laws amongst the principal tribes of
Franks, a code essentially barbarian, and called the Salic law, or law of
the Salians (Fig. 7). Such, however, was the spirit of inequality among
the German races, that it became an established principle for justice to
be subservient to the rank of individuals. The more powerful a man was,
the more he was protected by the law; the lower his rank, the less the law
protected him.
The life of a Frank, by right, was worth twice that of a Roman; the life
of a servant of the King was worth three times that of an ordinary
individual who did not possess that protecting tie. On the other hand,
punishment was the more prompt and rigorous according to the inferiority
of position of the culprit. In case of theft, for instance, a person of
importance was brought before the King's tribunal, and as it respected the
rank held by the accused in the social hierarchy, little or no punishment
was awarded. In the case of the same crime by a poor man, on the contrary,
the ordinary judge gave immediate sentence, and he was seized and hung on
the spot.
Inasmuch as no political institutions amongst the Germans were nobler or
more just than those of the Franks and the other barbaric races, we cannot
accept the creed of certain historians who have represented the Germans as
the true regenerators of society in Europe. The two sources of modern
civilisation are indisputably Pagan antiquity and Christianity.
After the fall of the Merovingian kings great progress was made in the
political and social state of nations. These kings, who were but chiefs of
undisciplined bands, were unable to assume a regal character, properly so
called. Their authority was more personal than territorial, for incessant
changes were made in the boundaries of their conquered dominions. It was
therefore with good reason that they styled themselves kings of the
Franks, and not kings of France.
Charlemagne was the first who recognised that social union, so admirable
an example of which was furnished by Roman organization, and who was able,
with the very elements of confusion and disorder to which he succeeded, to
unite, direct, and consolidate diverging and opposite forces, to establish
and regulate public administrations, to found and build towns, and to
form and reconstruct almost a new world (Fig. 8). We hear of him assigning
to each his place, creating for all a common interest, making of a crowd
of small and scattered peoples a great and powerful nation; in a word,
rekindling the beacon of ancient civilisation. When he died, after a most
active and glorious reign of forty-five years, he left an immense empire
in the most perfect state of peace (Fig. 9). But this magnificent
inheritance was unfortunately destined to pass into unworthy or impotent
hands, so that society soon fell back into anarchy and confusion. The
nobles, in their turn invested with power, were continually at war, and
gradually weakened the royal authority--the power of the kingdom--by their
endless disputes with the Crown and with one another.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--Charles, eldest Son of King Pepin, receives the
News of the Death of his Father and the Great Feudalists offer him the
Crown.--Costumes of the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth
Century.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of the "History of the Emperors"
(Library of the Arsenal).]
[Illustration: Fig. 9. Portrait of Charlemagne, whom the Song of Roland
names the King with the Grizzly Beard.--Fac-simile of an Engraving of the
End of the Sixteenth Century.]
The revolution in society which took place under the Carlovingian dynasty
had for its especial object that of rendering territorial what was
formerly personal, and, as it were, of destroying personality in matters
of government.
The usurpation of lands by the great having been thus limited by the
influence of the lesser holders, everybody tried to become the holder of
land. Its possession then formed the basis of social position, and, as a
consequence, individual servitude became lessened, and society assumed a
more stable condition. The ancient laws of wandering tribes fell into
disuse; and at the same time many distinctions of caste and race
disappeared, as they were incompatible with the new order of things. As
there were no more Salians, Ripuarians, nor Visigoths among the free men,
so there were no more colons, læti, nor slaves amongst those deprived of
liberty.
[Illustrations: Figs. 10 and 11.--Present State of the Feudal Castle of
Chateau-Gaillard aux Andelys, which was considered one of the strongest
Castles of France in the Middle Ages, and was rebuilt in the Twelfth
Century by Richard Coeur de Lion.]
Heads of families, on becoming attached to the soil, naturally had other
wants and other customs than those which they had delighted in when they
were only the chiefs of wandering adventurers. The strength of their
followers was not now so important to them as the security of their
castles. Fortresses took the place of armed bodies; and at this time,
every one who wished to keep what he had, entrenched himself to the best
of his ability at his own residence. The banks of rivers, elevated
positions, and all inaccessible heights, were occupied by towers and
castles, surrounded by ditches, which served as strongholds to the lords
of the soil. (Figs. 10 and 11). These places of defence soon became points
for attack. Out of danger at home, many of the nobles kept watch like
birds of prey on the surrounding country, and were always ready to fall,
not only upon their enemies, but also on their neighbours, in the hope
either of robbing them when off their guard, or of obtaining a ransom for
any unwary traveller who might fall into their hands. Everywhere society
was in ambuscade, and waged civil war--individual against
individual--without peace or mercy. Such was the reign of feudalism. It is
unnecessary to point out how this system of perpetual petty warfare tended
to reduce the power of centralisation, and how royalty itself was
weakened towards the end of the second dynasty. When the descendants of
Hugh Capet wished to restore their power by giving it a larger basis, they
were obliged to attack, one after the other, all these strongholds, and
practically to re-annex each fief, city, and province held by these petty
monarchs, in order to force their owners to recognise the sovereignty of
the King. Centuries of war and negotiations became necessary before the
kingdom of France could be, as it were, reformed.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Knights and Men-at-arms, cased in Mail, in the
Reign of Louis le Gros, from a Miniature in a Psalter written towards the
End of the Twelfth Century.]
The corporations and the citizens had great weight in restoring the
monarchical power, as well as in forming French nationality; but by far
the best influence brought to bear in the Middle Ages was that of
Christianity. The doctrine of one origin and of one final destiny being
common to all men of all classes constantly acted as a strong inducement
for thinking that all should be equally free. Religious equality paved the
way for political equality, and as all Christians were brothers before
God, the tendency was for them to become, as citizens, equal also in law.
This transformation, however, was but slow, and followed concurrently the
progress made in the security of property. At the onset, the slave only
possessed his life, and this was but imperfectly guaranteed to him by the
laws of charity; laws which, however, year by year became of greater
power. He afterwards became _colon_, or labourer (Figs. 13 and 14),
working for himself under certain conditions and tenures, paying fines, or
services, which, it is true, were often very extortionate. At this time he
was considered to belong to the domain on which he was born, and he was at
least sure that that soil would not be taken from him, and that in giving
part of his time to his master, he was at liberty to enjoy the rest
according to his fancy. The farmer afterwards became proprietor of the
soil he cultivated, and master, not only of himself, but of his lands;
certain trivial obligations or fines being all that was required of him,
and these daily grew less, and at last disappeared altogether. Having thus
obtained a footing in society, he soon began to take a place in provincial
assemblies; and he made the last bound on the road of social progress,
when the vote of his fellow-electors sent him to represent them in the
parliament of the kingdom. Thus the people who had begun by excessive
servitude, gradually climbed to power.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Labouring Colons (Twelfth Century), after a
Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ste. Chapelle, of the National Library of
Paris.]
We will now describe more in detail the various conditions of persons of
the Middle Ages.
The King, who held his rights by birth, and not by election, enjoyed
relatively an absolute authority, proportioned according to the power of
his abilities, to the extent of his dominions, and to the devotion of his
vassals. Invested with a power which for a long time resembled the command
of a general of an army, he had at first no other ministers than the
officers to whom he gave full power to act in the provinces, and who
decided arbitrarily in the name of, and representing, the King, on all
questions of administration. One minister alone approached the King, and
that was the chancellor, who verified, sealed, and dispatched all royal
decrees and orders.
As early, however, as the seventh century, a few officers of state
appeared, who were specially attached to the King's person or household; a
count of the palace, who examined and directed the suits brought before
the throne; a mayor of the palace, who at one time raised himself from the
administration of the royal property to the supreme power; an
arch-chaplain, who presided over ecclesiastical affairs; a lord of the
bedchamber, charged with the treasure of the chamber; and a count of the
stables, charged with the superintendence of the stables.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Labouring Colons (Twelfth Century), after a
Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ste. Chapelle, of the National Library of
Paris.]
For all important affairs, the King generally consulted the grandees of
his court; but as in the five or six first centuries of monarchy in France
the royal residence was not permanent, it is probable the Council of State
was composed in part of the officers who followed the King, and in part of
the noblemen who came to visit him, or resided near the place he happened
to be inhabiting. It was only under the Capetians that the Royal Council
took a permanent footing, or even assembled at stated periods.
In ordinary times, that is to say, when he was not engaged in war, the
King had few around him besides his family, his personal attendants, and
the ministers charged with the dispatch of affairs. As he changed from
one of his abodes to another he only held his court on the great festivals
of the year.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.--The Lords and Barons prove their Nobility by
hanging their Banners and exposing their Coats-of-arms at the Windows of
the Lodge of the Heralds.--After a Miniature of the "Tournaments of King
Réné" (Fifteenth Century), MSS. of the National Library of Paris.]
Up to the thirteenth century, there was, strictly speaking, no taxation
and no public treasury. The King received, through special officers
appointed for the purpose, tributes either in money or in kind, which
were most variable, but often very heavy, and drawn almost exclusively
from his personal and private properties. In cases of emergency only, he
appealed to his vassals for pecuniary aid. A great number of the grandees,
who lived far from the court, either in state offices or on their own
fiefs, had establishments similar to that of the King. Numerous and
considerable privileges elevated them above other free men. The offices
and fiefs having become hereditary, the order of nobility followed as a
consequence; and it then became highly necessary for families to keep
their genealogical histories, not only to gratify their pride, but also to
give them the necessary titles for the feudal advantages they derived by
birth. (Fig. 15). Without this right of inheritance, society, which was
still unsettled in the Middle Ages, would soon have been dissolved. This
great principle, sacred in the eyes both of great and small, maintained
feudalism, and in so doing it maintained itself amidst all the chaos and
confusion of repeated revolutions and social disturbances.
We have already stated, and we cannot sufficiently insist upon this
important point, that from the day on which the adventurous habits of the
chiefs of Germanic origin gave place to the desire for territorial
possessions, the part played by the land increased insensibly towards
defining the position of the persons holding it. Domains became small
kingdoms, over which the lord assumed the most absolute and arbitrary
rights. A rule was soon established, that the nobility was inherent to the
soil, and consequently that the land ought to transmit to its possessors
the rights of nobility.
This privilege was so much accepted, that the long tenure of a fief ended
by ennobling the commoner. Subsequently, by a sort of compensation which
naturally followed, lands on which rent had hitherto been paid became free
and noble on passing to the possession of a noble. At last, however, the
contrary rule prevailed, which caused the lands not to change quality in
changing owners: the noble could still possess the labourers's lands
without losing his nobility, but the labourer could be proprietor of a
fief without thereby becoming a noble.
To the _comites_, who, according to Tacitus, attached themselves to the
fortunes of the Germanic chiefs, succeeded the Merovingian _leudes_, whose
assembly formed the King's Council. These _leudes_ were persons of great
importance owing to the number of their vassals, and although they
composed his ordinary Council, they did not hesitate at times to declare
themselves openly opposed to his will.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Knight in War-harness, after a Miniature in a
Psalter written and illuminated under Louis le Gros.]
The name of _leudes_ was abandoned under the second of the then French
dynasties, and replaced by that of _fidèles_, which, in truth soon became
a common designation of both the vassals of the Crown and those of the
nobility.
Under the kings of the third dynasty, the kingdom was divided into about
one hundred and fifty domains, which were called great fiefs of the crown,
and which were possessed in hereditary right by the members of the highest
nobility, placed immediately under the royal sovereignty and dependence.
[Illustration: Fig. 17.--King Charlemagne receiving the Oath of Fidelity
and Homage from one of his great Feudatories or High Barons.--Fac-simile
of a Miniature in Cameo, of the "Chronicles of St. Denis." Manuscript of
the Fourteenth Century (Library of the Arsenal).]
Vassals emanating directly from the King, were then generally designated
by the title of _barons_, and mostly possessed strongholds. The other
nobles indiscriminately ranked as _chevaliers_ or _cnights_, a generic
title, to which was added that of _banneret_, The fiefs of _hauberk_ were
bound to supply the sovereign with a certain number of knights covered
with coats of mail, and completely armed. All knights were mounted in war
(Fig. 16); but knights who were made so in consequence of their high birth
must not be confounded with those who became knights by some great feat in
arms in the house of a prince or high noble, nor with the members of the
different orders of chivalry which were successively instituted, such as
the Knights of the Star, the Genet, the Golden Fleece, Saint-Esprit, St.
John of Jerusalem, &c. Originally, the possession of a benefice or fief
meant no more than the privilege of enjoying the profits derived from the
land, a concession which made the holder dependent upon the proprietor. He
was in fact his "man," to whom he owed homage (Fig. 17), service in case
of war, and assistance in any suit the proprietor might have before the
King's tribunal. The chiefs of German bands at first recompensed their
companions in arms by giving them fiefs of parts of the territory which
they had conquered; but later on, everything was equally given to be held
in fief, namely, dignities, offices, rights, and incomes or titles.
It is important to remark (and it is in this alone that feudalism shows
its social bearing), that if the vassal owed obedience and devotion to his
lord, the lord in exchange owed protection to the vassal. The rank of
"free man" did not necessarily require the possession of land; but the
position of free men who did not hold fiefs was extremely delicate and
often painful, for they were by natural right dependent upon those on
whose domain they resided. In fact, the greater part of these nobles
without lands became by choice the King's men, and remained attached to
his service. If this failed them, they took lands on lease, so as to
support themselves and their families, and to avoid falling into absolute
servitude. In the event of a change of proprietor, they changed with the
land into new hands. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon for them to be so
reduced as to sell their freedom; but in such cases, they reserved the
right, should better times come, of re-purchasing their liberty by paying
one-fifth more than the sum for which they had sold it.
We thus see that in olden times, as also later, freedom was more or less
the natural consequence of the possession of wealth or power on the part
of individuals or families who considered themselves free in the midst of
general dependence. During the tenth century, indeed, if not impossible,
it was at least difficult to find a single inhabitant of the kingdom of
France who was not "the man" of some one, and who was either tied by rules
of a liberal order, or else was under the most servile obligations.
The property of the free men was originally the "_aleu_," which was under
the jurisdiction of the royal magistrates. The _aleu_ gradually lost the
greater part of its franchise, and became liable to the common charges due
on lands which were not freehold.
In ancient times, all landed property of a certain extent was composed of
two distinct parts: one occupied by the owner, constituted the domain or
manor; the other, divided between persons who were more or less dependent,
formed what were called _tenures_. These _tenures_ were again divided
according to the position of those who occupied them: if they were
possessed by free men, who took the name of vassals, they were called
benefices or fiefs; if they were let to læti, colons, or serfs, they were
then called colonies or demesnes.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Ploughmen.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a very
ancient Anglo-Saxon Manuscript published by Shaw, with legend "God Spede
ye Plough, and send us Korne enow."]
The _læti_ occupied a rank between the colon and the serf. They had less
liberty than the colon, over whom the proprietor only had an indirect and
very limited power. The colon only served the land, whilst the læti,
whether agriculturists or servants, served both the land and the owner
(Fig. 18). They nevertheless enjoyed the right of possession, and of
defending themselves, or prosecuting by law. The serf, on the contrary,
had neither city, tribunal, nor family. The læti had, besides, the power
of purchasing their liberty when they had amassed sufficient for the
purpose.
_Serfs_ occupied the lowest position in the social ladder (Fig. 19). They
succeeded to slaves, thus making, thanks to Christianity, a step towards
liberty. Although the civil laws barely protected them, those of the
Church continually stepped in and defended them from arbitrary despotism.
The time came when they had no direct masters, and when the almost
absolute dependence of serfs was changed by the nobles requiring them to
farm the land and pay tithes and fees. And lastly, they became farmers,
and regular taxes took the place of tithes and fees.
The colons, læti, and serfs, all of whom were more or less tillers of the
soil, were, so to speak, the ancestors of "the people" of modern times;
those who remained devoted to agriculture were the ancestors of our
peasants; and those who gave themselves up to trades and commerce in the
towns, were the originators of the middle classes.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.--Serf or Vassal of Tenth Century, from
Miniatures in the "Dialogues of St. Gregory," Manuscript No. 9917 (Royal
Library of Brussels).]
As early as the commencement of the third royal dynasty we find in the
rural districts, as well as in the towns, a great number of free men: and
as the charters concerning the condition of lands and persons became more
and more extended, the tyranny of the great was reduced, and servitude
decreased. During the following centuries, the establishment of civic
bodies and the springing up of the middle classes (Fig. 20) made the
acquisition of liberty more easy and more general. Nevertheless, this
liberty was rather theoretical than practical; for if the nobles granted
it nominally, they gave it at the cost of excessive fines, and the
community, which purchased at a high price the right of
self-administration, did not get rid of any of the feudal charges imposed
upon it.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Bourgeois at the End of Thirteenth
Century.--Fac-simile of Miniature in Manuscript No. 6820, in the National
Library of Paris.]
Fortunately for the progress of liberty, the civic bodies, as if they had
been providentially warned of the future in store for them, never
hesitated to accept from their lords, civil or ecclesiastical, conditions,
onerous though they were, which enabled them to exist in the interior of
the cities to which they belonged. They formed a sort of small state,
almost independent for private affairs, subject to the absolute power of
the King, and more or less tied by their customs or agreements with the
local nobles. They held public assemblies and elected magistrates, whose
powers embraced both the administration of civil and criminal justice,
police, finance, and the militia. They generally had fixed and written
laws. Protected by ramparts, each possessed a town-hall (_hôtel de
ville_), a seal, a treasury, and a watch-tower, and it could arm a certain
number of men, either for its own defence or for the service of the noble
or sovereign under whom it held its rights.
In no case could a community such as this exist without the sanction of
the King, who placed it under the safeguard of the Crown. At first the
kings, blinded by a covetous policy, only seemed to see in the issue of
these charters an excellent pretext for extorting money. If they consented
to recognise them, and even to help them against their lords, it was on
account of the enormous sacrifices made by the towns. Later on, however,
they affected, on the contrary, the greatest generosity towards the
vassals who wished to incorporate themselves, when they had understood
that these institutions might become powerful auxiliaries against the
great titulary feudalists; but from the reign of Louis XI., when the power
of the nobles was much diminished, and no longer inspired any terror to
royalty, the kings turned against their former allies, the middle classes,
and deprived them successively of all the prerogatives which could
prejudice the rights of the Crown.
The middle classes, it is true, acquired considerable influence afterwards
by participation in the general and provincial councils. After having
victoriously struggled against the clergy and nobility, in the assemblies
of the three states or orders, they ended by defeating royalty itself.
Louis le Gros, in whose orders the style or title of _bourgeois_ first
appears (1134), is generally looked upon as the founder of the franchise
of communities in France; but it is proved that a certain number of
communities or corporations were already formally constituted, before his
accession to the throne.
The title of bourgeois was not, however, given exclusively to inhabitants
of cities. It often happened that the nobles, with the intention of
improving and enriching their domains, opened a kind of asylum, under the
attractive title of _Free Towns_, or _New Towns_, where they offered, to
all wishing to establish themselves, lands, houses, and a more or less
extended share of privileges, rights, and liberties. These congregations,
or families, soon became boroughs, and the inhabitants, though
agriculturists, took the name of bourgeois.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Costume of a Vilain or Peasant, Fifteenth
Century, from a Miniature of "La Danse Macabre," Manuscript 7310 of the
National Library of Paris.]
There was also a third kind of bourgeois, whose influence on the extension
of royal power was not less than that of the others. There were free
men who, under the title of bourgeois of the King _(bourgeois du Roy_),
kept their liberty by virtue of letters of protection given them by the
King, although they were established on lands of nobles whose inhabitants
were deprived of liberty. Further, when a _vilain_--that is to say, the
serf, of a noble--bought a lease of land in a royal borough, it was an
established custom that after having lived there a year and a day without
being reclaimed by his lord and master, he became a bourgeois of the King
and a free man. In consequence of this the serfs and vilains (Fig. 21)
emigrated from all parts, in order to profit by these advantages, to such
a degree, that the lands of the nobles became deserted by all the serfs of
different degrees, and were in danger of remaining uncultivated. The
nobility, in the interests of their properties, and to arrest this
increasing emigration, devoted themselves to improving the condition of
persons placed under their dependence, and attempted to create on their
domains _boroughs_ analogous to those of royalty. But however liberal
these ameliorations might appear to be, it was difficult for the nobles
not only to concede privileges equal to those emanating from the throne,
but also to ensure equal protection to those they thus enfranchised. In
spite of this, however, the result was that a double current of
enfranchisement was established, which resulted in the daily diminution of
the miserable order of serfs, and which, whilst it emancipated the lower
orders, had the immediate result of giving increased weight and power to
royalty, both in its own domains and in those of the nobility and their
vassals.
These social revolutions did not, of course, operate suddenly, nor did
they at once abolish former institutions, for we still find, that after
the establishment of communities and corporations, several orders of
servitude remained.
At the close of the thirteenth century, on the authority of Philippe de
Beaumanoir, the celebrated editor of "Coutumes de Beauvoisis," there were
three states or orders amongst the laity, namely, the nobleman (Fig. 22),
the free man, and the serf. All noblemen were free, but all free men were
not necessarily noblemen. Generally, nobility descended from the father
and franchise from the mother. But according to many other customs of
France, the child, as a general rule, succeeded to the lower rank of his
parents. There were two orders of serfs: one rigorously held in the
absolute dependence of his lord, to such a degree that the latter could
appropriate during his life, or after death if he chose, all he possessed;
he could imprison him, ill-treat him as he thought proper, without having
to answer to any one but God; the other, though held equally in bondage,
was more liberally treated, for "unless he was guilty of some evil-doing,
the lord could ask of him nothing during his life but the fees, rents, or
fines which he owed on account of his servitude." If one of the latter
class of serfs married a free woman, everything which he possessed became
the property of his lord. The same was the case when he died, for he could
not transmit any of his goods to his children, and was only allowed to
dispose by will of a sum of about five sous, or about twenty-five francs
of modern money.
As early as the fourteenth century, serfdom or servitude no longer existed
except in "mortmain," of which we still have to speak.
[Illustration: The Court of Mary of Anjou, Wife of Charles VII.
Her chaplain the learned Robert Blondel presents her with the allegorical
Treatise of the "_Twelve Perils of Hell_." Which he composed for her
(1455). Fac-simile of a miniature from this work. Bibl. de l'Arsenal,
Paris.]
_Mortmain_ consisted of the privation of the right of freely disposing
of one's person or goods. He who had not the power of going where he
would, of giving or selling, of leaving by will or transferring his
property, fixed or movable, as he thought best, was called a man of
mortmain.
[Illustration: Fig. 22.--Italian Nobleman of the Fifteenth Century. From a
Playing-card engraved on Copper about 1460 (Cabinet des Estampes, National
Library of Paris).]
This name was apparently chosen because the hand, "considered the symbol
of power and the instrument of donation," was deprived of movement,
paralysed, in fact struck as by death. It was also nearly in this sense,
that men of the Church were also called men of mortmain, because they
were equally forbidden to dispose, either in life, or by will after death,
of anything belonging to them.
There were two kinds of mortmain: real and personal; one concerning land,
and the other concerning the person; that is to say, land held in mortmain
did not change quality, whatever might be the position of the person who
occupied it, and a "man of mortmain" did not cease to suffer the
inconveniences of his position on whatever land he went to establish
himself.
The mortmains were generally subject to the greater share of feudal
obligations formerly imposed on serfs; these were particularly to work for
a certain time for their lord without receiving any wages, or else to pay
him the _tax_ when it was due, on certain definite occasions, as for
example, when he married, when he gave a dower to his daughter, when he
was taken prisoner of war, when he went to the Holy Land, &c., &c. What
particularly characterized the condition of mortmains was, that the lords
had the right to take all their goods when they died without issue, or
when the children held a separate household; and that they could not
dispose of anything they possessed, either by will or gift, beyond a
certain sum.
The noble who franchised mortmains, imposed on them in almost all cases
very heavy conditions, consisting of fees, labours, and fines of all
sorts. In fact, a mortmain person, to be free, not only required to be
franchised by his own lord, but also by all the nobles on whom he was
dependent, as well as by the sovereign. If a noble franchised without the
consent of his superiors, he incurred a fine, as it was considered a
dismemberment or depreciation of the fief.
As early as the end of the fourteenth century, the rigorous laws of
mortmain began to fall into disuse in the provinces; though if the name
began to disappear, the condition itself continued to exist. The free men,
whether they belonged to the middle class or to the peasantry, were
nevertheless still subject to pay fines or obligations to their lords of
such a nature that they must be considered to have been practically in the
same position as mortmains. In fact, this custom had been so deeply rooted
into social habits by feudalism, that to make it disappear totally at the
end of the eighteenth century, it required three decrees of the National
Convention (July 17 and October 2, 1793; and 8 Ventôse, year II.--that is,
March 2, 1794).
It is only just to state, that twelve or fourteen years earlier, Louis
XVI. had done all in his power towards the same purpose, by suppressing
mortmain, both real or personal, on the lands of the Crown, and personal
mortmain (i.e. the right of following mortmains out of their original
districts) all over the kingdom.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.--Alms Bag taken from some Tapestry in Orleans,
Fifteenth Century.]
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Disorganization of the West at the Beginning of the Middle
Ages.--Mixture of Roman, Germanic, and Gallic Institutions.--Fusion
organized under Charlemagne.--Royal Authority.--Position of the Great
Feudalists.--Division of the Territory and Prerogatives attached to
Landed Possessions.--Freemen and Tenants.--The Læti, the Colon, the
Serf, and the Labourer, who may be called the Origin of the Modern Lower
Classes.--Formation of Communities.--Right of Mortmain.
The period known as the Middle Ages, says the learned Benjamin Guérard, is
the produce of Pagan civilisation, of Germanic barbarism, and of
Christianity. It began in 476, on the fall of Agustulus, and ended in
1453, at the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II., and consequently the
fall of two empires, that of the West and that of the East, marks its
duration. Its first act, which was due to the Germans, was the destruction
of political unity, and this was destined to be afterwards replaced by
religions unity. Then we find a multitude of scattered and disorderly
influences growing on the ruins of central power. The yoke of imperial
dominion was broken by the barbarians; but the populace, far from
acquiring liberty, fell to the lowest degrees of servitude. Instead of one
despot, it found thousands of tyrants, and it was but slowly and with
much trouble that it succeeded in freeing itself from feudalism. Nothing
could be more strangely troubled than the West at the time of the
dissolution of the Empire of the Caesars; nothing more diverse or more
discordant than the interests, the institutions, and the state of society,
which were delivered to the Germans (Figs. 1 and 2). In fact, it would be
impossible in the whole pages of history to find a society formed of more
heterogeneous or incompatible elements. On the one side might be placed
the Goths, Burgundians, Vandals, Germans, Franks, Saxons, and Lombards,
nations, or more strictly hordes, accustomed to rough and successful
warfare, and, on the other, the Romans, including those people who by long
servitude to Roman dominion had become closely allied with their
conquerors (Fig. 3). There were, on both sides, freemen, freedmen, colons,
and slaves; different ranks and degrees being, however, observable both in
freedom and servitude. This hierarchical principle applied itself even to
the land, which was divided into freeholds, tributary lands, lands of the
nobility, and servile lands, thus constituting the freeholds, the
benefices, the fiefs, and the tenures. It may be added that the customs,
and to a certain degree the laws, varied according to the masters of the
country, so that it can hardly be wondered at that everywhere diversity
and inequality were to be found, and, as a consequence, that anarchy and
confusion ruled supreme.
[Illustration: Figs. 1 and 2.--Costumes of the Franks from the Fourth to
the Eighth Centuries, collected by H. de Vielcastel, from original
Documents in the great Libraries of Europe.]
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Costumes of Roman Soldiers. Fig. 4.--Costume of
German Soldiers. From Miniatures on different Manuscripts, from the Sixth
to the Twelfth Centuries.]
The Germans (Fig. 4) had brought with them over the Rhine none of the
heroic virtues attributed to them by Tacitus when he wrote their history,
with the evident intention of making a satire on his countrymen. Amongst
the degenerate Romans whom those ferocious Germans had subjugated,
civilisation was reconstituted on the ruins of vices common in the early
history of a new society by the adoption of a series of loose and
dissolute habits, both by the conquerors and the conquered.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Costumes of Slaves or Serfs, from the Sixth to the
Twelfth Centuries, collected by H. de Vielcastel, from original Documents
in the great Libraries of Europe.]
In fact, the conquerors contributed the worse share (Fig. 5); for, whilst
exercising the low and debasing instincts of their former barbarism, they
undertook the work of social reconstruction with a sort of natural and
innate servitude. To them, liberty, the desire for which caused them to
brave the greatest dangers, was simply the right of doing evil--of obeying
their ardent thirst for plunder. Long ago, in the depths of their forests,
they had adopted the curious institution of vassalage. When they came to
the West to create States, instead of reducing personal power, every step
in their social edifice, from the top to the bottom, was made to depend on
individual superiority. To bow to a superior was their first political
principle; and on that principle feudalism was one day to find its base.
Servitude was in fact to be found in all conditions and ranks, equally in
the palace of the sovereign as in the dwellings of his subjects. The
vassal who was waited on at his own table by a varlet, himself served at
the table of his lord; the nobles treated each other likewise, according
to their rank; and all the exactions which each submitted to from his
superiors, and required to be paid to him by those below him, were looked
upon not as onerous duties, but as rights and honours. The sentiment of
dignity and of personal independence, which has become, so to say, the
soul of modern society, did not exist at all, or at least but very
slightly, amongst the Germans. If we could doubt the fact, we have but to
remember that these men, so proud, so indifferent to suffering or death,
would often think little of staking their liberty in gambling, in the hope
that if successful their gain might afford them the means of gratifying
some brutal passion.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--King or Chief of Franks armed with the Seramasax,
from a Miniature of the Ninth Century, drawn by H. de Vielcastel.]
When the Franks took root in Gaul, their dress and institutions were
adopted by the Roman society (Fig. 6). This had the most disastrous
influence in every point of view, and it is easy to prove that
civilisation did not emerge from this chaos until by degrees the Teutonic
spirit disappeared from the world. As long as this spirit reigned, neither
private nor public liberty existed. Individual patriotism only extended as
far as the border of a man's family, and the nation became broken up into
clans. Gaul soon found itself parcelled off into domains which were
almost independent of one another. It was thus that Germanic genius became
developed.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--The King of the Franks, in the midst of the
Military Chiefs who formed his _Treuste_, or armed Court, dictates the
Salic Law (Code of the Barbaric Laws).--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the
"Chronicles of St. Denis," a Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Library
of the Arsenal).]
The advantages of acting together for mutual protection first established
itself in families. If any one suffered from an act of violence, he laid
the matter before his relatives for them jointly to seek reparation. The
question was then settled between the families of the offended person and
the offender, all of whom were equally associated in the object of
vindicating a cause which interested them alone, without recognising any
established authority, and without appealing to the law. If the parties
had sought the protection or advice of men of power, the quarrel might at
once take a wider scope, and tend to kindle a feud between two nobles. In
any case the King only interfered when the safety of his person or the
interests of his dominions were threatened.
Penalties and punishments were almost always to be averted by a money
payment. A son, for instance, instead of avenging the death of his
father, received from the murderer a certain indemnity in specie,
according to legal tariff; and the law was thus satisfied.
The tariff of indemnities or compensations to be paid for each crime
formed the basis of the code of laws amongst the principal tribes of
Franks, a code essentially barbarian, and called the Salic law, or law of
the Salians (Fig. 7). Such, however, was the spirit of inequality among
the German races, that it became an established principle for justice to
be subservient to the rank of individuals. The more powerful a man was,
the more he was protected by the law; the lower his rank, the less the law
protected him.
The life of a Frank, by right, was worth twice that of a Roman; the life
of a servant of the King was worth three times that of an ordinary
individual who did not possess that protecting tie. On the other hand,
punishment was the more prompt and rigorous according to the inferiority
of position of the culprit. In case of theft, for instance, a person of
importance was brought before the King's tribunal, and as it respected the
rank held by the accused in the social hierarchy, little or no punishment
was awarded. In the case of the same crime by a poor man, on the contrary,
the ordinary judge gave immediate sentence, and he was seized and hung on
the spot.
Inasmuch as no political institutions amongst the Germans were nobler or
more just than those of the Franks and the other barbaric races, we cannot
accept the creed of certain historians who have represented the Germans as
the true regenerators of society in Europe. The two sources of modern
civilisation are indisputably Pagan antiquity and Christianity.
After the fall of the Merovingian kings great progress was made in the
political and social state of nations. These kings, who were but chiefs of
undisciplined bands, were unable to assume a regal character, properly so
called. Their authority was more personal than territorial, for incessant
changes were made in the boundaries of their conquered dominions. It was
therefore with good reason that they styled themselves kings of the
Franks, and not kings of France.
Charlemagne was the first who recognised that social union, so admirable
an example of which was furnished by Roman organization, and who was able,
with the very elements of confusion and disorder to which he succeeded, to
unite, direct, and consolidate diverging and opposite forces, to establish
and regulate public administrations, to found and build towns, and to
form and reconstruct almost a new world (Fig. 8). We hear of him assigning
to each his place, creating for all a common interest, making of a crowd
of small and scattered peoples a great and powerful nation; in a word,
rekindling the beacon of ancient civilisation. When he died, after a most
active and glorious reign of forty-five years, he left an immense empire
in the most perfect state of peace (Fig. 9). But this magnificent
inheritance was unfortunately destined to pass into unworthy or impotent
hands, so that society soon fell back into anarchy and confusion. The
nobles, in their turn invested with power, were continually at war, and
gradually weakened the royal authority--the power of the kingdom--by their
endless disputes with the Crown and with one another.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--Charles, eldest Son of King Pepin, receives the
News of the Death of his Father and the Great Feudalists offer him the
Crown.--Costumes of the Court of Burgundy in the Fifteenth
Century.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of the "History of the Emperors"
(Library of the Arsenal).]
[Illustration: Fig. 9. Portrait of Charlemagne, whom the Song of Roland
names the King with the Grizzly Beard.--Fac-simile of an Engraving of the
End of the Sixteenth Century.]
The revolution in society which took place under the Carlovingian dynasty
had for its especial object that of rendering territorial what was
formerly personal, and, as it were, of destroying personality in matters
of government.
The usurpation of lands by the great having been thus limited by the
influence of the lesser holders, everybody tried to become the holder of
land. Its possession then formed the basis of social position, and, as a
consequence, individual servitude became lessened, and society assumed a
more stable condition. The ancient laws of wandering tribes fell into
disuse; and at the same time many distinctions of caste and race
disappeared, as they were incompatible with the new order of things. As
there were no more Salians, Ripuarians, nor Visigoths among the free men,
so there were no more colons, læti, nor slaves amongst those deprived of
liberty.
[Illustrations: Figs. 10 and 11.--Present State of the Feudal Castle of
Chateau-Gaillard aux Andelys, which was considered one of the strongest
Castles of France in the Middle Ages, and was rebuilt in the Twelfth
Century by Richard Coeur de Lion.]
Heads of families, on becoming attached to the soil, naturally had other
wants and other customs than those which they had delighted in when they
were only the chiefs of wandering adventurers. The strength of their
followers was not now so important to them as the security of their
castles. Fortresses took the place of armed bodies; and at this time,
every one who wished to keep what he had, entrenched himself to the best
of his ability at his own residence. The banks of rivers, elevated
positions, and all inaccessible heights, were occupied by towers and
castles, surrounded by ditches, which served as strongholds to the lords
of the soil. (Figs. 10 and 11). These places of defence soon became points
for attack. Out of danger at home, many of the nobles kept watch like
birds of prey on the surrounding country, and were always ready to fall,
not only upon their enemies, but also on their neighbours, in the hope
either of robbing them when off their guard, or of obtaining a ransom for
any unwary traveller who might fall into their hands. Everywhere society
was in ambuscade, and waged civil war--individual against
individual--without peace or mercy. Such was the reign of feudalism. It is
unnecessary to point out how this system of perpetual petty warfare tended
to reduce the power of centralisation, and how royalty itself was
weakened towards the end of the second dynasty. When the descendants of
Hugh Capet wished to restore their power by giving it a larger basis, they
were obliged to attack, one after the other, all these strongholds, and
practically to re-annex each fief, city, and province held by these petty
monarchs, in order to force their owners to recognise the sovereignty of
the King. Centuries of war and negotiations became necessary before the
kingdom of France could be, as it were, reformed.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Knights and Men-at-arms, cased in Mail, in the
Reign of Louis le Gros, from a Miniature in a Psalter written towards the
End of the Twelfth Century.]
The corporations and the citizens had great weight in restoring the
monarchical power, as well as in forming French nationality; but by far
the best influence brought to bear in the Middle Ages was that of
Christianity. The doctrine of one origin and of one final destiny being
common to all men of all classes constantly acted as a strong inducement
for thinking that all should be equally free. Religious equality paved the
way for political equality, and as all Christians were brothers before
God, the tendency was for them to become, as citizens, equal also in law.
This transformation, however, was but slow, and followed concurrently the
progress made in the security of property. At the onset, the slave only
possessed his life, and this was but imperfectly guaranteed to him by the
laws of charity; laws which, however, year by year became of greater
power. He afterwards became _colon_, or labourer (Figs. 13 and 14),
working for himself under certain conditions and tenures, paying fines, or
services, which, it is true, were often very extortionate. At this time he
was considered to belong to the domain on which he was born, and he was at
least sure that that soil would not be taken from him, and that in giving
part of his time to his master, he was at liberty to enjoy the rest
according to his fancy. The farmer afterwards became proprietor of the
soil he cultivated, and master, not only of himself, but of his lands;
certain trivial obligations or fines being all that was required of him,
and these daily grew less, and at last disappeared altogether. Having thus
obtained a footing in society, he soon began to take a place in provincial
assemblies; and he made the last bound on the road of social progress,
when the vote of his fellow-electors sent him to represent them in the
parliament of the kingdom. Thus the people who had begun by excessive
servitude, gradually climbed to power.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Labouring Colons (Twelfth Century), after a
Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ste. Chapelle, of the National Library of
Paris.]
We will now describe more in detail the various conditions of persons of
the Middle Ages.
The King, who held his rights by birth, and not by election, enjoyed
relatively an absolute authority, proportioned according to the power of
his abilities, to the extent of his dominions, and to the devotion of his
vassals. Invested with a power which for a long time resembled the command
of a general of an army, he had at first no other ministers than the
officers to whom he gave full power to act in the provinces, and who
decided arbitrarily in the name of, and representing, the King, on all
questions of administration. One minister alone approached the King, and
that was the chancellor, who verified, sealed, and dispatched all royal
decrees and orders.
As early, however, as the seventh century, a few officers of state
appeared, who were specially attached to the King's person or household; a
count of the palace, who examined and directed the suits brought before
the throne; a mayor of the palace, who at one time raised himself from the
administration of the royal property to the supreme power; an
arch-chaplain, who presided over ecclesiastical affairs; a lord of the
bedchamber, charged with the treasure of the chamber; and a count of the
stables, charged with the superintendence of the stables.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Labouring Colons (Twelfth Century), after a
Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ste. Chapelle, of the National Library of
Paris.]
For all important affairs, the King generally consulted the grandees of
his court; but as in the five or six first centuries of monarchy in France
the royal residence was not permanent, it is probable the Council of State
was composed in part of the officers who followed the King, and in part of
the noblemen who came to visit him, or resided near the place he happened
to be inhabiting. It was only under the Capetians that the Royal Council
took a permanent footing, or even assembled at stated periods.
In ordinary times, that is to say, when he was not engaged in war, the
King had few around him besides his family, his personal attendants, and
the ministers charged with the dispatch of affairs. As he changed from
one of his abodes to another he only held his court on the great festivals
of the year.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.--The Lords and Barons prove their Nobility by
hanging their Banners and exposing their Coats-of-arms at the Windows of
the Lodge of the Heralds.--After a Miniature of the "Tournaments of King
Réné" (Fifteenth Century), MSS. of the National Library of Paris.]
Up to the thirteenth century, there was, strictly speaking, no taxation
and no public treasury. The King received, through special officers
appointed for the purpose, tributes either in money or in kind, which
were most variable, but often very heavy, and drawn almost exclusively
from his personal and private properties. In cases of emergency only, he
appealed to his vassals for pecuniary aid. A great number of the grandees,
who lived far from the court, either in state offices or on their own
fiefs, had establishments similar to that of the King. Numerous and
considerable privileges elevated them above other free men. The offices
and fiefs having become hereditary, the order of nobility followed as a
consequence; and it then became highly necessary for families to keep
their genealogical histories, not only to gratify their pride, but also to
give them the necessary titles for the feudal advantages they derived by
birth. (Fig. 15). Without this right of inheritance, society, which was
still unsettled in the Middle Ages, would soon have been dissolved. This
great principle, sacred in the eyes both of great and small, maintained
feudalism, and in so doing it maintained itself amidst all the chaos and
confusion of repeated revolutions and social disturbances.
We have already stated, and we cannot sufficiently insist upon this
important point, that from the day on which the adventurous habits of the
chiefs of Germanic origin gave place to the desire for territorial
possessions, the part played by the land increased insensibly towards
defining the position of the persons holding it. Domains became small
kingdoms, over which the lord assumed the most absolute and arbitrary
rights. A rule was soon established, that the nobility was inherent to the
soil, and consequently that the land ought to transmit to its possessors
the rights of nobility.
This privilege was so much accepted, that the long tenure of a fief ended
by ennobling the commoner. Subsequently, by a sort of compensation which
naturally followed, lands on which rent had hitherto been paid became free
and noble on passing to the possession of a noble. At last, however, the
contrary rule prevailed, which caused the lands not to change quality in
changing owners: the noble could still possess the labourers's lands
without losing his nobility, but the labourer could be proprietor of a
fief without thereby becoming a noble.
To the _comites_, who, according to Tacitus, attached themselves to the
fortunes of the Germanic chiefs, succeeded the Merovingian _leudes_, whose
assembly formed the King's Council. These _leudes_ were persons of great
importance owing to the number of their vassals, and although they
composed his ordinary Council, they did not hesitate at times to declare
themselves openly opposed to his will.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Knight in War-harness, after a Miniature in a
Psalter written and illuminated under Louis le Gros.]
The name of _leudes_ was abandoned under the second of the then French
dynasties, and replaced by that of _fidèles_, which, in truth soon became
a common designation of both the vassals of the Crown and those of the
nobility.
Under the kings of the third dynasty, the kingdom was divided into about
one hundred and fifty domains, which were called great fiefs of the crown,
and which were possessed in hereditary right by the members of the highest
nobility, placed immediately under the royal sovereignty and dependence.
[Illustration: Fig. 17.--King Charlemagne receiving the Oath of Fidelity
and Homage from one of his great Feudatories or High Barons.--Fac-simile
of a Miniature in Cameo, of the "Chronicles of St. Denis." Manuscript of
the Fourteenth Century (Library of the Arsenal).]
Vassals emanating directly from the King, were then generally designated
by the title of _barons_, and mostly possessed strongholds. The other
nobles indiscriminately ranked as _chevaliers_ or _cnights_, a generic
title, to which was added that of _banneret_, The fiefs of _hauberk_ were
bound to supply the sovereign with a certain number of knights covered
with coats of mail, and completely armed. All knights were mounted in war
(Fig. 16); but knights who were made so in consequence of their high birth
must not be confounded with those who became knights by some great feat in
arms in the house of a prince or high noble, nor with the members of the
different orders of chivalry which were successively instituted, such as
the Knights of the Star, the Genet, the Golden Fleece, Saint-Esprit, St.
John of Jerusalem, &c. Originally, the possession of a benefice or fief
meant no more than the privilege of enjoying the profits derived from the
land, a concession which made the holder dependent upon the proprietor. He
was in fact his "man," to whom he owed homage (Fig. 17), service in case
of war, and assistance in any suit the proprietor might have before the
King's tribunal. The chiefs of German bands at first recompensed their
companions in arms by giving them fiefs of parts of the territory which
they had conquered; but later on, everything was equally given to be held
in fief, namely, dignities, offices, rights, and incomes or titles.
It is important to remark (and it is in this alone that feudalism shows
its social bearing), that if the vassal owed obedience and devotion to his
lord, the lord in exchange owed protection to the vassal. The rank of
"free man" did not necessarily require the possession of land; but the
position of free men who did not hold fiefs was extremely delicate and
often painful, for they were by natural right dependent upon those on
whose domain they resided. In fact, the greater part of these nobles
without lands became by choice the King's men, and remained attached to
his service. If this failed them, they took lands on lease, so as to
support themselves and their families, and to avoid falling into absolute
servitude. In the event of a change of proprietor, they changed with the
land into new hands. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon for them to be so
reduced as to sell their freedom; but in such cases, they reserved the
right, should better times come, of re-purchasing their liberty by paying
one-fifth more than the sum for which they had sold it.
We thus see that in olden times, as also later, freedom was more or less
the natural consequence of the possession of wealth or power on the part
of individuals or families who considered themselves free in the midst of
general dependence. During the tenth century, indeed, if not impossible,
it was at least difficult to find a single inhabitant of the kingdom of
France who was not "the man" of some one, and who was either tied by rules
of a liberal order, or else was under the most servile obligations.
The property of the free men was originally the "_aleu_," which was under
the jurisdiction of the royal magistrates. The _aleu_ gradually lost the
greater part of its franchise, and became liable to the common charges due
on lands which were not freehold.
In ancient times, all landed property of a certain extent was composed of
two distinct parts: one occupied by the owner, constituted the domain or
manor; the other, divided between persons who were more or less dependent,
formed what were called _tenures_. These _tenures_ were again divided
according to the position of those who occupied them: if they were
possessed by free men, who took the name of vassals, they were called
benefices or fiefs; if they were let to læti, colons, or serfs, they were
then called colonies or demesnes.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Ploughmen.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a very
ancient Anglo-Saxon Manuscript published by Shaw, with legend "God Spede
ye Plough, and send us Korne enow."]
The _læti_ occupied a rank between the colon and the serf. They had less
liberty than the colon, over whom the proprietor only had an indirect and
very limited power. The colon only served the land, whilst the læti,
whether agriculturists or servants, served both the land and the owner
(Fig. 18). They nevertheless enjoyed the right of possession, and of
defending themselves, or prosecuting by law. The serf, on the contrary,
had neither city, tribunal, nor family. The læti had, besides, the power
of purchasing their liberty when they had amassed sufficient for the
purpose.
_Serfs_ occupied the lowest position in the social ladder (Fig. 19). They
succeeded to slaves, thus making, thanks to Christianity, a step towards
liberty. Although the civil laws barely protected them, those of the
Church continually stepped in and defended them from arbitrary despotism.
The time came when they had no direct masters, and when the almost
absolute dependence of serfs was changed by the nobles requiring them to
farm the land and pay tithes and fees. And lastly, they became farmers,
and regular taxes took the place of tithes and fees.
The colons, læti, and serfs, all of whom were more or less tillers of the
soil, were, so to speak, the ancestors of "the people" of modern times;
those who remained devoted to agriculture were the ancestors of our
peasants; and those who gave themselves up to trades and commerce in the
towns, were the originators of the middle classes.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.--Serf or Vassal of Tenth Century, from
Miniatures in the "Dialogues of St. Gregory," Manuscript No. 9917 (Royal
Library of Brussels).]
As early as the commencement of the third royal dynasty we find in the
rural districts, as well as in the towns, a great number of free men: and
as the charters concerning the condition of lands and persons became more
and more extended, the tyranny of the great was reduced, and servitude
decreased. During the following centuries, the establishment of civic
bodies and the springing up of the middle classes (Fig. 20) made the
acquisition of liberty more easy and more general. Nevertheless, this
liberty was rather theoretical than practical; for if the nobles granted
it nominally, they gave it at the cost of excessive fines, and the
community, which purchased at a high price the right of
self-administration, did not get rid of any of the feudal charges imposed
upon it.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Bourgeois at the End of Thirteenth
Century.--Fac-simile of Miniature in Manuscript No. 6820, in the National
Library of Paris.]
Fortunately for the progress of liberty, the civic bodies, as if they had
been providentially warned of the future in store for them, never
hesitated to accept from their lords, civil or ecclesiastical, conditions,
onerous though they were, which enabled them to exist in the interior of
the cities to which they belonged. They formed a sort of small state,
almost independent for private affairs, subject to the absolute power of
the King, and more or less tied by their customs or agreements with the
local nobles. They held public assemblies and elected magistrates, whose
powers embraced both the administration of civil and criminal justice,
police, finance, and the militia. They generally had fixed and written
laws. Protected by ramparts, each possessed a town-hall (_hôtel de
ville_), a seal, a treasury, and a watch-tower, and it could arm a certain
number of men, either for its own defence or for the service of the noble
or sovereign under whom it held its rights.
In no case could a community such as this exist without the sanction of
the King, who placed it under the safeguard of the Crown. At first the
kings, blinded by a covetous policy, only seemed to see in the issue of
these charters an excellent pretext for extorting money. If they consented
to recognise them, and even to help them against their lords, it was on
account of the enormous sacrifices made by the towns. Later on, however,
they affected, on the contrary, the greatest generosity towards the
vassals who wished to incorporate themselves, when they had understood
that these institutions might become powerful auxiliaries against the
great titulary feudalists; but from the reign of Louis XI., when the power
of the nobles was much diminished, and no longer inspired any terror to
royalty, the kings turned against their former allies, the middle classes,
and deprived them successively of all the prerogatives which could
prejudice the rights of the Crown.
The middle classes, it is true, acquired considerable influence afterwards
by participation in the general and provincial councils. After having
victoriously struggled against the clergy and nobility, in the assemblies
of the three states or orders, they ended by defeating royalty itself.
Louis le Gros, in whose orders the style or title of _bourgeois_ first
appears (1134), is generally looked upon as the founder of the franchise
of communities in France; but it is proved that a certain number of
communities or corporations were already formally constituted, before his
accession to the throne.
The title of bourgeois was not, however, given exclusively to inhabitants
of cities. It often happened that the nobles, with the intention of
improving and enriching their domains, opened a kind of asylum, under the
attractive title of _Free Towns_, or _New Towns_, where they offered, to
all wishing to establish themselves, lands, houses, and a more or less
extended share of privileges, rights, and liberties. These congregations,
or families, soon became boroughs, and the inhabitants, though
agriculturists, took the name of bourgeois.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Costume of a Vilain or Peasant, Fifteenth
Century, from a Miniature of "La Danse Macabre," Manuscript 7310 of the
National Library of Paris.]
There was also a third kind of bourgeois, whose influence on the extension
of royal power was not less than that of the others. There were free
men who, under the title of bourgeois of the King _(bourgeois du Roy_),
kept their liberty by virtue of letters of protection given them by the
King, although they were established on lands of nobles whose inhabitants
were deprived of liberty. Further, when a _vilain_--that is to say, the
serf, of a noble--bought a lease of land in a royal borough, it was an
established custom that after having lived there a year and a day without
being reclaimed by his lord and master, he became a bourgeois of the King
and a free man. In consequence of this the serfs and vilains (Fig. 21)
emigrated from all parts, in order to profit by these advantages, to such
a degree, that the lands of the nobles became deserted by all the serfs of
different degrees, and were in danger of remaining uncultivated. The
nobility, in the interests of their properties, and to arrest this
increasing emigration, devoted themselves to improving the condition of
persons placed under their dependence, and attempted to create on their
domains _boroughs_ analogous to those of royalty. But however liberal
these ameliorations might appear to be, it was difficult for the nobles
not only to concede privileges equal to those emanating from the throne,
but also to ensure equal protection to those they thus enfranchised. In
spite of this, however, the result was that a double current of
enfranchisement was established, which resulted in the daily diminution of
the miserable order of serfs, and which, whilst it emancipated the lower
orders, had the immediate result of giving increased weight and power to
royalty, both in its own domains and in those of the nobility and their
vassals.
These social revolutions did not, of course, operate suddenly, nor did
they at once abolish former institutions, for we still find, that after
the establishment of communities and corporations, several orders of
servitude remained.
At the close of the thirteenth century, on the authority of Philippe de
Beaumanoir, the celebrated editor of "Coutumes de Beauvoisis," there were
three states or orders amongst the laity, namely, the nobleman (Fig. 22),
the free man, and the serf. All noblemen were free, but all free men were
not necessarily noblemen. Generally, nobility descended from the father
and franchise from the mother. But according to many other customs of
France, the child, as a general rule, succeeded to the lower rank of his
parents. There were two orders of serfs: one rigorously held in the
absolute dependence of his lord, to such a degree that the latter could
appropriate during his life, or after death if he chose, all he possessed;
he could imprison him, ill-treat him as he thought proper, without having
to answer to any one but God; the other, though held equally in bondage,
was more liberally treated, for "unless he was guilty of some evil-doing,
the lord could ask of him nothing during his life but the fees, rents, or
fines which he owed on account of his servitude." If one of the latter
class of serfs married a free woman, everything which he possessed became
the property of his lord. The same was the case when he died, for he could
not transmit any of his goods to his children, and was only allowed to
dispose by will of a sum of about five sous, or about twenty-five francs
of modern money.
As early as the fourteenth century, serfdom or servitude no longer existed
except in "mortmain," of which we still have to speak.
[Illustration: The Court of Mary of Anjou, Wife of Charles VII.
Her chaplain the learned Robert Blondel presents her with the allegorical
Treatise of the "_Twelve Perils of Hell_." Which he composed for her
(1455). Fac-simile of a miniature from this work. Bibl. de l'Arsenal,
Paris.]
_Mortmain_ consisted of the privation of the right of freely disposing
of one's person or goods. He who had not the power of going where he
would, of giving or selling, of leaving by will or transferring his
property, fixed or movable, as he thought best, was called a man of
mortmain.
[Illustration: Fig. 22.--Italian Nobleman of the Fifteenth Century. From a
Playing-card engraved on Copper about 1460 (Cabinet des Estampes, National
Library of Paris).]
This name was apparently chosen because the hand, "considered the symbol
of power and the instrument of donation," was deprived of movement,
paralysed, in fact struck as by death. It was also nearly in this sense,
that men of the Church were also called men of mortmain, because they
were equally forbidden to dispose, either in life, or by will after death,
of anything belonging to them.
There were two kinds of mortmain: real and personal; one concerning land,
and the other concerning the person; that is to say, land held in mortmain
did not change quality, whatever might be the position of the person who
occupied it, and a "man of mortmain" did not cease to suffer the
inconveniences of his position on whatever land he went to establish
himself.
The mortmains were generally subject to the greater share of feudal
obligations formerly imposed on serfs; these were particularly to work for
a certain time for their lord without receiving any wages, or else to pay
him the _tax_ when it was due, on certain definite occasions, as for
example, when he married, when he gave a dower to his daughter, when he
was taken prisoner of war, when he went to the Holy Land, &c., &c. What
particularly characterized the condition of mortmains was, that the lords
had the right to take all their goods when they died without issue, or
when the children held a separate household; and that they could not
dispose of anything they possessed, either by will or gift, beyond a
certain sum.
The noble who franchised mortmains, imposed on them in almost all cases
very heavy conditions, consisting of fees, labours, and fines of all
sorts. In fact, a mortmain person, to be free, not only required to be
franchised by his own lord, but also by all the nobles on whom he was
dependent, as well as by the sovereign. If a noble franchised without the
consent of his superiors, he incurred a fine, as it was considered a
dismemberment or depreciation of the fief.
As early as the end of the fourteenth century, the rigorous laws of
mortmain began to fall into disuse in the provinces; though if the name
began to disappear, the condition itself continued to exist. The free men,
whether they belonged to the middle class or to the peasantry, were
nevertheless still subject to pay fines or obligations to their lords of
such a nature that they must be considered to have been practically in the
same position as mortmains. In fact, this custom had been so deeply rooted
into social habits by feudalism, that to make it disappear totally at the
end of the eighteenth century, it required three decrees of the National
Convention (July 17 and October 2, 1793; and 8 Ventôse, year II.--that is,
March 2, 1794).
It is only just to state, that twelve or fourteen years earlier, Louis
XVI. had done all in his power towards the same purpose, by suppressing
mortmain, both real or personal, on the lands of the Crown, and personal
mortmain (i.e. the right of following mortmains out of their original
districts) all over the kingdom.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.--Alms Bag taken from some Tapestry in Orleans,
Fifteenth Century.]
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The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 by J. Arthur Thomson
I
THE ROMANCE OF THE HEAVENS
THE SCALE OF THE UNIVERSE--THE SOLAR SYSTEM
§ 1
The story of the triumphs of modern science naturally opens with
Astronomy. The picture of the Universe which the astronomer offers to us
is imperfect; the lines he traces are often faint and uncertain. There
are many problems which have been solved, there are just as many about
which there is doubt, and notwithstanding our great increase in
knowledge, there remain just as many which are entirely unsolved.
The problem of the structure and duration of the universe [said the
great astronomer Simon Newcomb] is the most far-reaching with which
the mind has to deal. Its solution may be regarded as the ultimate
object of stellar astronomy, the possibility of reaching which has
occupied the minds of thinkers since the beginning of civilisation.
Before our time the problem could be considered only from the
imaginative or the speculative point of view. Although we can to-day
attack it to a limited extent by scientific methods, it must be
admitted that we have scarcely taken more than the first step toward
the actual solution.... What is the duration of the universe in
time? Is it fitted to last for ever in its present form, or does it
contain within itself the seeds of dissolution? Must it, in the
course of time, in we know not how many millions of ages, be
transformed into something very different from what it now is? This
question is intimately associated with the question whether the
stars form a system. If they do, we may suppose that system to be
permanent in its general features; if not, we must look further for
our conclusions.
The Heavenly Bodies
The heavenly bodies fall into two very distinct classes so far as their
relation to our Earth is concerned; the one class, a very small one,
comprises a sort of colony of which the Earth is a member. These bodies
are called _planets_, or wanderers. There are eight of them, including
the Earth, and they all circle round the sun. Their names, in the order
of their distance from the sun, are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and of these Mercury, the nearest to
the sun, is rarely seen by the naked eye. Uranus is practically
invisible, and Neptune quite so. These eight planets, together with the
sun, constitute, as we have said, a sort of little colony; this colony
is called the Solar System.
The second class of heavenly bodies are those which lie _outside_ the
solar system. Every one of those glittering points we see on a starlit
night is at an immensely greater distance from us than is any member of
the Solar System. Yet the members of this little colony of ours, judged
by terrestrial standards, are at enormous distances from one another. If
a shell were shot in a straight line from one side of Neptune's orbit to
the other it would take five hundred years to complete its journey. Yet
this distance, the greatest in the Solar System as now known (excepting
the far swing of some of the comets), is insignificant compared to the
distances of the stars. One of the nearest stars to the earth that we
know of is Alpha Centauri, estimated to be some twenty-five million
millions of miles away. Sirius, the brightest star in the firmament, is
double this distance from the earth.
We must imagine the colony of planets to which we belong as a compact
little family swimming in an immense void. At distances which would take
our shell, not hundreds, but millions of years to traverse, we reach
the stars--or rather, a star, for the distances between stars are as
great as the distance between the nearest of them and our Sun. The
Earth, the planet on which we live, is a mighty globe bounded by a crust
of rock many miles in thickness; the great volumes of water which we
call our oceans lie in the deeper hollows of the crust. Above the
surface an ocean of invisible gas, the atmosphere, rises to a height of
about three hundred miles, getting thinner and thinner as it ascends.
[Illustration: LAPLACE
One of the greatest mathematical astronomers of all time and the
originator of the nebular theory.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Royal Astronomical Society._
PROFESSOR J. C. ADAMS
who, anticipating the great French mathematician, Le Verrier, discovered
the planet Neptune by calculations based on the irregularities of the
orbit of Uranus. One of the most dramatic discoveries in the history of
Science.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Elliott & Fry, Ltd._
PROFESSOR EDDINGTON
Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge. The most famous of the English
disciples of Einstein.]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--DIAGRAMS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
THE COMPARATIVE DISTANCES OF THE PLANETS
(Drawn approximately to scale)
The isolation of the Solar System is very great. On the above scale the
_nearest_ star (at a distance of 25 trillions of miles) would be over
_one half mile_ away. The hours, days, and years are the measures of
time as we use them; that is: Jupiter's "Day" (one rotation of the
planet) is made in ten of _our hours_; Mercury's "Year" (one revolution
of the planet around the Sun) is eighty-eight of _our days_. Mercury's
"Day" and "Year" are the same. This planet turns always the same side to
the Sun.]
[Illustration: THE COMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE SUN AND THE PLANETS (Drawn
approximately to scale)
On this scale the Sun would be 17-1/2 inches in diameter; it is far
greater than all the planets put together. Jupiter, in turn, is greater
than all the other planets put together.]
Except when the winds rise to a high speed, we seem to live in a very
tranquil world. At night, when the glare of the sun passes out of our
atmosphere, the stars and planets seem to move across the heavens with a
stately and solemn slowness. It was one of the first discoveries of
modern astronomy that this movement is only apparent. The apparent
creeping of the stars across the heavens at night is accounted for by
the fact that the earth turns upon its axis once in every twenty-four
hours. When we remember the size of the earth we see that this implies a
prodigious speed.
In addition to this the earth revolves round the sun at a speed of more
than a thousand miles a minute. Its path round the sun, year in year
out, measures about 580,000,000 miles. The earth is held closely to this
path by the gravitational pull of the sun, which has a mass 333,432
times that of the earth. If at any moment the sun ceased to exert this
pull the earth would instantly fly off into space straight in the
direction in which it was moving at the time, that is to say, at a
tangent. This tendency to fly off at a tangent is continuous. It is the
balance between it and the sun's pull which keeps the earth to her
almost circular orbit. In the same way the seven other planets are held
to their orbits.
Circling round the earth, in the same way as the earth circles round the
sun, is our moon. Sometimes the moon passes directly between us and the
sun, and cuts off the light from us. We then have a total or partial
eclipse of the sun. At other times the earth passes directly between the
sun and the moon, and causes an eclipse of the moon. The great ball of
the earth naturally trails a mighty shadow across space, and the moon is
"eclipsed" when it passes into this.
The other seven planets, five of which have moons of their own, circle
round the sun as the earth does. The sun's mass is immensely larger than
that of all the planets put together, and all of them would be drawn
into it and perish if they did not travel rapidly round it in gigantic
orbits. So the eight planets, spinning round on their axes, follow their
fixed paths round the sun. The planets are secondary bodies, but they
are most important, because they are the only globes in which there can
be life, as we know life.
If we could be transported in some magical way to an immense distance in
space above the sun, we should see our Solar System as it is drawn in
the accompanying diagram (Fig. 1), except that the planets would be mere
specks, faintly visible in the light which they receive from the sun.
(This diagram is drawn approximately to scale.) If we moved still
farther away, trillions of miles away, the planets would fade entirely
out of view, and the sun would shrink into a point of fire, a star. And
here you begin to realize the nature of the universe. _The sun is a
star. The stars are suns._ Our sun looks big simply because of its
comparative nearness to us. The universe is a stupendous collection of
millions of stars or suns, many of which may have planetary families
like ours.
§ 2
The Scale of the Universe
How many stars are there? A glance at a photograph of star-clouds will
tell at once that it is quite impossible to count them. The fine
photograph reproduced in Figure 2 represents a very small patch of that
pale-white belt, the Milky Way, which spans the sky at night. It is true
that this is a particularly rich area of the Milky Way, but the entire
belt of light has been resolved in this way into masses or clouds of
stars. Astronomers have counted the stars in typical districts here and
there, and from these partial counts we get some idea of the total
number of stars. There are estimated to be between two and three
thousand million stars.
Yet these stars are separated by inconceivable distances from each
other, and it is one of the greatest triumphs of modern astronomy to
have mastered, so far, the scale of the universe. For several centuries
astronomers have known the relative distances from each other of the sun
and the planets. If they could discover the actual distance of any one
planet from any other, they could at once tell all the distances within
the Solar System.
The sun is, on the latest measurements, at an average distance of
92,830,000 miles from the earth, for as the orbit of the earth is not a
true circle, this distance varies. This means that in six months from
now the earth will be right at the opposite side of its path round the
sun, or 185,000,000 miles away from where it is now. Viewed or
photographed from two positions so wide apart, the nearest stars show a
tiny "shift" against the background of the most distant stars, and that
is enough for the mathematician. He can calculate the distance of any
star near enough to show this "shift." We have found that the nearest
star to the earth, a recently discovered star, is twenty-five trillion
miles away. Only thirty stars are known to be within a hundred trillion
miles of us.
This way of measuring does not, however, take us very far away in the
heavens. There are only a few hundred stars within five hundred trillion
miles of the earth, and at that distance the "shift" of a star against
the background (parallax, the astronomer calls it) is so minute that
figures are very uncertain. At this point the astronomer takes up a new
method. He learns the different types of stars, and then he is able to
deduce more or less accurately the distance of a star of a known type
from its faintness. He, of course, has instruments for gauging their
light. As a result of twenty years work in this field, it is now known
that the more distant stars of the Milky Way are at least a hundred
thousand trillion (100,000,000,000,000,000) miles away from the sun.
Our sun is in a more or less central region of the universe, or a few
hundred trillion miles from the actual centre. The remainder of the
stars, which are all outside our Solar System, are spread out,
apparently, in an enormous disc-like collection, so vast that even a ray
of light, which travels at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, would
take 50,000 years to travel from one end of it to the other. This, then
is what we call our universe.
Are there other Universes?
Why do we say "our universe"? Why not _the_ universe? It is now believed
by many of our most distinguished astronomers that our colossal family
of stars is only one of many universes. By a universe an astronomer
means any collection of stars which are close enough to control each
other's movements by gravitation; and it is clear that there might be
many universes, in this sense, separated from each other by profound
abysses of space. Probably there are.
For a long time we have been familiar with certain strange objects in
the heavens which are called "spiral nebulæ" (Fig 4). We shall see at a
later stage what a nebula is, and we shall see that some astronomers
regard these spiral nebulæ as worlds "in the making." But some of the
most eminent astronomers believe that they are separate
universes--"island-universes" they call them--or great collections of
millions of stars like our universe. There are certain peculiarities in
the structure of the Milky Way which lead these astronomers to think
that our universe may be a spiral nebula, and that the other spiral
nebulæ are "other universes."
[Illustration: _Photo: Harvard College Observatory._
FIG. 2.--THE MILKY WAY
Note the cloud-like effect.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3--THE MOON ENTERING THE SHADOW CAST BY THE EARTH
The diagram shows the Moon partially eclipsed.]
[Illustration: _From a photograph taken at the Yerkes Observatory_
FIG. 4.--THE GREAT NEBULA IN ANDROMEDA, MESSIER 31]
Vast as is the Solar System, then, it is excessively minute in
comparison with the Stellar System, the universe of the Stars, which is
on a scale far transcending anything the human mind can apprehend.
THE SOLAR SYSTEM
THE SUN
§ 1
But now let us turn to the Solar System, and consider the members of our
own little colony.
Within the Solar System there are a large number of problems that
interest us. What is the size, mass, and distance of each of the
planets? What satellites, like our Moon, do they possess? What are their
temperatures? And those other, sporadic members of our system, comets
and meteors, what are they? What are their movements? How do they
originate? And the Sun itself, what is its composition, what is the
source of its heat, how did it originate? Is it running down?
These last questions introduce us to a branch of astronomy which is
concerned with the physical constitution of the stars, a study which,
not so very many years ago, may well have appeared inconceivable. But
the spectroscope enables us to answer even these questions, and the
answer opens up questions of yet greater interest. We find that the
stars can be arranged in an order of development--that there are stars
at all stages of their life-history. The main lines of the evolution of
the stellar universe can be worked out. In the sun and stars we have
furnaces with temperatures enormously high; it is in such conditions
that substances are resolved into their simplest forms, and it is thus
we are enabled to obtain a knowledge of the most primitive forms of
matter. It is in this direction that the spectroscope (which we shall
refer to immediately) has helped us so much. It is to this wonderful
instrument that we owe our knowledge of the composition of the sun and
stars, as we shall see.
"That the spectroscope will detect the millionth of a milligram of
matter, and on that account has discovered new elements, commands
our admiration; but when we find in addition that it will detect the
nature of forms of matter trillions of miles away, and moreover,
that it will measure the velocities with which these forms of matter
are moving with an absurdly small per cent. of possible error, we
can easily acquiesce in the statement that it is the greatest
instrument ever devised by the brain and hand of man."
Such are some of the questions with which modern astronomy deals. To
answer them requires the employment of instruments of almost incredible
refinement and exactitude and also the full resources of mathematical
genius. Whether astronomy be judged from the point of view of the
phenomena studied, the vast masses, the immense distances, the æons of
time, or whether it be judged as a monument of human ingenuity,
patience, and the rarest type of genius, it is certainly one of the
grandest, as it is also one of the oldest, of the sciences.
The Solar System
In the Solar System we include all those bodies dependent on the sun
which circulate round it at various distances, deriving their light and
heat from the sun--the planets and their moons, certain comets and a
multitude of meteors: in other words, all bodies whose movements in
space are determined by the gravitational pull of the sun.
The Sun
Thanks to our wonderful modern instruments and the ingenious methods
used by astronomers, we have to-day a remarkable knowledge of the sun.
Look at the figure of the sun in the frontispiece. The picture
represents an eclipse of the sun; the dark body of the moon has screened
the sun's shining disc and taken the glare out of our eyes; we see a
silvery halo surrounding the great orb on every side. It is the sun's
atmosphere, or "crown" (corona), stretching for millions of miles into
space in the form of a soft silvery-looking light; probably much of its
light is sunlight reflected from particles of dust, although the
spectroscope shows an element in the corona that has not so far been
detected anywhere else in the universe and which in consequence has been
named Coronium.
We next notice in the illustration that at the base of the halo there
are red flames peeping out from the edges of the hidden disc. When one
remembers that the sun is 866,000 miles in diameter, one hardly needs to
be told that these flames are really gigantic. We shall see what they
are presently.
Regions of the Sun
The astronomer has divided the sun into definite concentric regions or
layers. These layers envelop the nucleus or central body of the sun
somewhat as the atmosphere envelops our earth. It is through these
vapour layers that the bright white body of the sun is seen. Of the
innermost region, the heart or nucleus of the sun, we know almost
nothing. The central body or nucleus is surrounded by a brilliantly
luminous envelope or layer of vaporous matter which is what we see when
we look at the sun and which the astronomer calls the photosphere.
Above--that is, overlying--the photosphere there is a second layer of
glowing gases, which is known as the reversing layer. This layer is
cooler than the underlying photosphere; it forms a veil of smoke-like
haze and is of from 500 to 1,000 miles in thickness.
A third layer or envelope immediately lying over the last one is the
region known as the chromosphere. The chromosphere extends from 5,000
to 10,000 miles in thickness--a "sea" of red tumultuous surging fire.
Chief among the glowing gases is the vapour of hydrogen. The intense
white heat of the photosphere beneath shines through this layer,
overpowering its brilliant redness. From the uppermost portion of the
chromosphere great fiery tongues of glowing hydrogen and calcium vapour
shoot out for many thousands of miles, driven outward by some prodigious
expulsive force. It is these red "prominences" which are such a notable
feature in the picture of the eclipse of the sun already referred to.
During the solar eclipse of 1919 one of these red flames rose in less
than seven hours from a height of 130,000 miles to more than 500,000
miles above the sun's surface. This immense column of red-hot gas, four
or five times the thickness of the earth, was soaring upward at the rate
of 60,000 miles an hour.
These flaming jets or prominences shooting out from the chromosphere are
not to be seen every day by the naked eye; the dazzling light of the sun
obscures them, gigantic as they are. They can be observed, however, by
the spectroscope any day, and they are visible to us for a very short
time during an eclipse of the sun. Some extraordinary outbursts have
been witnessed. Thus the late Professor Young described one on September
7, 1871, when he had been examining a prominence by the spectroscope:
It had remained unchanged since noon of the previous day--a long,
low, quiet-looking cloud, not very dense, or brilliant, or in any
way remarkable except for its size. At 12:30 p.m. the Professor left
the spectroscope for a short time, and on returning half an hour
later to his observations, he was astonished to find the gigantic
Sun flame shattered to pieces. The solar atmosphere was filled with
flying debris, and some of these portions reached a height of
100,000 miles above the solar surface. Moving with a velocity which,
even at the distance of 93,000,000 miles, was almost perceptible to
the eye, these fragments doubled their height in ten minutes. On
January 30, 1885, another distinguished solar observer, the late
Professor Tacchini of Rome, observed one of the greatest prominences
ever seen by man. Its height was no less than 142,000
miles--eighteen times the diameter of the earth. Another mighty
flame was so vast that supposing the eight large planets of the
solar system ranged one on top of the other, the prominence would
still tower above them.[1]
[1] _The Romance of Astronomy_, by H. Macpherson.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--DIAGRAM SHOWING THE MAIN LAYERS OF THE SUN
Compare with frontispiece.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Royal Observatory, Greenwich._
FIG. 6.--SOLAR PROMINENCES SEEN AT TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, May 29, 1919.
TAKEN AT SOBRAL, BRAZIL.
The small Corona is also visible.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--THE VISIBLE SURFACE OF THE SUN
A photograph taken at the Mount Wilson Observatory of the Carnegie
Institution at Washington.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--THE SUN
Photographed in the light of glowing hydrogen, at the Mount Wilson
Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington: vortex phenomena
near the spots are especially prominent.]
The fourth and uppermost layer or region is that of the corona, of
immense extent and fading away into the surrounding sky--this we have
already referred to. The diagram (Fig. 5) shows the dispositions of
these various layers of the sun. It is through these several transparent
layers that we see the white light body of the sun.
§ 2
The Surface of the Sun
Here let us return to and see what more we know about the
photosphere--the sun's surface. It is from the photosphere that we have
gained most of our knowledge of the composition of the sun, which is
believed not to be a solid body. Examination of the photosphere shows
that the outer surface is never at rest. Small bright cloudlets come and
go in rapid succession, giving the surface, through contrasts in
luminosity, a granular appearance. Of course, to be visible at all at
92,830,000 miles the cloudlets cannot be small. They imply enormous
activity in the photosphere. If we might speak picturesquely the sun's
surface resembles a boiling ocean of white-hot metal vapours. We have
to-day a wonderful instrument, which will be described later, which
dilutes, as it were, the general glare of the sun, and enables us to
observe these fiery eruptions at any hour. The "oceans" of red-hot gas
and white-hot metal vapour at the sun's surface are constantly driven by
great storms. Some unimaginable energy streams out from the body or
muscles of the sun and blows its outer layers into gigantic shreds, as
it were.
The actual temperature at the sun's surface, or what appears to us to be
the surface--the photosphere--is, of course, unknown, but careful
calculation suggests that it is from 5,000° C. to 7,000° C. The interior
is vastly hotter. We can form no conception of such temperatures as must
exist there. Not even the most obdurate solid could resist such
temperatures, but would be converted almost instantaneously into gas.
But it would not be gas as we know gases on the earth. The enormous
pressures that exist on the sun must convert even gases into thick
treacly fluids. We can only infer this state of matter. It is beyond our
power to reproduce it.
Sun-spots
It is in the brilliant photosphere that the dark areas known as
sun-spots appear. Some of these dark spots--they are dark only by
contrast with the photosphere surrounding them--are of enormous size,
covering many thousands of square miles of surface. What they are we
cannot positively say. They look like great cavities in the sun's
surface. Some think they are giant whirlpools. Certainly they seem to be
great whirling streams of glowing gases with vapours above them and
immense upward and downward currents within them. Round the edges of the
sun-spots rise great tongues of flame.
Perhaps the most popularly known fact about sun-spots is that they are
somehow connected with what we call magnetic storms on earth. These
magnetic storms manifest themselves in interruptions of our telegraphic
and telephonic communications, in violent disturbances of the mariner's
compass, and in exceptional auroral displays. The connection between the
two sets of phenomena cannot be doubted, even although at times there
may be a great spot on the sun without any corresponding "magnetic
storm" effects on the earth.
A surprising fact about sun-spots is that they show definite periodic
variations in number. The best-defined period is one of about eleven
years. During this period the spots increase to a maximum in number and
then diminish to a minimum, the variation being more or less regular.
Now this can only mean one thing. To be periodic the spots must have
some deep-seated connection with the fundamental facts of the sun's
structure and activities. Looked at from this point of view their
importance becomes great.
[Illustration: _Reproduction from "The Forces of Nature"_ (_Messrs.
Macmillan_)
THE AURORA BOREALIS
The aurora borealis is one of the most beautiful spectacles in the sky.
The colours and shape change every instant; sometimes a fan-like cluster
of rays, at other times long golden draperies gliding one over the
other. Blue, green, yellow, red, and white combine to give a glorious
display of colour. The theory of its origin is still, in part, obscure,
but there can be no doubt that the aurora is related to the magnetic
phenomena of the earth and therefore is connected with the electrical
influence of the sun.]
It is from the study of sun-spots that we have learned that the sun's
surface does not appear to rotate all at the same speed. The
"equatorial" regions are rotating quicker than regions farther north or
south. A point forty-five degrees from the equator seems to take about
two and a half days longer to complete one rotation than a point on the
equator. This, of course, confirms our belief that the sun cannot be a
solid body.
What is its composition? We know that there are present, in a gaseous
state, such well-known elements as sodium, iron, copper, zinc, and
magnesium; indeed, we know that there is practically every element in
the sun that we know to be in the earth. How do we know?
It is from the photosphere, as has been said, that we have won most of
our knowledge of the sun. The instrument used for this purpose is the
spectroscope; and before proceeding to deal further with the sun and the
source of its energy it will be better to describe this instrument.
A WONDERFUL INSTRUMENT AND WHAT IT REVEALS
The spectroscope is an instrument for analysing light. So important is
it in the revelations it has given us that it will be best to describe
it fully. Every substance to be examined must first be made to glow,
made luminous; and as nearly everything in the heavens _is_ luminous the
instrument has a great range in Astronomy. And when we speak of
analysing light, we mean that the light may be broken up into waves of
different lengths. What we call light is a series of minute waves in
ether, and these waves are--measuring them from crest to crest, so to
say--of various lengths. Each wave-length corresponds to a colour of the
rainbow. The shortest waves give us a sensation of violet colour, and
the largest waves cause a sensation of red. The rainbow, in fact, is a
sort of natural spectrum. (The meaning of the rainbow is that the
moisture-laden air has sorted out these waves, in the sun's light,
according to their length.) Now the simplest form of spectroscope is a
glass prism--a triangular-shaped piece of glass. If white light
(sunlight, for example) passes through a glass prism, we see a series of
rainbow-tinted colours. Anyone can notice this effect when sunlight is
shining through any kind of cut glass--the stopper of a wine decanter,
for instance. If, instead of catching with the eye the coloured lights
as they emerge from the glass prism, we allow them to fall on a screen,
we shall find that they pass, by continuous gradations, from red at the
one end of the screen, through orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo,
to violet at the other end. _In other words, what we call white light is
composed of rays of these several colours. They go to make up the effect
which we call white._ And now just as water can be split up into its two
elements, oxygen and hydrogen, so sunlight can be broken up into its
primary colours, which are those we have just mentioned.
This range of colours, produced by the spectroscope, we call the solar
spectrum, and these are, from the spectroscopic point of view, primary
colours. Each shade of colour has its definite position in the spectrum.
That is to say, the light of each shade of colour (corresponding to its
wave-length) is reflected through a certain fixed angle on passing
through the glass prism. Every possible kind of light has its definite
position, and is denoted by a number which gives the wave-length of the
vibrations constituting that particular kind of light.
Now, other kinds of light besides sunlight can be analysed. Light
from any substance which has been made incandescent may be observed with
the spectroscope in the same way, and each element can be thus
separated. It is found that each substance (in the same conditions of
pressure, etc.) gives a constant spectrum of its own. _Each metal
displays its own distinctive colour. It is obvious, therefore, that the
spectrum provides the means for identifying a particular substance._ It
was by this method that we discovered in the sun the presence of such
well-known elements as sodium, iron, copper, zinc, and magnesium.
[Illustration: _Yerkes Observatory._
FIG. 9.--THE GREAT SUN-SPOT OF JULY 17, 1905]
[Illustration: _From photographs taken at the Yerkes Observatory._
FIG. 10.--SOLAR PROMINENCES
These are about 60,000 miles in height. The two photographs show the
vast changes occurring in ten minutes. October 10, 1910.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Mount Wilson Observatory._
FIG. 11.--MARS, October 5, 1909
Showing the dark markings and the Polar Cap.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--JUPITER
Showing the belts which are probably cloud formations.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Professor E. E. Barnard, Yerkes Observatory._
FIG. 13.--SATURN, November 19, 1911
Showing the rings, mighty swarms of meteorites.]
Every chemical element known, then, has a distinctive spectrum of its
own when it is raised to incandescence, and this distinctive spectrum is
as reliable a means of identification for the element as a human face is
for its owner. Whether it is a substance glowing in the laboratory or in
a remote star makes no difference to the spectroscope; if the light of
any substance reaches it, that substance will be recognised and
identified by the characteristic set of waves.
The spectrum of a glowing mass of gas will consist in a number of bright
lines of various colours, and at various intervals; corresponding to
each kind of gas, there will be a peculiar and distinctive arrangement
of bright lines. But if the light from such a mass of glowing gas be
made to pass through a cool mass of the _same_ gas it will be found that
dark lines replace the bright lines in the spectrum, the reason for this
being that the cool gas absorbs the rays of light emitted by the hot
gas. Experiments of this kind enable us to reach the important general
statement that every gas, when cold, absorbs the same rays of light
which it emits when hot.
Crossing the solar spectrum are hundreds and hundreds of dark lines.
These could not at first be explained, because this fact of
discriminative absorption was not known. We understand now. The sun's
white light comes from the photosphere, but between us and the
photosphere there is, as we have seen, another solar envelope of
relatively cooler vapours--the reversing layer. Each constituent
element in this outer envelope stops its own kind of light, that is, the
kind of light made by incandescent atoms of the same element in the
photosphere. The "stoppages" register themselves in the solar spectrum
as dark lines placed exactly where the corresponding bright lines would
have been. The explanation once attained, dark lines became as
significant as bright lines. The secret of the sun's composition was
out. We have found practically every element in the sun that we know to
be in the earth. We have identified an element in the sun before we were
able to isolate it on the earth. We have been able even to point to the
coolest places on the sun, the centres of sun-spots, where alone the
temperature seems to have fallen sufficiently low to allow chemical
compounds to form.
It is thus we have been able to determine what the stars, comets, or
nebulæ are made of.
A Unique Discovery
In 1868 Sir Norman Lockyer detected a light coming from the prominences
of the sun which was not given by any substance known on earth, and
attributed this to an unknown gas which he called helium, from the Greek
_helios_, the sun. _In 1895 Sir William Ramsay discovered in certain
minerals the same gas identified by the spectroscope._ We can say,
therefore, that this gas was discovered in the sun nearly thirty years
before it was found on earth; this discovery of the long-lost heir is as
thrilling a chapter in the detective story of science as any in the
sensational stories of the day, and makes us feel quite certain that our
methods really tell us of what elements sun and stars are built up. The
light from the corona of the sun, as we have mentioned indicates a gas
still unknown on earth, which has been christened Coronium.
Measuring the Speed of Light
But this is not all; soon a new use was found for the spectroscope. We
found that we could measure with it the most difficult of all speeds
to measure, speed in the line of sight. Movement at right angles to the
direction in which one is looking is, if there is sufficient of it, easy
to detect, and, if the distance of the moving body is known, easy to
measure. But movement in the line of vision is both difficult to detect
and difficult to measure. Yet, even at the enormous distances with which
astronomers have to deal, the spectroscope can detect such movement and
furnish data for its measurement. If a luminous body containing, say,
sodium is moving rapidly towards the spectroscope, it will be found that
the sodium lines in the spectrum have moved slightly from their usual
definite positions towards the violet end of the spectrum, the amount of
the change of position increasing with the speed of the luminous body.
If the body is moving away from the spectroscope the shifting of the
spectral lines will be in the opposite direction, towards the red end of
the spectrum. In this way we have discovered and measured movements that
otherwise would probably not have revealed themselves unmistakably to us
for thousands of years. In the same way we have watched, and measured
the speed of, tremendous movements on the sun, and so gained proof that
the vast disturbances we should expect there actually do occur.
[Illustration: THE SPECTROSCOPE IS AN INSTRUMENT FOR ANALYSING LIGHT; IT
PROVIDES THE MEANS FOR IDENTIFYING DIFFERENT SUBSTANCES
This pictorial diagram illustrates the principal of Spectrum Analysis,
showing how sunlight is decomposed into its primary colours. What we
call white light is composed of seven different colours. The diagram is
relieved of all detail which would unduly obscure the simple process by
which a ray of light is broken up by a prism into different
wave-lengths. The spectrum rays have been greatly magnified.]
IS THE SUN DYING?
§ 3
Now let us return to our consideration of the sun.
To us on the earth the most patent and most astonishing fact about the
sun is its tremendous energy. Heat and light in amazing quantities pour
from it without ceasing.
Where does this energy come from? Enormous jets of red glowing gases can
be seen shooting outwards from the sun, like flames from a fire, for
thousands of miles. Does this argue fire, as we know fire on the earth?
On this point the scientist is sure. The sun is not burning, and
combustion is not the source of its heat. Combustion is a chemical
reaction between atoms. The conditions that make it possible are known
and the results are predictable and measurable. But no chemical reaction
of the nature of combustion as we know it will explain the sun's energy,
nor indeed will any ordinary chemical reaction of any kind. If the sun
were composed of combustible material throughout and the conditions of
combustion as we understand them were always present, the sun would burn
itself out in some thousands of years, with marked changes in its heat
and light production as the process advanced. There is no evidence of
such changes. There is, instead, strong evidence that the sun has been
emitting light and heat in prodigious quantities, not for thousands, but
for millions of years. Every addition to our knowledge that throws light
on the sun's age seems to make for increase rather than decrease of its
years. This makes the wonder of its energy greater.
And we cannot avoid the issue of the source of the energy by saying
merely that the sun is gradually radiating away an energy that
originated in some unknown manner, away back at the beginning of things.
Reliable calculations show that the years required for the mere cooling
of a globe like the sun could not possibly run to millions. In other
words, the sun's energy must be subject to continuous and more or less
steady renewal. However it may have acquired its enormous energy in the
past, it must have some source of energy in the present.
The best explanation that we have to-day of this continuous accretion of
energy is that it is due to shrinkage of the sun's bulk under the force
of gravity. Gravity is one of the most mysterious forces of nature, but
it is an obvious fact that bodies behave as if they attracted one
another, and Newton worked out the law of this attraction. We may say,
without trying to go too deeply into things, that every particle of
matter attracts every other throughout the universe. If the diameter of
the sun were to shrink by one mile all round, this would mean that all
the millions of tons in the outer one-mile thickness would have a
straight drop of one mile towards the centre. And that is not all,
because obviously the layers below this outer mile would also drop
inwards, each to a less degree than the one above it. What a tremendous
movement of matter, however slowly it might take place! And what a
tremendous energy would be involved! Astronomers calculate that the
above shrinkage of one mile all round would require fifty years for its
completion, assuming, reasonably, that there is close and continuous
relationship between loss of heat by radiation and shrinkage. Even if
this were true we need not feel over-anxious on this theory; before the
sun became too cold to support life many millions of years would be
required.
It was suggested at one time that falls of meteoric matter into the sun
would account for the sun's heat. This position is hardly tenable now.
The mere bulk of the meteoric matter required by the hypothesis, apart
from other reasons, is against it. There is undoubtedly an enormous
amount of meteoric matter moving about within the bounds of the solar
system, but most of it seems to be following definite routes round the
sun like the planets. The stray erratic quantities destined to meet
their doom by collision with the sun can hardly be sufficient to account
for the sun's heat.
Recent study of radio-active bodies has suggested another factor that
may be working powerfully along with the force of gravitation to
maintain the sun's store of heat. In radio-active bodies certain atoms
seem to be undergoing disintegration. These atoms appear to be splitting
up into very minute and primitive constituents. But since matter may be
split up into such constituents, may it not be built up from them?
The question is whether these "radio-active" elements are undergoing
disintegration, or formation, in the sun. If they are undergoing
disintegration--and the sun itself is undoubtedly radio-active--then we
have another source of heat for the sun that will last indefinitely.
THE PLANETS
LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS?
§ 1
It is quite clear that there cannot be life on the stars. Nothing solid
or even liquid can exist in such furnaces as they are. Life exists only
on planets, and even on these its possibilities are limited. Whether all
the stars, or how many of them, have planetary families like our sun, we
cannot positively say. If they have, such planets would be too faint and
small to be visible tens of trillions of miles away. Some astronomers
think that our sun may be exceptional in having planets, but their
reasons are speculative and unconvincing. Probably a large proportion at
least of the stars have planets, and we may therefore survey the globes
of our own solar system and in a general way extend the results to the
rest of the universe.
In considering the possibility of life as we know it we may at once rule
out the most distant planets from the sun, Uranus and Neptune. They are
probably intrinsically too hot. We may also pass over the nearest planet
to the sun, Mercury. We have reason to believe that it turns on its axis
in the same period as it revolves round the sun, and it must therefore
always present the same side to the sun. This means that the heat on the
sunlit side of Mercury is above boiling-point, while the cold on the
other side must be between two and three hundred degrees below
freezing-point.
The Planet Venus
The planet Venus, the bright globe which is known to all as the morning
and evening "star," seems at first sight more promising as regards the
possibility of life. It is of nearly the same size as the earth, and it
has a good atmosphere, but there are many astronomers who believe that,
like Mercury, it always presents the same face to the sun, and it would
therefore have the same disadvantage--a broiling heat on the sunny side
and the cold of space on the opposite side. We are not sure. The
surface of Venus is so bright--the light of the sun is reflected to us
by such dense masses of cloud and dust--that it is difficult to trace
any permanent markings on it, and thus ascertain how long it takes to
rotate on its axis. Many astronomers believe that they have succeeded,
and that the planet always turns the same face to the sun. If it does,
we can hardly conceive of life on its surface, in spite of the
cloud-screen.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--THE MOON
Showing a great plain and some typical craters. There are thousands of
these craters, and some theories of their origin are explained on page
34.]
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--MARS
1} Drawings by Prof. Lowell to accompany actual photographs of Mars
showing many of the
2} canals. Taken in 1907 by Mr. E. C. Slipher of the Lowell Observatory.
3 Drawing by Prof. Lowell made January 6, 1914.
4 Drawing by Prof. Lowell made January 21, 1914.
Nos. 1 and 2 show the effect of the planet's rotation. Nos. 3 and 4
depict quite different sections. Note the change in the polar snow-caps
in the last two.]
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--THE MOON, AT NINE AND THREE-QUARTER DAYS
Note the mysterious "rays" diverging from the almost perfectly circular
craters indicated by the arrows (Tycho, upper; Copernicus, lower), and
also the mountains to the right with the lunar dawn breaking on them.]
We turn to Mars; and we must first make it clear why there is so much
speculation about life on Mars, and why it is supposed that, if there
_is_ life on Mars, it must be more advanced than life on the earth.
Is there Life on Mars?
The basis of this belief is that if, as we saw, all the globes in our
solar system are masses of metal that are cooling down, the smaller will
have cooled down before the larger, and will be further ahead in their
development. Now Mars is very much smaller than the earth, and must have
cooled at its surface millions of years before the earth did. Hence, if
a story of life began on Mars at all, it began long before the story of
life on the earth. We cannot guess what sort of life-forms would be
evolved in a different world, but we can confidently say that they would
tend toward increasing intelligence; and thus we are disposed to look
for highly intelligent beings on Mars.
But this argument supposes that the conditions of life, namely air and
water, are found on Mars, and it is disputed whether they are found
there in sufficient quantity. The late Professor Percival Lowell, who
made a lifelong study of Mars, maintained that there are hundreds of
straight lines drawn across the surface of the planet, and he claimed
that they are beds of vegetation marking the sites of great channels or
pipes by means of which the "Martians" draw water from their polar
ocean. Professor W. H. Pickering, another high authority, thinks that
the lines are long, narrow marshes fed by moist winds from the poles.
There are certainly white polar caps on Mars. They seem to melt in the
spring, and the dark fringe round them grows broader.
Other astronomers, however, say that they find no trace of water-vapour
in the atmosphere of Mars, and they think that the polar caps may be
simply thin sheets of hoar-frost or frozen gas. They point out that, as
the atmosphere of Mars is certainly scanty, and the distance from the
sun is so great, it may be too cold for the fluid water to exist on the
planet.
If one asks why our wonderful instruments cannot settle these points,
one must be reminded that Mars is never nearer than 34,000,000 miles
from the earth, and only approaches to this distance once in fifteen or
seventeen years. The image of Mars on the photographic negative taken in
a big telescope is very small. Astronomers rely to a great extent on the
eye, which is more sensitive than the photographic plate. But it is easy
to have differences of opinion as to what the eye sees, and so there is
a good deal of controversy.
In August, 1924, the planet will again be well placed for observation,
and we may learn more about it. Already a few of the much-disputed
lines, which people wrongly call "canals," have been traced on
photographs. Astronomers who are sceptical about life on Mars are often
not fully aware of the extraordinary adaptability of life. There was a
time when the climate of the whole earth, from pole to pole, was
semi-tropical for millions of years. No animal could then endure the
least cold, yet now we have plenty of Arctic plants and animals. If the
cold came slowly on Mars, as we have reason to suppose, the population
could be gradually adapted to it. On the whole, it is possible that
there is advanced life on Mars, and it is not impossible, in spite of
the very great difficulties of a code of communication, that our "elder
brothers" may yet flash across space the solution of many of our
problems.
§ 2
Jupiter and Saturn
Next to Mars, going outward from the sun, is Jupiter. Between Mars and
Jupiter, however, there are more than three hundred million miles of
space, and the older astronomers wondered why this was not occupied by a
planet. We now know that it contains about nine hundred "planetoids," or
small globes of from five to five hundred miles in diameter. It was at
one time thought that a planet might have burst into these fragments (a
theory which is not mathematically satisfactory), or it may be that the
material which is scattered in them was prevented by the nearness of the
great bulk of Jupiter from uniting into one globe.
For Jupiter is a giant planet, and its gravitational influence must
extend far over space. It is 1,300 times as large as the earth, and has
nine moons, four of which are large, in attendance on it. It is
interesting to note that the outermost moons of Jupiter and Saturn
revolve round these planets in a direction contrary to the usual
direction taken by moons round planets, and by planets round the sun.
But there is no life on Jupiter.
The surface which we see in photographs (Fig. 12) is a mass of cloud or
steam which always envelops the body of the planet. It is apparently
red-hot. A red tinge is seen sometimes at the edges of its cloud-belts,
and a large red region (the "red spot"), 23,000 miles in length, has
been visible on it for half a century. There may be a liquid or solid
core to the planet, but as a whole it is a mass of seething vapours
whirling round on its axis once in every ten hours. As in the case of
the sun, however, different latitudes appear to rotate at different
rates. The interior of Jupiter is very hot, but the planet is not
self-luminous. The planets Venus and Jupiter shine very brightly, but
they have no light of their own; they reflect the sunlight.
Saturn is in the same interesting condition. The surface in the
photograph (Fig. 13) is steam, and Saturn is so far away from the sun
that the vaporisation of its oceans must necessarily be due to its own
internal heat. It is too hot for water to settle on its surface. Like
Jupiter, the great globe turns on its axis once in ten hours--a
prodigious speed--and must be a swirling, seething mass of metallic
vapours and gases. It is instructive to compare Jupiter and Saturn in
this respect with the sun. They are smaller globes and have cooled down
more than the central fire.
Saturn is a beautiful object in the telescope because it has ten moons
(to include one which is disputed) and a wonderful system of "rings"
round it. The so-called rings are a mighty swarm of meteorites--pieces
of iron and stone of all sorts and sizes, which reflect the light of the
sun to us. This ocean of matter is some miles deep, and stretches from a
few thousand miles from the surface of the planet to 172,000 miles out
in space. Some astronomers think that this is volcanic material which
has been shot out of the planet. Others regard it as stuff which would
have combined to form an eleventh moon but was prevented by the nearness
of Saturn itself. There is no evidence of life on Saturn.
THE MOON
Mars and Venus are therefore the only planets, besides the earth, on
which we may look for life; and in the case of Venus, the possibility is
very faint. But what about the moons which attend the planets? They
range in size from the little ten-miles-wide moons of Mars, to Titan, a
moon of Saturn, and Ganymede, a satellite of Jupiter, which are about
3,000 miles in diameter. May there not be life on some of the larger of
these moons? We will take our own moon as a type of the class.
A Dead World
The moon is so very much nearer to us than any other heavenly body that
we have a remarkable knowledge of it. In Fig. 14 you have a photograph,
taken in one of our largest telescopes, of part of its surface. In a
sense such a telescope brings the moon to within about fifty miles of
us. We should see a city like London as a dark, sprawling blotch on the
globe. We could just detect a Zeppelin or a Diplodocus as a moving speck
against the surface. But we find none of these things. It is true that a
few astronomers believe that they see signs of some sort of feeble life
or movement on the moon. Professor Pickering thinks that he can trace
some volcanic activity. He believes that there are areas of vegetation,
probably of a low order, and that the soil of the moon may retain a
certain amount of water in it. He speaks of a very thin atmosphere, and
of occasional light falls of snow. He has succeeded in persuading some
careful observers that there probably are slight changes of some kind
taking place on the moon.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--A MAP OF THE CHIEF PLAINS AND CRATERS OF THE
MOON
The plains were originally supposed to be seas: hence the name "Mare."]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--A DIAGRAM OF A STREAM OF METEORS SHOWING THE
EARTH PASSING THROUGH THEM] [Illustration: _Photo: Royal Observatory,
Greenwich._
FIG. 19.--COMET, September 29, 1908
Notice the tendency to form a number of tails. (See photograph below.)]
[Illustration: _Photo: Royal Observatory, Greenwich._
FIG. 20.--COMET, October 3, 1908
The process has gone further and a number of distinct tails can now be
counted.]
But there are many things that point to absence of air on the moon. Even
the photographs we reproduce tell the same story. The edges of the
shadows are all hard and black. If there had been an appreciable
atmosphere it would have scattered the sun's light on to the edges and
produced a gradual shading off such as we see on the earth. This
relative absence of air must give rise to some surprising effects. There
will be no sounds on the moon, because sounds are merely air waves. Even
a meteor shattering itself to a violent end against the surface of the
moon would make no noise. Nor would it herald its coming by glowing into
a "shooting star," as it would on entering the earth's atmosphere. There
will be no floating dust, no scent, no twilight, no blue sky, no
twinkling of the stars. The sky will be always black and the stars will
be clearly visible by day as by night. The sun's wonderful corona, which
no man on earth, even by seizing every opportunity during eclipses, can
hope to see for more than two hours in all in a long lifetime, will be
visible all day. So will the great red flames of the sun. Of course,
there will be no life, and no landscape effects and scenery effects due
to vegetation.
The moon takes approximately twenty-seven of our days to turn once on
its axis. So for fourteen days there is continuous night, when the
temperature must sink away down towards the absolute cold of space. This
will be followed without an instant of twilight by full daylight. For
another fourteen days the sun's rays will bear straight down, with no
diffusion or absorption of their heat, or light, on the way. It does not
follow, however, that the temperature of the moon's surface must rise
enormously. It may not even rise to the temperature of melting ice.
Seeing there is no air there can be no check on radiation. The heat that
the moon gets will radiate away immediately. We know that amongst the
coldest places on the earth are the tops of very high mountains, the
points that have reared themselves nearest to the sun but farthest out
of the sheltering blanket of the earth's atmosphere. The actual
temperature of the moon's surface by day is a moot point. It may be
below the freezing-point or above the boiling-point of water.
The Mountains of the Moon
The lack of air is considered by many astronomers to furnish the
explanation of the enormous number of "craters" which pit the moon's
surface. There are about a hundred thousand of these strange rings, and
it is now believed by many that they are spots where very large
meteorites, or even planetoids, splashed into the moon when its surface
was still soft. Other astronomers think that they are the remains of
gigantic bubbles which were raised in the moon's "skin," when the globe
was still molten, by volcanic gases from below. A few astronomers think
that they are, as is popularly supposed, the craters of extinct
volcanoes. Our craters, on the earth, are generally deep cups, whereas
these ring-formations on the moon are more like very shallow and broad
saucers. Clavius, the largest of them, is 123 miles across the interior,
yet its encircling rampart is not a mile high.
The mountains on the moon (Fig. 16) rise to a great height, and are
extraordinarily gaunt and rugged. They are like fountains of lava,
rising in places to 26,000 and 27,000 feet. The lunar Apennines have
three thousand steep and weird peaks. Our terrestrial mountains are
continually worn down by frost acting on moisture and by ice and water,
but there are none of these agencies operating on the moon. Its
mountains are comparatively "everlasting hills."
The moon is interesting to us precisely because it is a dead world. It
seems to show how the earth, or any cooling metal globe, will evolve in
the remote future. We do not know if there was ever life on the moon,
but in any case it cannot have proceeded far in development. At the most
we can imagine some strange lowly forms of vegetation lingering here and
there in pools of heavy gas, expanding during the blaze of the sun's
long day, and frozen rigid during the long night.
METEORS AND COMETS
We may conclude our survey of the solar system with a word about
"shooting stars," or meteors, and comets. There are few now who do not
know that the streak of fire which suddenly lights the sky overhead at
night means that a piece of stone or iron has entered our atmosphere
from outer space, and has been burned up by friction. It was travelling
at, perhaps, twenty or thirty miles a second. At seventy or eighty miles
above our heads it began to glow, as at that height the air is thick
enough to offer serious friction and raise it to a white heat. By the
time the meteor reached about twenty miles or so from the earth's
surface it was entirely dissipated, as a rule in fiery vapour.
Millions of Meteorites
It is estimated that between ten and a hundred million meteorites enter
our atmosphere and are cremated, every day. Most of them weigh only an
ounce or two, and are invisible. Some of them weigh a ton or more, but
even against these large masses the air acts as a kind of "torpedo-net."
They generally burst into fragments and fall without doing damage.
It is clear that "empty space" is, at least within the limits of our
solar system, full of these things. They swarm like fishes in the seas.
Like the fishes, moreover, they may be either solitary or gregarious.
The solitary bit of cosmic rubbish is the meteorite, which we have just
examined. A "social" group of meteorites is the essential part of a
comet. The nucleus, or bright central part, of the head of a comet (Fig.
19) consists of a swarm, sometimes thousands of miles wide, of these
pieces of iron or stone. This swarm has come under the sun's
gravitational influence, and is forced to travel round it. From some
dark region of space it has moved slowly into our system. It is not then
a comet, for it has no tail. But as the crowded meteors approach the
sun, the speed increases. They give off fine vapour-like matter and the
fierce flood of light from the sun sweeps this vapour out in an
ever-lengthening tail. Whatever way the comet is travelling, the tail
always points away from the sun.
A Great Comet
The vapoury tail often grows to an enormous length as the comet
approaches the sun. The great comet of 1843 had a tail two hundred
million miles long. It is, however, composed of the thinnest vapours
imaginable. Twice during the nineteenth century the earth passed through
the tail of a comet, and nothing was felt. The vapours of the tail are,
in fact, so attenuated that we can hardly imagine them to be white-hot.
They may be lit by some electrical force. However that may be, the comet
dashes round the sun, often at three or four hundred miles a second,
then may pass gradually out of our system once more. It may be a
thousand years, or it may be fifty years, before the monarch of the
system will summon it again to make its fiery journey round his throne.
[Illustration: _Photo: Harvard College Observatory._
FIG. 21.--TYPICAL SPECTRA
Six main types of stellar spectra. Notice the lines they have in common,
showing what elements are met with in different types of stars. Each of
these spectra corresponds to a different set of physical and chemical
conditions.] [Illustration: _Photo: Mount Wilson Observatory._
FIG. 22.--A NEBULAR REGION SOUTH OF ZETA ORIONIS
Showing a great projection of "dark matter" cutting off the light from
behind.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, British
Columbia._
FIG. 23.--STAR CLUSTER IN HERCULES
A wonderful cluster of stars. It has been estimated that the distance of
this cluster is such that it would take light more than 100,000 years to
reach us.]
THE STELLAR UNIVERSE
§ 1
The immensity of the Stellar Universe, as we have seen, is beyond our
apprehension. The sun is nothing more than a very ordinary star, perhaps
an insignificant one. There are stars enormously greater than the sun.
One such, Betelgeux, has recently been measured, and its diameter is
more than 300 times that of the sun.
The Evolution of Stars
The proof of the similarity between our sun and the stars has come to us
through the spectroscope. The elements that we find by its means in the
sun are also found in the same way in the stars. Matter, says the
spectroscope, is essentially the same everywhere, in the earth and the
sun, in the comet that visits us once in a thousand years, in the star
whose distance is incalculable, and in the great clouds of "fire-mist"
that we call nebulæ.
In considering the evolution of the stars let us keep two points clearly
in mind. The starting-point, the nebula, is no figment of the scientific
imagination. Hundreds of thousands of nebulæ, besides even vaster
irregular stretches of nebulous matter, exist in the heavens. But the
stages of the evolution of this stuff into stars are very largely a
matter of speculation. Possibly there is more than one line of
evolution, and the various theories may be reconciled. And this applies
also to the theories of the various stages through which the stars
themselves pass on their way to extinction.
The light of about a quarter of a million stars has been analysed in the
spectroscope, and it is found that they fall into about a dozen classes
which generally correspond to stages in their evolution (Fig. 21).
The Age of Stars
In its main lines the spectrum of a star corresponds to its colour, and
we may roughly group the stars into red, yellow, and white. This is also
the order of increasing temperature, the red stars being the coolest and
the white stars the hottest. We might therefore imagine that the white
stars are the youngest, and that as they grow older and cooler they
become yellowish, then red, and finally become invisible--just as a
cooling white-hot iron would do. But a very interesting recent research
shows that there are two kinds of red stars; some of them are amongst
the oldest stars and some are amongst the youngest. The facts appear to
be that when a star is first formed it is not very hot. It is an immense
mass of diffuse gas glowing with a dull-red heat. It contracts under the
mutual gravitation of its particles, and as it does so it grows hotter.
It acquires a yellowish tinge. As it continues to contract it grows
hotter and hotter until its temperature reaches a maximum as a white
star. At this point the contraction process does not stop, but the
heating process does. Further contraction is now accompanied by cooling,
and the star goes through its colour changes again, but this time in the
inverse order. It contracts and cools to yellow and finally to red. But
when it again becomes a red star it is enormously denser and smaller
than when it began as a red star. Consequently the red stars are divided
into two classes called, appropriately, Giants and Dwarfs. This theory,
which we owe to an American astronomer, H. N. Russell, has been
successful in explaining a variety of phenomena, and there is
consequently good reason to suppose it to be true. But the question as
to how the red giant stars were formed has received less satisfactory
and precise answers.
The most commonly accepted theory is the nebular theory.
THE NEBULAR THEORY
§ 2
Nebulæ are dim luminous cloud-like patches in the heavens, more like
wisps of smoke in some cases than anything else. Both photography and
the telescope show that they are very numerous, hundreds of thousands
being already known and the number being continually added to. They are
not small. Most of them are immensely large. Actual dimensions cannot be
given, because to estimate these we must first know definitely the
distance of the nebulæ from the earth. The distances of some nebulæ are
known approximately, and we can therefore form some idea of size in
these cases. The results are staggering. The mere visible surface of
some nebulæ is so large that the whole stretch of the solar system would
be too small to form a convenient unit for measuring it. A ray of light
would require to travel for years to cross from side to side of such a
nebula. Its immensity is inconceivable to the human mind.
There appear to be two types of nebulæ, and there is evidence suggesting
that the one type is only an earlier form of the other; but this again
we do not know.
The more primitive nebulæ would seem to be composed of gas in an
extremely rarified form. It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of
the rarity of nebular gases. The residual gases in a vacuum tube are
dense by comparison. A cubic inch of air at ordinary pressure would
contain more matter than is contained in millions of cubic inches of the
gases of nebulæ. The light of even the faintest stars does not seem to
be dimmed by passing through a gaseous nebula, although we cannot be
sure on this point. The most remarkable physical fact about these gases
is that they are luminous. Whence they derive their luminosity we do not
know. It hardly seems possible to believe that extremely thin gases
exposed to the terrific cold of space can be so hot as to be luminous
and can retain their heat and their luminosity indefinitely. A cold
luminosity due to electrification, like that of the aurora borealis,
would seem to fit the case better.
Now the nebular theory is that out of great "fire-mists," such as we
have described, stars are born. We do not know whether gravitation is
the only or even the main force at work in a nebula, but it is supposed
that under the action of gravity the far-flung "fire-mists" would begin
to condense round centres of greatest density, heat being evolved in the
process. Of course the condensation would be enormously slow, although
the sudden irruption of a swarm of meteors or some solid body might
hasten matters greatly by providing large, ready-made centres of
condensation.
Spiral Nebulæ
It is then supposed that the contracting mass of gas would begin to
rotate and to throw off gigantic streamers, which would in their turn
form centres of condensation. The whole structure would thus form a
spiral, having a dense region at its centre and knots or lumps of
condensed matter along its spiral arms. Besides the formless gaseous
nebulæ there are hundreds of thousands of "spiral" nebulæ such as we
have just mentioned in the heavens. They are at all stages of
development, and they are visible to us at all angles--that is to say,
some of them face directly towards us, others are edge on, and some are
in intermediate positions. It appears, therefore, that we have here a
striking confirmation of the nebular hypothesis. But we must not go so
fast. There is much controversy as to the nature of these spiral nebulæ.
Some eminent astronomers think they are other stellar universes,
comparable in size with our own. In any case they are vast structures,
and if they represent stars in process of condensation, they must be
giving birth to huge agglomerations of stars--to star clusters at least.
These vast and enigmatic objects do not throw much light on the origin
of our own solar system. The nebular hypothesis, which was invented
by Laplace to explain the origin of our solar system, has not yet met
with universal acceptance. The explanation offers grave difficulties,
and it is best while the subject is still being closely investigated, to
hold all opinions with reserve. It may be taken as probable, however,
that the universe has developed from masses of incandescent gas.
[Illustration: _Photo: Yerkes Observatory._
FIG. 24.--THE GREAT NEBULA IN ORION
The most impressive nebula in the heavens. It is inconceivably greater
in dimensions than the whole solar system.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Lick Observatory._
FIG. 25--GIANT SPIRAL NEBULA, March 23, 1914
This spiral nebula is seen full on. Notice the central nucleus and the
two spiral arms emerging from its opposite directions. Is matter flowing
out of the nucleus into the arms or along the arms into the nucleus? In
either case we should get two streams in opposite directions within the
nucleus.]
THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF STARS
§ 3
Variable, New, and Dark Stars: Dying Suns
Many astronomers believe that in "variable stars" we have another star,
following that of the dullest red star, in the dying of suns. The light
of these stars varies periodically in so many days, weeks, or years. It
is interesting to speculate that they are slowly dying suns, in which
the molten interior periodically bursts through the shell of thick
vapours that is gathering round them. What we saw about our sun seems to
point to some such stage in the future. That is, however, not the
received opinion about variable stars. It may be that they are stars
which periodically pass through a great swarm of meteors or a region of
space that is rich in cosmic dust of some sort, when, of course, a great
illumination would take place.
One class of these variable stars, which takes its name from the star
Algol, is of special interest. Every third night Algol has its light
reduced for several hours. Modern astronomy has discovered that in this
case there are really two stars, circulating round a common centre, and
that every third night the fainter of the two comes directly between us
and its companion and causes an "eclipse." This was until recently
regarded as a most interesting case in which a dead star revealed itself
to us by passing before the light of another star. But astronomers have
in recent years invented something, the "selenium-cell," which is even
more sensitive than the photographic plate, and on this the supposed
dead star registers itself as very much alive. Algol is, however,
interesting in another way. The pair of stars which we have discovered
in it are hundreds of trillions of miles away from the earth, yet we
know their masses and their distances from each other.
The Death and Birth of Stars
We have no positive knowledge of dead stars; which is not surprising
when we reflect that a dead star means an invisible star! But when we
see so many individual stars tending toward death, when we behold a vast
population of all conceivable ages, we presume that there are many
already dead. On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that the
universe as a whole is "running down." Some writers have maintained
this, but their argument implies that we know a great deal more about
the universe than we actually do. The scientific man does not know
whether the universe is finite or infinite, temporal or eternal; and he
declines to speculate where there are no facts to guide him. He knows
only that the great gaseous nebulæ promise myriads of worlds in the
future, and he concedes the possibility that new nebulæ may be forming
in the ether of space.
The last, and not the least interesting, subject we have to notice is
the birth of a "new star." This is an event which astronomers now
announce every few years; and it is a far more portentous event than the
reader imagines when it is reported in his daily paper. The story is
much the same in all cases. We say that the star appeared in 1901, but
you begin to realise the magnitude of the event when you learn that the
distant "blaze" had really occurred about the time of the death of
Luther! The light of the conflagration had been speeding toward us
across space at 186,000 miles a second, yet it has taken nearly three
centuries to reach us. To be visible at all to us at that distance the
fiery outbreak must have been stupendous. If a mass of petroleum ten
times the size of the earth were suddenly fired it would not be seen at
such a distance. The new star had increased its light many hundredfold
in a few days.
There is a considerable fascination about the speculation that in such
cases we see the resurrection of a dead world, a means of renewing the
population of the universe. What happens is that in some region of the
sky where no star, or only a very faint star, had been registered on our
charts, we almost suddenly perceive a bright star. In a few days it may
rise to the highest brilliancy. By the spectroscope we learn that this
distant blaze means a prodigious outpour of white-hot hydrogen at
hundreds of miles a second. But the star sinks again after a few months,
and we then find a nebula round it on every side. It is natural to
suppose that a dead or dying sun has somehow been reconverted in whole
or in part into a nebula. A few astronomers think that it may have
partially collided with another star, or approached too closely to
another, with the result we described on an earlier page. The general
opinion now is that a faint or dead star had rushed into one of those
regions of space in which there are immense stretches of nebulous
matter, and been (at least in part) vaporised by the friction.
But the difficulties are considerable, and some astronomers prefer to
think that the blazing star may merely have lit up a dark nebula which
already existed. It is one of those problems on which speculation is
most tempting but positive knowledge is still very incomplete. We may be
content, even proud, that already we can take a conflagration that has
occurred more than a thousand trillion miles away and analyse it
positively into an outflame of glowing hydrogen gas at so many miles a
second.
THE SHAPE OF OUR UNIVERSE
§ 4
Our Universe a Spiral Nebula
What is the shape of our universe, and what are its dimensions? This is
a tremendous question to ask. It is like asking an intelligent insect,
living on a single leaf in the midst of a great Brazilian forest, to say
what is the shape and size of the forest. Yet man's ingenuity has proved
equal to giving an answer even to this question, and by a method exactly
similar to that which would be adopted by the insect. Suppose, for
instance, that the forest was shaped as an elongated oval, and the
insect lived on a tree near the centre of the oval. If the trees were
approximately equally spaced from one another they would appear much
denser along the length of the oval than across its width. This is the
simple consideration that has guided astronomers in determining the
shape of our stellar universe. There is one direction in the heavens
along which the stars appear denser than in the directions at right
angles to it. That direction is the direction in which we look towards
the Milky Way. If we count the number of stars visible all over the
heavens, we find they become more and more numerous as we approach the
Milky Way. As we go farther and farther from the Milky Way the stars
thin out until they reach a maximum sparseness in directions at right
angles to the plane of the Milky Way. We may consider the Milky Way to
form, as it were, the equator of our system, and the line at right
angles to point to the north and south poles.
Our system, in fact, is shaped something like a lens, and our sun is
situated near the centre of this lens. In the remoter part of this lens,
near its edge, or possibly outside it altogether, lies the great series
of star clouds which make up the Milky Way. All the stars are in motion
within this system, but the very remarkable discovery has been made that
these motions are not entirely random. The great majority of the stars
whose motions can be measured fall into two groups drifting past one
another in opposite directions. The velocity of one stream relative to
the other is about twenty-five miles per second. The stars forming these
two groups are thoroughly well mixed; it is not a case of an inner
stream going one way and an outer stream the other. But there are not
quite as many stars going one way as the other. For every two stars in
one stream there are three in the other. Now, as we have said, some
eminent astronomers hold that the spiral nebulæ are universes like our
own, and if we look at the two photographs (Figs. 25 and 26) we see that
these spirals present features which, in the light of what we have just
said about our system, are very remarkable. The nebula in Coma Berenices
is a spiral edge-on to us, and we see that it has precisely the
lens-shaped middle and the general flattened shape that we have found in
our own system. The nebula in Canes Venatici is a spiral facing towards
us, and its shape irresistibly suggests motions along the spiral arms.
This motion, whether it is towards or away from the central, lens-shaped
portion, would cause a double streaming motion in that central portion
of the kind we have found in our own system. Again, and altogether apart
from these considerations, there are good reasons for supposing our
Milky Way to possess a double-armed spiral structure. And the great
patches of dark absorbing matter which are known to exist in the Milky
Way (see Fig. 22) would give very much the mottled appearance we notice
in the arms (which we see edge-on) of the nebula in Coma Berenices. The
hypothesis, therefore, that our universe is a spiral nebula has much to
be said for it. If it be accepted it greatly increases our estimate of
the size of the material universe. For our central, lens-shaped system
is calculated to extend towards the Milky Way for more than twenty
thousand times a million million miles, and about a third of this
distance towards what we have called the poles. If, as we suppose, each
spiral nebula is an independent stellar universe comparable in size with
our own, then, since there are hundreds of thousands of spiral nebulæ,
we see that the size of the whole material universe is indeed beyond our
comprehension.
[Illustration: _Photo: Mount Wilson Observatory._
FIG. 26.--A SPIRAL NEBULA SEEN EDGE-ON
Notice the lens-shaped formation of the nucleus and the arm stretching
as a band across it. See reference in the text to the resemblance
between this and our stellar universe.]
[Illustration: _Photo: H. J. Shepstone._
100-INCH TELESCOPE, MOUNT WILSON
A reflecting telescope: the largest in the world. The mirror is situated
at the base of the telescope.]
[Illustration:
________________________________________________________________
| |
| THE SOLAR SYSTEM |
|________________________________________________________________|
| | | | | |
| | MEAN DISTANCE | PERIOD OF | | |
| NAME | FROM SUN (IN | REVOLUTION | DIAMETER | NUMBER OF |
| | MILLIONS OF | AROUND SUN | (IN MILES) | SATELLITES |
| | MILES) | (IN YEARS) | | |
|_________|_______________|____________|____________|____________|
| | | | | |
| MERCURY | 36.0 | 0.24 | 3030 | 0 |
| VENUS | 67.2 | 0.62 | 7700 | 0 |
| EARTH | 92.9 | 1.00 | 7918 | 1 |
| MARS | 141.5 | 1.88 | 4230 | 2 |
| JUPITER | 483.3 | 11.86 | 86500 | 9 |
| SATURN | 886.0 | 29.46 | 73000 | 10 |
| URANUS | 1781.9 | 84.02 | 31900 | 4 |
| NEPTUNE | 2971.6 | 164.78 | 34800 | 1 |
| SUN | ------ | ------ | 866400 | -- |
| MOON | ------ | ------ | 2163 | -- |
|_________|_______________|____________|____________|____________|
FIG. 27]
[Illustration:
______________________________________
| |
| STAR DISTANCES |
|______________________________________|
| |
| DISTANCE IN |
| STAR LIGHT-YEARS |
| |
| POLARIS 76 |
| CAPELLA 49.4 |
| RIGEL 466 |
| SIRIUS 8.7 |
| PROCYON 10.5 |
| REGULUS 98.8 |
| ARCTURUS 43.4 |
| [ALPHA] CENTAURI 4.29 |
| VEGA 34.7 |
|______________________________________|
| |
| SMALLER MAGELLANIC CLOUD 32,600[A] |
| GREAT CLUSTER IN HERCULES 108,600[A] |
|______________________________________|
[A] ESTIMATED
FIG. 28
The above distances are merely approximate and are subject to further
revision. A "light-year" is the distance that light, travelling at the
rate of 186,000 miles per second, would cover in one year.]
In this simple outline we have not touched on some of the more debatable
questions that engage the attention of modern astronomers. Many of these
questions have not yet passed the controversial stage; out of these will
emerge the astronomy of the future. But we have seen enough to convince
us that, whatever advances the future holds in store, the science of the
heavens constitutes one of the most important stones in the wonderful
fabric of human knowledge.
ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS
§ 1
The Telescope
The instruments used in modern astronomy are amongst the finest triumphs
of mechanical skill in the world. In a great modern observatory the
different instruments are to be counted by the score, but there are two
which stand out pre-eminent as the fundamental instruments of modern
astronomy. These instruments are the telescope and the spectroscope, and
without them astronomy, as we know it, could not exist.
There is still some dispute as to where and when the first telescope was
constructed; as an astronomical instrument, however, it dates from the
time of the great Italian scientist Galileo, who, with a very small and
imperfect telescope of his own invention, first observed the spots on
the sun, the mountains of the moon, and the chief four satellites of
Jupiter. A good pair of modern binoculars is superior to this early
instrument of Galileo's, and the history of telescope construction, from
that primitive instrument to the modern giant recently erected on Mount
Wilson, California, is an exciting chapter in human progress. But the
early instruments have only an historic interest: the era of modern
telescopes begins in the nineteenth century.
During the last century telescope construction underwent an
unprecedented development. An immense amount of interest was taken in
the construction of large telescopes, and the different countries of the
world entered on an exciting race to produce the most powerful possible
instruments. Besides this rivalry of different countries there was a
rivalry of methods. The telescope developed along two different lines,
and each of these two types has its partisans at the present day. These
types are known as _refractors_ and _reflectors_, and it is necessary to
mention, briefly, the principles employed in each. The _refractor_ is
the ordinary, familiar type of telescope. It consists, essentially, of a
large lens at one end of a tube, and a small lens, called the eye-piece,
at the other. The function of the large lens is to act as a sort of
gigantic eye. It collects a large amount of light, an amount
proportional to its size, and brings this light to a focus within the
tube of the telescope. It thus produces a small but bright image, and
the eye-piece magnifies this image. In the _reflector_, instead of a
large lens at the top of the tube, a large mirror is placed at the
bottom. This mirror is so shaped as to reflect the light that falls on
it to a focus, whence the light is again led to an eye-piece. Thus the
refractor and the reflector differ chiefly in their manner of gathering
light. The powerfulness of the telescope depends on the size of the
light-gatherer. A telescope with a lens four inches in diameter is four
times as powerful as the one with a lens two inches in diameter, for the
amount of light gathered obviously depends on the _area_ of the lens,
and the area varies as the _square_ of the diameter.
The largest telescopes at present in existence are _reflectors_. It is
much easier to construct a very large mirror than to construct a very
large lens; it is also cheaper. A mirror is more likely to get out of
order than is a lens, however, and any irregularity in the shape of a
mirror produces a greater distorting effect than in a lens. A refractor
is also more convenient to handle than is a reflector. For these reasons
great refractors are still made, but the largest of them, the great
Yerkes' refractor, is much smaller than the greatest reflector, the one
on Mount Wilson, California. The lens of the Yerkes' refractor measures
three feet four inches in diameter, whereas the Mount Wilson reflector
has a diameter of no less than eight feet four inches.
[Illustration: THE YERKES 40-INCH REFRACTOR
(The largest _refracting_ telescope in the world. Its big lens weighs
1,000 pounds, and its mammoth tube, which is 62 feet long, weighs about
12,000 pounds. The parts to be moved weigh approximately 22 tons.
The great _100-inch reflector_ of the Mount Wilson reflecting
telescope--the largest _reflecting_ instrument in the world--weighs
nearly 9,000 pounds and the moving parts of the telescope weigh about
100 tons.
The new _72-inch reflector_ at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory,
near Victoria, B. C., weighs nearly 4,500 pounds, and the moving parts
about 35 tons.)]
[Illustration: _Photo: H. J. Shepstone._
THE DOUBLE-SLIDE PLATE HOLDER ON YERKES 40-INCH REFRACTING TELESCOPE
The smaller telescope at the top of the picture acts as a "finder"; the
field of view of the large telescope is so restricted that it is
difficult to recognise, as it were, the part of the heavens being
surveyed. The smaller telescope takes in a larger area and enables the
precise object to be examined to be easily selected.]
[Illustration: MODERN DIRECT-READING SPECTROSCOPE
(_By A. Hilger, Ltd._)
The light is brought through one telescope, is split up by the prism,
and the resulting spectrum is observed through the other telescope.]
But there is a device whereby the power of these giant instruments,
great as it is, can be still further heightened. That device is the
simple one of allowing the photographic plate to take the place of the
human eye. Nowadays an astronomer seldom spends the night with his eye
glued to the great telescope. He puts a photographic plate there. The
photographic plate has this advantage over the eye, that it builds up
impressions. However long we stare at an object too faint to be seen, we
shall never see it. With the photographic plate, however, faint
impressions go on accumulating. As hour after hour passes, the star
which was too faint to make a perceptible impression on the plate goes
on affecting it until finally it makes an impression which can be made
visible. In this way the photographic plate reveals to us phenomena in
the heavens which cannot be seen even through the most powerful
telescopes.
Telescopes of the kind we have been discussing, telescopes for exploring
the heavens, are mounted _equatorially_; that is to say, they are
mounted on an inclined pillar parallel to the axis of the earth so that,
by rotating round this pillar, the telescope is enabled to follow the
apparent motion of a star due to the rotation of the earth. This motion
is effected by clock-work, so that, once adjusted on a star, and the
clock-work started, the telescope remains adjusted on that star for any
length of time that is desired. But a great official observatory, such
as Greenwich Observatory or the Observatory at Paris, also has _transit_
instruments, or telescopes smaller than the equatorials and without the
same facility of movement, but which, by a number of exquisite
refinements, are more adapted to accurate measurements. It is these
instruments which are chiefly used in the compilation of the _Nautical
Almanac_. They do not follow the apparent motions of the stars. Stars
are allowed to drift across the field of vision, and as each star
crosses a small group of parallel wires in the eye-piece its precise
time of passage is recorded. Owing to their relative fixity of position
these instruments can be constructed to record the _positions_ of stars
with much greater accuracy than is possible to the more general and
flexible mounting of equatorials. The recording of transit is
comparatively dry work; the spectacular element is entirely absent;
stars are treated merely as mathematical points. But these observations
furnish the very basis of modern mathematical astronomy, and without
them such publications as the _Nautical Almanac_ and the _Connaissance
du Temps_ would be robbed of the greater part of their importance.
§ 2
The Spectroscope
We have already learnt something of the principles of the spectroscope,
the instrument which, by making it possible to learn the actual
constitution of the stars, has added a vast new domain to astronomy. In
the simplest form of this instrument the analysing portion consists of a
single prism. Unless the prism is very large, however, only a small
degree of dispersion is obtained. It is obviously desirable, for
accurate analytical work, that the dispersion--that is, the separation
of the different parts of the spectrum--should be as great as possible.
The dispersion can be increased by using a large number of prisms, the
light emerging from the first prism, entering the second, and so on. In
this way each prism produces its own dispersive effect and, when a
number of prisms are employed, the final dispersion is considerable. A
considerable amount of light is absorbed in this way, however, so that
unless our primary source of light is very strong, the final spectrum
will be very feeble and hard to decipher.
Another way of obtaining considerable dispersion is by using a
_diffraction grating_ instead of a prism. This consists essentially of a
piece of glass on which lines are ruled by a diamond point. When the
lines are sufficiently close together they split up light falling on
them into its constituents and produce a spectrum. The modern
diffraction grating is a truly wonderful piece of work. It contains
several thousands of lines to the inch, and these lines have to be
spaced with the greatest accuracy. But in this instrument, again, there
is a considerable loss of light.
We have said that every substance has its own distinctive spectrum, and
it might be thought that, when a list of the spectra of different
substances has been prepared, spectrum analysis would become perfectly
straightforward. In practice, however, things are not quite so simple.
The spectrum emitted by a substance is influenced by a variety of
conditions. The pressure, the temperature, the state of motion of the
object we are observing, all make a difference, and one of the most
laborious tasks of the modern spectroscopist is to disentangle these
effects from one another. Simple as it is in its broad outlines,
spectroscopy is, in reality, one of the most intricate branches of
modern science.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(The following list of books may be useful to readers wishing to pursue
further the study of Astronomy.)
BALL, _The Story of the Heavens_.
BALL, _The Story of the Sun_.
FORBES, _History of Astronomy_.
HINCKS, _Astronomy_.
KIPPAX, _Call of the Stars_.
LOWELL, _Mars and Its Canals_.
LOWELL, _Evolution of Worlds_.
MCKREADY, _A Beginner's Star-Book_.
NEWCOMB, _Popular Astronomy_.
NEWCOMB, _The Stars: A Study of the Universe_.
OLCOTT, _Field Book of the Stars_.
PRICE, _Essence of Astronomy_.
SERVISS, _Curiosities of the Skies_.
WEBB, _Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes_.
YOUNG, _Text-Book of General Astronomy_.
THE ROMANCE OF THE HEAVENS
THE SCALE OF THE UNIVERSE--THE SOLAR SYSTEM
§ 1
The story of the triumphs of modern science naturally opens with
Astronomy. The picture of the Universe which the astronomer offers to us
is imperfect; the lines he traces are often faint and uncertain. There
are many problems which have been solved, there are just as many about
which there is doubt, and notwithstanding our great increase in
knowledge, there remain just as many which are entirely unsolved.
The problem of the structure and duration of the universe [said the
great astronomer Simon Newcomb] is the most far-reaching with which
the mind has to deal. Its solution may be regarded as the ultimate
object of stellar astronomy, the possibility of reaching which has
occupied the minds of thinkers since the beginning of civilisation.
Before our time the problem could be considered only from the
imaginative or the speculative point of view. Although we can to-day
attack it to a limited extent by scientific methods, it must be
admitted that we have scarcely taken more than the first step toward
the actual solution.... What is the duration of the universe in
time? Is it fitted to last for ever in its present form, or does it
contain within itself the seeds of dissolution? Must it, in the
course of time, in we know not how many millions of ages, be
transformed into something very different from what it now is? This
question is intimately associated with the question whether the
stars form a system. If they do, we may suppose that system to be
permanent in its general features; if not, we must look further for
our conclusions.
The Heavenly Bodies
The heavenly bodies fall into two very distinct classes so far as their
relation to our Earth is concerned; the one class, a very small one,
comprises a sort of colony of which the Earth is a member. These bodies
are called _planets_, or wanderers. There are eight of them, including
the Earth, and they all circle round the sun. Their names, in the order
of their distance from the sun, are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and of these Mercury, the nearest to
the sun, is rarely seen by the naked eye. Uranus is practically
invisible, and Neptune quite so. These eight planets, together with the
sun, constitute, as we have said, a sort of little colony; this colony
is called the Solar System.
The second class of heavenly bodies are those which lie _outside_ the
solar system. Every one of those glittering points we see on a starlit
night is at an immensely greater distance from us than is any member of
the Solar System. Yet the members of this little colony of ours, judged
by terrestrial standards, are at enormous distances from one another. If
a shell were shot in a straight line from one side of Neptune's orbit to
the other it would take five hundred years to complete its journey. Yet
this distance, the greatest in the Solar System as now known (excepting
the far swing of some of the comets), is insignificant compared to the
distances of the stars. One of the nearest stars to the earth that we
know of is Alpha Centauri, estimated to be some twenty-five million
millions of miles away. Sirius, the brightest star in the firmament, is
double this distance from the earth.
We must imagine the colony of planets to which we belong as a compact
little family swimming in an immense void. At distances which would take
our shell, not hundreds, but millions of years to traverse, we reach
the stars--or rather, a star, for the distances between stars are as
great as the distance between the nearest of them and our Sun. The
Earth, the planet on which we live, is a mighty globe bounded by a crust
of rock many miles in thickness; the great volumes of water which we
call our oceans lie in the deeper hollows of the crust. Above the
surface an ocean of invisible gas, the atmosphere, rises to a height of
about three hundred miles, getting thinner and thinner as it ascends.
[Illustration: LAPLACE
One of the greatest mathematical astronomers of all time and the
originator of the nebular theory.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Royal Astronomical Society._
PROFESSOR J. C. ADAMS
who, anticipating the great French mathematician, Le Verrier, discovered
the planet Neptune by calculations based on the irregularities of the
orbit of Uranus. One of the most dramatic discoveries in the history of
Science.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Elliott & Fry, Ltd._
PROFESSOR EDDINGTON
Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge. The most famous of the English
disciples of Einstein.]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--DIAGRAMS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
THE COMPARATIVE DISTANCES OF THE PLANETS
(Drawn approximately to scale)
The isolation of the Solar System is very great. On the above scale the
_nearest_ star (at a distance of 25 trillions of miles) would be over
_one half mile_ away. The hours, days, and years are the measures of
time as we use them; that is: Jupiter's "Day" (one rotation of the
planet) is made in ten of _our hours_; Mercury's "Year" (one revolution
of the planet around the Sun) is eighty-eight of _our days_. Mercury's
"Day" and "Year" are the same. This planet turns always the same side to
the Sun.]
[Illustration: THE COMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE SUN AND THE PLANETS (Drawn
approximately to scale)
On this scale the Sun would be 17-1/2 inches in diameter; it is far
greater than all the planets put together. Jupiter, in turn, is greater
than all the other planets put together.]
Except when the winds rise to a high speed, we seem to live in a very
tranquil world. At night, when the glare of the sun passes out of our
atmosphere, the stars and planets seem to move across the heavens with a
stately and solemn slowness. It was one of the first discoveries of
modern astronomy that this movement is only apparent. The apparent
creeping of the stars across the heavens at night is accounted for by
the fact that the earth turns upon its axis once in every twenty-four
hours. When we remember the size of the earth we see that this implies a
prodigious speed.
In addition to this the earth revolves round the sun at a speed of more
than a thousand miles a minute. Its path round the sun, year in year
out, measures about 580,000,000 miles. The earth is held closely to this
path by the gravitational pull of the sun, which has a mass 333,432
times that of the earth. If at any moment the sun ceased to exert this
pull the earth would instantly fly off into space straight in the
direction in which it was moving at the time, that is to say, at a
tangent. This tendency to fly off at a tangent is continuous. It is the
balance between it and the sun's pull which keeps the earth to her
almost circular orbit. In the same way the seven other planets are held
to their orbits.
Circling round the earth, in the same way as the earth circles round the
sun, is our moon. Sometimes the moon passes directly between us and the
sun, and cuts off the light from us. We then have a total or partial
eclipse of the sun. At other times the earth passes directly between the
sun and the moon, and causes an eclipse of the moon. The great ball of
the earth naturally trails a mighty shadow across space, and the moon is
"eclipsed" when it passes into this.
The other seven planets, five of which have moons of their own, circle
round the sun as the earth does. The sun's mass is immensely larger than
that of all the planets put together, and all of them would be drawn
into it and perish if they did not travel rapidly round it in gigantic
orbits. So the eight planets, spinning round on their axes, follow their
fixed paths round the sun. The planets are secondary bodies, but they
are most important, because they are the only globes in which there can
be life, as we know life.
If we could be transported in some magical way to an immense distance in
space above the sun, we should see our Solar System as it is drawn in
the accompanying diagram (Fig. 1), except that the planets would be mere
specks, faintly visible in the light which they receive from the sun.
(This diagram is drawn approximately to scale.) If we moved still
farther away, trillions of miles away, the planets would fade entirely
out of view, and the sun would shrink into a point of fire, a star. And
here you begin to realize the nature of the universe. _The sun is a
star. The stars are suns._ Our sun looks big simply because of its
comparative nearness to us. The universe is a stupendous collection of
millions of stars or suns, many of which may have planetary families
like ours.
§ 2
The Scale of the Universe
How many stars are there? A glance at a photograph of star-clouds will
tell at once that it is quite impossible to count them. The fine
photograph reproduced in Figure 2 represents a very small patch of that
pale-white belt, the Milky Way, which spans the sky at night. It is true
that this is a particularly rich area of the Milky Way, but the entire
belt of light has been resolved in this way into masses or clouds of
stars. Astronomers have counted the stars in typical districts here and
there, and from these partial counts we get some idea of the total
number of stars. There are estimated to be between two and three
thousand million stars.
Yet these stars are separated by inconceivable distances from each
other, and it is one of the greatest triumphs of modern astronomy to
have mastered, so far, the scale of the universe. For several centuries
astronomers have known the relative distances from each other of the sun
and the planets. If they could discover the actual distance of any one
planet from any other, they could at once tell all the distances within
the Solar System.
The sun is, on the latest measurements, at an average distance of
92,830,000 miles from the earth, for as the orbit of the earth is not a
true circle, this distance varies. This means that in six months from
now the earth will be right at the opposite side of its path round the
sun, or 185,000,000 miles away from where it is now. Viewed or
photographed from two positions so wide apart, the nearest stars show a
tiny "shift" against the background of the most distant stars, and that
is enough for the mathematician. He can calculate the distance of any
star near enough to show this "shift." We have found that the nearest
star to the earth, a recently discovered star, is twenty-five trillion
miles away. Only thirty stars are known to be within a hundred trillion
miles of us.
This way of measuring does not, however, take us very far away in the
heavens. There are only a few hundred stars within five hundred trillion
miles of the earth, and at that distance the "shift" of a star against
the background (parallax, the astronomer calls it) is so minute that
figures are very uncertain. At this point the astronomer takes up a new
method. He learns the different types of stars, and then he is able to
deduce more or less accurately the distance of a star of a known type
from its faintness. He, of course, has instruments for gauging their
light. As a result of twenty years work in this field, it is now known
that the more distant stars of the Milky Way are at least a hundred
thousand trillion (100,000,000,000,000,000) miles away from the sun.
Our sun is in a more or less central region of the universe, or a few
hundred trillion miles from the actual centre. The remainder of the
stars, which are all outside our Solar System, are spread out,
apparently, in an enormous disc-like collection, so vast that even a ray
of light, which travels at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, would
take 50,000 years to travel from one end of it to the other. This, then
is what we call our universe.
Are there other Universes?
Why do we say "our universe"? Why not _the_ universe? It is now believed
by many of our most distinguished astronomers that our colossal family
of stars is only one of many universes. By a universe an astronomer
means any collection of stars which are close enough to control each
other's movements by gravitation; and it is clear that there might be
many universes, in this sense, separated from each other by profound
abysses of space. Probably there are.
For a long time we have been familiar with certain strange objects in
the heavens which are called "spiral nebulæ" (Fig 4). We shall see at a
later stage what a nebula is, and we shall see that some astronomers
regard these spiral nebulæ as worlds "in the making." But some of the
most eminent astronomers believe that they are separate
universes--"island-universes" they call them--or great collections of
millions of stars like our universe. There are certain peculiarities in
the structure of the Milky Way which lead these astronomers to think
that our universe may be a spiral nebula, and that the other spiral
nebulæ are "other universes."
[Illustration: _Photo: Harvard College Observatory._
FIG. 2.--THE MILKY WAY
Note the cloud-like effect.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3--THE MOON ENTERING THE SHADOW CAST BY THE EARTH
The diagram shows the Moon partially eclipsed.]
[Illustration: _From a photograph taken at the Yerkes Observatory_
FIG. 4.--THE GREAT NEBULA IN ANDROMEDA, MESSIER 31]
Vast as is the Solar System, then, it is excessively minute in
comparison with the Stellar System, the universe of the Stars, which is
on a scale far transcending anything the human mind can apprehend.
THE SOLAR SYSTEM
THE SUN
§ 1
But now let us turn to the Solar System, and consider the members of our
own little colony.
Within the Solar System there are a large number of problems that
interest us. What is the size, mass, and distance of each of the
planets? What satellites, like our Moon, do they possess? What are their
temperatures? And those other, sporadic members of our system, comets
and meteors, what are they? What are their movements? How do they
originate? And the Sun itself, what is its composition, what is the
source of its heat, how did it originate? Is it running down?
These last questions introduce us to a branch of astronomy which is
concerned with the physical constitution of the stars, a study which,
not so very many years ago, may well have appeared inconceivable. But
the spectroscope enables us to answer even these questions, and the
answer opens up questions of yet greater interest. We find that the
stars can be arranged in an order of development--that there are stars
at all stages of their life-history. The main lines of the evolution of
the stellar universe can be worked out. In the sun and stars we have
furnaces with temperatures enormously high; it is in such conditions
that substances are resolved into their simplest forms, and it is thus
we are enabled to obtain a knowledge of the most primitive forms of
matter. It is in this direction that the spectroscope (which we shall
refer to immediately) has helped us so much. It is to this wonderful
instrument that we owe our knowledge of the composition of the sun and
stars, as we shall see.
"That the spectroscope will detect the millionth of a milligram of
matter, and on that account has discovered new elements, commands
our admiration; but when we find in addition that it will detect the
nature of forms of matter trillions of miles away, and moreover,
that it will measure the velocities with which these forms of matter
are moving with an absurdly small per cent. of possible error, we
can easily acquiesce in the statement that it is the greatest
instrument ever devised by the brain and hand of man."
Such are some of the questions with which modern astronomy deals. To
answer them requires the employment of instruments of almost incredible
refinement and exactitude and also the full resources of mathematical
genius. Whether astronomy be judged from the point of view of the
phenomena studied, the vast masses, the immense distances, the æons of
time, or whether it be judged as a monument of human ingenuity,
patience, and the rarest type of genius, it is certainly one of the
grandest, as it is also one of the oldest, of the sciences.
The Solar System
In the Solar System we include all those bodies dependent on the sun
which circulate round it at various distances, deriving their light and
heat from the sun--the planets and their moons, certain comets and a
multitude of meteors: in other words, all bodies whose movements in
space are determined by the gravitational pull of the sun.
The Sun
Thanks to our wonderful modern instruments and the ingenious methods
used by astronomers, we have to-day a remarkable knowledge of the sun.
Look at the figure of the sun in the frontispiece. The picture
represents an eclipse of the sun; the dark body of the moon has screened
the sun's shining disc and taken the glare out of our eyes; we see a
silvery halo surrounding the great orb on every side. It is the sun's
atmosphere, or "crown" (corona), stretching for millions of miles into
space in the form of a soft silvery-looking light; probably much of its
light is sunlight reflected from particles of dust, although the
spectroscope shows an element in the corona that has not so far been
detected anywhere else in the universe and which in consequence has been
named Coronium.
We next notice in the illustration that at the base of the halo there
are red flames peeping out from the edges of the hidden disc. When one
remembers that the sun is 866,000 miles in diameter, one hardly needs to
be told that these flames are really gigantic. We shall see what they
are presently.
Regions of the Sun
The astronomer has divided the sun into definite concentric regions or
layers. These layers envelop the nucleus or central body of the sun
somewhat as the atmosphere envelops our earth. It is through these
vapour layers that the bright white body of the sun is seen. Of the
innermost region, the heart or nucleus of the sun, we know almost
nothing. The central body or nucleus is surrounded by a brilliantly
luminous envelope or layer of vaporous matter which is what we see when
we look at the sun and which the astronomer calls the photosphere.
Above--that is, overlying--the photosphere there is a second layer of
glowing gases, which is known as the reversing layer. This layer is
cooler than the underlying photosphere; it forms a veil of smoke-like
haze and is of from 500 to 1,000 miles in thickness.
A third layer or envelope immediately lying over the last one is the
region known as the chromosphere. The chromosphere extends from 5,000
to 10,000 miles in thickness--a "sea" of red tumultuous surging fire.
Chief among the glowing gases is the vapour of hydrogen. The intense
white heat of the photosphere beneath shines through this layer,
overpowering its brilliant redness. From the uppermost portion of the
chromosphere great fiery tongues of glowing hydrogen and calcium vapour
shoot out for many thousands of miles, driven outward by some prodigious
expulsive force. It is these red "prominences" which are such a notable
feature in the picture of the eclipse of the sun already referred to.
During the solar eclipse of 1919 one of these red flames rose in less
than seven hours from a height of 130,000 miles to more than 500,000
miles above the sun's surface. This immense column of red-hot gas, four
or five times the thickness of the earth, was soaring upward at the rate
of 60,000 miles an hour.
These flaming jets or prominences shooting out from the chromosphere are
not to be seen every day by the naked eye; the dazzling light of the sun
obscures them, gigantic as they are. They can be observed, however, by
the spectroscope any day, and they are visible to us for a very short
time during an eclipse of the sun. Some extraordinary outbursts have
been witnessed. Thus the late Professor Young described one on September
7, 1871, when he had been examining a prominence by the spectroscope:
It had remained unchanged since noon of the previous day--a long,
low, quiet-looking cloud, not very dense, or brilliant, or in any
way remarkable except for its size. At 12:30 p.m. the Professor left
the spectroscope for a short time, and on returning half an hour
later to his observations, he was astonished to find the gigantic
Sun flame shattered to pieces. The solar atmosphere was filled with
flying debris, and some of these portions reached a height of
100,000 miles above the solar surface. Moving with a velocity which,
even at the distance of 93,000,000 miles, was almost perceptible to
the eye, these fragments doubled their height in ten minutes. On
January 30, 1885, another distinguished solar observer, the late
Professor Tacchini of Rome, observed one of the greatest prominences
ever seen by man. Its height was no less than 142,000
miles--eighteen times the diameter of the earth. Another mighty
flame was so vast that supposing the eight large planets of the
solar system ranged one on top of the other, the prominence would
still tower above them.[1]
[1] _The Romance of Astronomy_, by H. Macpherson.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--DIAGRAM SHOWING THE MAIN LAYERS OF THE SUN
Compare with frontispiece.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Royal Observatory, Greenwich._
FIG. 6.--SOLAR PROMINENCES SEEN AT TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, May 29, 1919.
TAKEN AT SOBRAL, BRAZIL.
The small Corona is also visible.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--THE VISIBLE SURFACE OF THE SUN
A photograph taken at the Mount Wilson Observatory of the Carnegie
Institution at Washington.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--THE SUN
Photographed in the light of glowing hydrogen, at the Mount Wilson
Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington: vortex phenomena
near the spots are especially prominent.]
The fourth and uppermost layer or region is that of the corona, of
immense extent and fading away into the surrounding sky--this we have
already referred to. The diagram (Fig. 5) shows the dispositions of
these various layers of the sun. It is through these several transparent
layers that we see the white light body of the sun.
§ 2
The Surface of the Sun
Here let us return to and see what more we know about the
photosphere--the sun's surface. It is from the photosphere that we have
gained most of our knowledge of the composition of the sun, which is
believed not to be a solid body. Examination of the photosphere shows
that the outer surface is never at rest. Small bright cloudlets come and
go in rapid succession, giving the surface, through contrasts in
luminosity, a granular appearance. Of course, to be visible at all at
92,830,000 miles the cloudlets cannot be small. They imply enormous
activity in the photosphere. If we might speak picturesquely the sun's
surface resembles a boiling ocean of white-hot metal vapours. We have
to-day a wonderful instrument, which will be described later, which
dilutes, as it were, the general glare of the sun, and enables us to
observe these fiery eruptions at any hour. The "oceans" of red-hot gas
and white-hot metal vapour at the sun's surface are constantly driven by
great storms. Some unimaginable energy streams out from the body or
muscles of the sun and blows its outer layers into gigantic shreds, as
it were.
The actual temperature at the sun's surface, or what appears to us to be
the surface--the photosphere--is, of course, unknown, but careful
calculation suggests that it is from 5,000° C. to 7,000° C. The interior
is vastly hotter. We can form no conception of such temperatures as must
exist there. Not even the most obdurate solid could resist such
temperatures, but would be converted almost instantaneously into gas.
But it would not be gas as we know gases on the earth. The enormous
pressures that exist on the sun must convert even gases into thick
treacly fluids. We can only infer this state of matter. It is beyond our
power to reproduce it.
Sun-spots
It is in the brilliant photosphere that the dark areas known as
sun-spots appear. Some of these dark spots--they are dark only by
contrast with the photosphere surrounding them--are of enormous size,
covering many thousands of square miles of surface. What they are we
cannot positively say. They look like great cavities in the sun's
surface. Some think they are giant whirlpools. Certainly they seem to be
great whirling streams of glowing gases with vapours above them and
immense upward and downward currents within them. Round the edges of the
sun-spots rise great tongues of flame.
Perhaps the most popularly known fact about sun-spots is that they are
somehow connected with what we call magnetic storms on earth. These
magnetic storms manifest themselves in interruptions of our telegraphic
and telephonic communications, in violent disturbances of the mariner's
compass, and in exceptional auroral displays. The connection between the
two sets of phenomena cannot be doubted, even although at times there
may be a great spot on the sun without any corresponding "magnetic
storm" effects on the earth.
A surprising fact about sun-spots is that they show definite periodic
variations in number. The best-defined period is one of about eleven
years. During this period the spots increase to a maximum in number and
then diminish to a minimum, the variation being more or less regular.
Now this can only mean one thing. To be periodic the spots must have
some deep-seated connection with the fundamental facts of the sun's
structure and activities. Looked at from this point of view their
importance becomes great.
[Illustration: _Reproduction from "The Forces of Nature"_ (_Messrs.
Macmillan_)
THE AURORA BOREALIS
The aurora borealis is one of the most beautiful spectacles in the sky.
The colours and shape change every instant; sometimes a fan-like cluster
of rays, at other times long golden draperies gliding one over the
other. Blue, green, yellow, red, and white combine to give a glorious
display of colour. The theory of its origin is still, in part, obscure,
but there can be no doubt that the aurora is related to the magnetic
phenomena of the earth and therefore is connected with the electrical
influence of the sun.]
It is from the study of sun-spots that we have learned that the sun's
surface does not appear to rotate all at the same speed. The
"equatorial" regions are rotating quicker than regions farther north or
south. A point forty-five degrees from the equator seems to take about
two and a half days longer to complete one rotation than a point on the
equator. This, of course, confirms our belief that the sun cannot be a
solid body.
What is its composition? We know that there are present, in a gaseous
state, such well-known elements as sodium, iron, copper, zinc, and
magnesium; indeed, we know that there is practically every element in
the sun that we know to be in the earth. How do we know?
It is from the photosphere, as has been said, that we have won most of
our knowledge of the sun. The instrument used for this purpose is the
spectroscope; and before proceeding to deal further with the sun and the
source of its energy it will be better to describe this instrument.
A WONDERFUL INSTRUMENT AND WHAT IT REVEALS
The spectroscope is an instrument for analysing light. So important is
it in the revelations it has given us that it will be best to describe
it fully. Every substance to be examined must first be made to glow,
made luminous; and as nearly everything in the heavens _is_ luminous the
instrument has a great range in Astronomy. And when we speak of
analysing light, we mean that the light may be broken up into waves of
different lengths. What we call light is a series of minute waves in
ether, and these waves are--measuring them from crest to crest, so to
say--of various lengths. Each wave-length corresponds to a colour of the
rainbow. The shortest waves give us a sensation of violet colour, and
the largest waves cause a sensation of red. The rainbow, in fact, is a
sort of natural spectrum. (The meaning of the rainbow is that the
moisture-laden air has sorted out these waves, in the sun's light,
according to their length.) Now the simplest form of spectroscope is a
glass prism--a triangular-shaped piece of glass. If white light
(sunlight, for example) passes through a glass prism, we see a series of
rainbow-tinted colours. Anyone can notice this effect when sunlight is
shining through any kind of cut glass--the stopper of a wine decanter,
for instance. If, instead of catching with the eye the coloured lights
as they emerge from the glass prism, we allow them to fall on a screen,
we shall find that they pass, by continuous gradations, from red at the
one end of the screen, through orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo,
to violet at the other end. _In other words, what we call white light is
composed of rays of these several colours. They go to make up the effect
which we call white._ And now just as water can be split up into its two
elements, oxygen and hydrogen, so sunlight can be broken up into its
primary colours, which are those we have just mentioned.
This range of colours, produced by the spectroscope, we call the solar
spectrum, and these are, from the spectroscopic point of view, primary
colours. Each shade of colour has its definite position in the spectrum.
That is to say, the light of each shade of colour (corresponding to its
wave-length) is reflected through a certain fixed angle on passing
through the glass prism. Every possible kind of light has its definite
position, and is denoted by a number which gives the wave-length of the
vibrations constituting that particular kind of light.
Now, other kinds of light besides sunlight can be analysed. Light
from any substance which has been made incandescent may be observed with
the spectroscope in the same way, and each element can be thus
separated. It is found that each substance (in the same conditions of
pressure, etc.) gives a constant spectrum of its own. _Each metal
displays its own distinctive colour. It is obvious, therefore, that the
spectrum provides the means for identifying a particular substance._ It
was by this method that we discovered in the sun the presence of such
well-known elements as sodium, iron, copper, zinc, and magnesium.
[Illustration: _Yerkes Observatory._
FIG. 9.--THE GREAT SUN-SPOT OF JULY 17, 1905]
[Illustration: _From photographs taken at the Yerkes Observatory._
FIG. 10.--SOLAR PROMINENCES
These are about 60,000 miles in height. The two photographs show the
vast changes occurring in ten minutes. October 10, 1910.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Mount Wilson Observatory._
FIG. 11.--MARS, October 5, 1909
Showing the dark markings and the Polar Cap.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--JUPITER
Showing the belts which are probably cloud formations.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Professor E. E. Barnard, Yerkes Observatory._
FIG. 13.--SATURN, November 19, 1911
Showing the rings, mighty swarms of meteorites.]
Every chemical element known, then, has a distinctive spectrum of its
own when it is raised to incandescence, and this distinctive spectrum is
as reliable a means of identification for the element as a human face is
for its owner. Whether it is a substance glowing in the laboratory or in
a remote star makes no difference to the spectroscope; if the light of
any substance reaches it, that substance will be recognised and
identified by the characteristic set of waves.
The spectrum of a glowing mass of gas will consist in a number of bright
lines of various colours, and at various intervals; corresponding to
each kind of gas, there will be a peculiar and distinctive arrangement
of bright lines. But if the light from such a mass of glowing gas be
made to pass through a cool mass of the _same_ gas it will be found that
dark lines replace the bright lines in the spectrum, the reason for this
being that the cool gas absorbs the rays of light emitted by the hot
gas. Experiments of this kind enable us to reach the important general
statement that every gas, when cold, absorbs the same rays of light
which it emits when hot.
Crossing the solar spectrum are hundreds and hundreds of dark lines.
These could not at first be explained, because this fact of
discriminative absorption was not known. We understand now. The sun's
white light comes from the photosphere, but between us and the
photosphere there is, as we have seen, another solar envelope of
relatively cooler vapours--the reversing layer. Each constituent
element in this outer envelope stops its own kind of light, that is, the
kind of light made by incandescent atoms of the same element in the
photosphere. The "stoppages" register themselves in the solar spectrum
as dark lines placed exactly where the corresponding bright lines would
have been. The explanation once attained, dark lines became as
significant as bright lines. The secret of the sun's composition was
out. We have found practically every element in the sun that we know to
be in the earth. We have identified an element in the sun before we were
able to isolate it on the earth. We have been able even to point to the
coolest places on the sun, the centres of sun-spots, where alone the
temperature seems to have fallen sufficiently low to allow chemical
compounds to form.
It is thus we have been able to determine what the stars, comets, or
nebulæ are made of.
A Unique Discovery
In 1868 Sir Norman Lockyer detected a light coming from the prominences
of the sun which was not given by any substance known on earth, and
attributed this to an unknown gas which he called helium, from the Greek
_helios_, the sun. _In 1895 Sir William Ramsay discovered in certain
minerals the same gas identified by the spectroscope._ We can say,
therefore, that this gas was discovered in the sun nearly thirty years
before it was found on earth; this discovery of the long-lost heir is as
thrilling a chapter in the detective story of science as any in the
sensational stories of the day, and makes us feel quite certain that our
methods really tell us of what elements sun and stars are built up. The
light from the corona of the sun, as we have mentioned indicates a gas
still unknown on earth, which has been christened Coronium.
Measuring the Speed of Light
But this is not all; soon a new use was found for the spectroscope. We
found that we could measure with it the most difficult of all speeds
to measure, speed in the line of sight. Movement at right angles to the
direction in which one is looking is, if there is sufficient of it, easy
to detect, and, if the distance of the moving body is known, easy to
measure. But movement in the line of vision is both difficult to detect
and difficult to measure. Yet, even at the enormous distances with which
astronomers have to deal, the spectroscope can detect such movement and
furnish data for its measurement. If a luminous body containing, say,
sodium is moving rapidly towards the spectroscope, it will be found that
the sodium lines in the spectrum have moved slightly from their usual
definite positions towards the violet end of the spectrum, the amount of
the change of position increasing with the speed of the luminous body.
If the body is moving away from the spectroscope the shifting of the
spectral lines will be in the opposite direction, towards the red end of
the spectrum. In this way we have discovered and measured movements that
otherwise would probably not have revealed themselves unmistakably to us
for thousands of years. In the same way we have watched, and measured
the speed of, tremendous movements on the sun, and so gained proof that
the vast disturbances we should expect there actually do occur.
[Illustration: THE SPECTROSCOPE IS AN INSTRUMENT FOR ANALYSING LIGHT; IT
PROVIDES THE MEANS FOR IDENTIFYING DIFFERENT SUBSTANCES
This pictorial diagram illustrates the principal of Spectrum Analysis,
showing how sunlight is decomposed into its primary colours. What we
call white light is composed of seven different colours. The diagram is
relieved of all detail which would unduly obscure the simple process by
which a ray of light is broken up by a prism into different
wave-lengths. The spectrum rays have been greatly magnified.]
IS THE SUN DYING?
§ 3
Now let us return to our consideration of the sun.
To us on the earth the most patent and most astonishing fact about the
sun is its tremendous energy. Heat and light in amazing quantities pour
from it without ceasing.
Where does this energy come from? Enormous jets of red glowing gases can
be seen shooting outwards from the sun, like flames from a fire, for
thousands of miles. Does this argue fire, as we know fire on the earth?
On this point the scientist is sure. The sun is not burning, and
combustion is not the source of its heat. Combustion is a chemical
reaction between atoms. The conditions that make it possible are known
and the results are predictable and measurable. But no chemical reaction
of the nature of combustion as we know it will explain the sun's energy,
nor indeed will any ordinary chemical reaction of any kind. If the sun
were composed of combustible material throughout and the conditions of
combustion as we understand them were always present, the sun would burn
itself out in some thousands of years, with marked changes in its heat
and light production as the process advanced. There is no evidence of
such changes. There is, instead, strong evidence that the sun has been
emitting light and heat in prodigious quantities, not for thousands, but
for millions of years. Every addition to our knowledge that throws light
on the sun's age seems to make for increase rather than decrease of its
years. This makes the wonder of its energy greater.
And we cannot avoid the issue of the source of the energy by saying
merely that the sun is gradually radiating away an energy that
originated in some unknown manner, away back at the beginning of things.
Reliable calculations show that the years required for the mere cooling
of a globe like the sun could not possibly run to millions. In other
words, the sun's energy must be subject to continuous and more or less
steady renewal. However it may have acquired its enormous energy in the
past, it must have some source of energy in the present.
The best explanation that we have to-day of this continuous accretion of
energy is that it is due to shrinkage of the sun's bulk under the force
of gravity. Gravity is one of the most mysterious forces of nature, but
it is an obvious fact that bodies behave as if they attracted one
another, and Newton worked out the law of this attraction. We may say,
without trying to go too deeply into things, that every particle of
matter attracts every other throughout the universe. If the diameter of
the sun were to shrink by one mile all round, this would mean that all
the millions of tons in the outer one-mile thickness would have a
straight drop of one mile towards the centre. And that is not all,
because obviously the layers below this outer mile would also drop
inwards, each to a less degree than the one above it. What a tremendous
movement of matter, however slowly it might take place! And what a
tremendous energy would be involved! Astronomers calculate that the
above shrinkage of one mile all round would require fifty years for its
completion, assuming, reasonably, that there is close and continuous
relationship between loss of heat by radiation and shrinkage. Even if
this were true we need not feel over-anxious on this theory; before the
sun became too cold to support life many millions of years would be
required.
It was suggested at one time that falls of meteoric matter into the sun
would account for the sun's heat. This position is hardly tenable now.
The mere bulk of the meteoric matter required by the hypothesis, apart
from other reasons, is against it. There is undoubtedly an enormous
amount of meteoric matter moving about within the bounds of the solar
system, but most of it seems to be following definite routes round the
sun like the planets. The stray erratic quantities destined to meet
their doom by collision with the sun can hardly be sufficient to account
for the sun's heat.
Recent study of radio-active bodies has suggested another factor that
may be working powerfully along with the force of gravitation to
maintain the sun's store of heat. In radio-active bodies certain atoms
seem to be undergoing disintegration. These atoms appear to be splitting
up into very minute and primitive constituents. But since matter may be
split up into such constituents, may it not be built up from them?
The question is whether these "radio-active" elements are undergoing
disintegration, or formation, in the sun. If they are undergoing
disintegration--and the sun itself is undoubtedly radio-active--then we
have another source of heat for the sun that will last indefinitely.
THE PLANETS
LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS?
§ 1
It is quite clear that there cannot be life on the stars. Nothing solid
or even liquid can exist in such furnaces as they are. Life exists only
on planets, and even on these its possibilities are limited. Whether all
the stars, or how many of them, have planetary families like our sun, we
cannot positively say. If they have, such planets would be too faint and
small to be visible tens of trillions of miles away. Some astronomers
think that our sun may be exceptional in having planets, but their
reasons are speculative and unconvincing. Probably a large proportion at
least of the stars have planets, and we may therefore survey the globes
of our own solar system and in a general way extend the results to the
rest of the universe.
In considering the possibility of life as we know it we may at once rule
out the most distant planets from the sun, Uranus and Neptune. They are
probably intrinsically too hot. We may also pass over the nearest planet
to the sun, Mercury. We have reason to believe that it turns on its axis
in the same period as it revolves round the sun, and it must therefore
always present the same side to the sun. This means that the heat on the
sunlit side of Mercury is above boiling-point, while the cold on the
other side must be between two and three hundred degrees below
freezing-point.
The Planet Venus
The planet Venus, the bright globe which is known to all as the morning
and evening "star," seems at first sight more promising as regards the
possibility of life. It is of nearly the same size as the earth, and it
has a good atmosphere, but there are many astronomers who believe that,
like Mercury, it always presents the same face to the sun, and it would
therefore have the same disadvantage--a broiling heat on the sunny side
and the cold of space on the opposite side. We are not sure. The
surface of Venus is so bright--the light of the sun is reflected to us
by such dense masses of cloud and dust--that it is difficult to trace
any permanent markings on it, and thus ascertain how long it takes to
rotate on its axis. Many astronomers believe that they have succeeded,
and that the planet always turns the same face to the sun. If it does,
we can hardly conceive of life on its surface, in spite of the
cloud-screen.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--THE MOON
Showing a great plain and some typical craters. There are thousands of
these craters, and some theories of their origin are explained on page
34.]
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--MARS
1} Drawings by Prof. Lowell to accompany actual photographs of Mars
showing many of the
2} canals. Taken in 1907 by Mr. E. C. Slipher of the Lowell Observatory.
3 Drawing by Prof. Lowell made January 6, 1914.
4 Drawing by Prof. Lowell made January 21, 1914.
Nos. 1 and 2 show the effect of the planet's rotation. Nos. 3 and 4
depict quite different sections. Note the change in the polar snow-caps
in the last two.]
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--THE MOON, AT NINE AND THREE-QUARTER DAYS
Note the mysterious "rays" diverging from the almost perfectly circular
craters indicated by the arrows (Tycho, upper; Copernicus, lower), and
also the mountains to the right with the lunar dawn breaking on them.]
We turn to Mars; and we must first make it clear why there is so much
speculation about life on Mars, and why it is supposed that, if there
_is_ life on Mars, it must be more advanced than life on the earth.
Is there Life on Mars?
The basis of this belief is that if, as we saw, all the globes in our
solar system are masses of metal that are cooling down, the smaller will
have cooled down before the larger, and will be further ahead in their
development. Now Mars is very much smaller than the earth, and must have
cooled at its surface millions of years before the earth did. Hence, if
a story of life began on Mars at all, it began long before the story of
life on the earth. We cannot guess what sort of life-forms would be
evolved in a different world, but we can confidently say that they would
tend toward increasing intelligence; and thus we are disposed to look
for highly intelligent beings on Mars.
But this argument supposes that the conditions of life, namely air and
water, are found on Mars, and it is disputed whether they are found
there in sufficient quantity. The late Professor Percival Lowell, who
made a lifelong study of Mars, maintained that there are hundreds of
straight lines drawn across the surface of the planet, and he claimed
that they are beds of vegetation marking the sites of great channels or
pipes by means of which the "Martians" draw water from their polar
ocean. Professor W. H. Pickering, another high authority, thinks that
the lines are long, narrow marshes fed by moist winds from the poles.
There are certainly white polar caps on Mars. They seem to melt in the
spring, and the dark fringe round them grows broader.
Other astronomers, however, say that they find no trace of water-vapour
in the atmosphere of Mars, and they think that the polar caps may be
simply thin sheets of hoar-frost or frozen gas. They point out that, as
the atmosphere of Mars is certainly scanty, and the distance from the
sun is so great, it may be too cold for the fluid water to exist on the
planet.
If one asks why our wonderful instruments cannot settle these points,
one must be reminded that Mars is never nearer than 34,000,000 miles
from the earth, and only approaches to this distance once in fifteen or
seventeen years. The image of Mars on the photographic negative taken in
a big telescope is very small. Astronomers rely to a great extent on the
eye, which is more sensitive than the photographic plate. But it is easy
to have differences of opinion as to what the eye sees, and so there is
a good deal of controversy.
In August, 1924, the planet will again be well placed for observation,
and we may learn more about it. Already a few of the much-disputed
lines, which people wrongly call "canals," have been traced on
photographs. Astronomers who are sceptical about life on Mars are often
not fully aware of the extraordinary adaptability of life. There was a
time when the climate of the whole earth, from pole to pole, was
semi-tropical for millions of years. No animal could then endure the
least cold, yet now we have plenty of Arctic plants and animals. If the
cold came slowly on Mars, as we have reason to suppose, the population
could be gradually adapted to it. On the whole, it is possible that
there is advanced life on Mars, and it is not impossible, in spite of
the very great difficulties of a code of communication, that our "elder
brothers" may yet flash across space the solution of many of our
problems.
§ 2
Jupiter and Saturn
Next to Mars, going outward from the sun, is Jupiter. Between Mars and
Jupiter, however, there are more than three hundred million miles of
space, and the older astronomers wondered why this was not occupied by a
planet. We now know that it contains about nine hundred "planetoids," or
small globes of from five to five hundred miles in diameter. It was at
one time thought that a planet might have burst into these fragments (a
theory which is not mathematically satisfactory), or it may be that the
material which is scattered in them was prevented by the nearness of the
great bulk of Jupiter from uniting into one globe.
For Jupiter is a giant planet, and its gravitational influence must
extend far over space. It is 1,300 times as large as the earth, and has
nine moons, four of which are large, in attendance on it. It is
interesting to note that the outermost moons of Jupiter and Saturn
revolve round these planets in a direction contrary to the usual
direction taken by moons round planets, and by planets round the sun.
But there is no life on Jupiter.
The surface which we see in photographs (Fig. 12) is a mass of cloud or
steam which always envelops the body of the planet. It is apparently
red-hot. A red tinge is seen sometimes at the edges of its cloud-belts,
and a large red region (the "red spot"), 23,000 miles in length, has
been visible on it for half a century. There may be a liquid or solid
core to the planet, but as a whole it is a mass of seething vapours
whirling round on its axis once in every ten hours. As in the case of
the sun, however, different latitudes appear to rotate at different
rates. The interior of Jupiter is very hot, but the planet is not
self-luminous. The planets Venus and Jupiter shine very brightly, but
they have no light of their own; they reflect the sunlight.
Saturn is in the same interesting condition. The surface in the
photograph (Fig. 13) is steam, and Saturn is so far away from the sun
that the vaporisation of its oceans must necessarily be due to its own
internal heat. It is too hot for water to settle on its surface. Like
Jupiter, the great globe turns on its axis once in ten hours--a
prodigious speed--and must be a swirling, seething mass of metallic
vapours and gases. It is instructive to compare Jupiter and Saturn in
this respect with the sun. They are smaller globes and have cooled down
more than the central fire.
Saturn is a beautiful object in the telescope because it has ten moons
(to include one which is disputed) and a wonderful system of "rings"
round it. The so-called rings are a mighty swarm of meteorites--pieces
of iron and stone of all sorts and sizes, which reflect the light of the
sun to us. This ocean of matter is some miles deep, and stretches from a
few thousand miles from the surface of the planet to 172,000 miles out
in space. Some astronomers think that this is volcanic material which
has been shot out of the planet. Others regard it as stuff which would
have combined to form an eleventh moon but was prevented by the nearness
of Saturn itself. There is no evidence of life on Saturn.
THE MOON
Mars and Venus are therefore the only planets, besides the earth, on
which we may look for life; and in the case of Venus, the possibility is
very faint. But what about the moons which attend the planets? They
range in size from the little ten-miles-wide moons of Mars, to Titan, a
moon of Saturn, and Ganymede, a satellite of Jupiter, which are about
3,000 miles in diameter. May there not be life on some of the larger of
these moons? We will take our own moon as a type of the class.
A Dead World
The moon is so very much nearer to us than any other heavenly body that
we have a remarkable knowledge of it. In Fig. 14 you have a photograph,
taken in one of our largest telescopes, of part of its surface. In a
sense such a telescope brings the moon to within about fifty miles of
us. We should see a city like London as a dark, sprawling blotch on the
globe. We could just detect a Zeppelin or a Diplodocus as a moving speck
against the surface. But we find none of these things. It is true that a
few astronomers believe that they see signs of some sort of feeble life
or movement on the moon. Professor Pickering thinks that he can trace
some volcanic activity. He believes that there are areas of vegetation,
probably of a low order, and that the soil of the moon may retain a
certain amount of water in it. He speaks of a very thin atmosphere, and
of occasional light falls of snow. He has succeeded in persuading some
careful observers that there probably are slight changes of some kind
taking place on the moon.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--A MAP OF THE CHIEF PLAINS AND CRATERS OF THE
MOON
The plains were originally supposed to be seas: hence the name "Mare."]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--A DIAGRAM OF A STREAM OF METEORS SHOWING THE
EARTH PASSING THROUGH THEM] [Illustration: _Photo: Royal Observatory,
Greenwich._
FIG. 19.--COMET, September 29, 1908
Notice the tendency to form a number of tails. (See photograph below.)]
[Illustration: _Photo: Royal Observatory, Greenwich._
FIG. 20.--COMET, October 3, 1908
The process has gone further and a number of distinct tails can now be
counted.]
But there are many things that point to absence of air on the moon. Even
the photographs we reproduce tell the same story. The edges of the
shadows are all hard and black. If there had been an appreciable
atmosphere it would have scattered the sun's light on to the edges and
produced a gradual shading off such as we see on the earth. This
relative absence of air must give rise to some surprising effects. There
will be no sounds on the moon, because sounds are merely air waves. Even
a meteor shattering itself to a violent end against the surface of the
moon would make no noise. Nor would it herald its coming by glowing into
a "shooting star," as it would on entering the earth's atmosphere. There
will be no floating dust, no scent, no twilight, no blue sky, no
twinkling of the stars. The sky will be always black and the stars will
be clearly visible by day as by night. The sun's wonderful corona, which
no man on earth, even by seizing every opportunity during eclipses, can
hope to see for more than two hours in all in a long lifetime, will be
visible all day. So will the great red flames of the sun. Of course,
there will be no life, and no landscape effects and scenery effects due
to vegetation.
The moon takes approximately twenty-seven of our days to turn once on
its axis. So for fourteen days there is continuous night, when the
temperature must sink away down towards the absolute cold of space. This
will be followed without an instant of twilight by full daylight. For
another fourteen days the sun's rays will bear straight down, with no
diffusion or absorption of their heat, or light, on the way. It does not
follow, however, that the temperature of the moon's surface must rise
enormously. It may not even rise to the temperature of melting ice.
Seeing there is no air there can be no check on radiation. The heat that
the moon gets will radiate away immediately. We know that amongst the
coldest places on the earth are the tops of very high mountains, the
points that have reared themselves nearest to the sun but farthest out
of the sheltering blanket of the earth's atmosphere. The actual
temperature of the moon's surface by day is a moot point. It may be
below the freezing-point or above the boiling-point of water.
The Mountains of the Moon
The lack of air is considered by many astronomers to furnish the
explanation of the enormous number of "craters" which pit the moon's
surface. There are about a hundred thousand of these strange rings, and
it is now believed by many that they are spots where very large
meteorites, or even planetoids, splashed into the moon when its surface
was still soft. Other astronomers think that they are the remains of
gigantic bubbles which were raised in the moon's "skin," when the globe
was still molten, by volcanic gases from below. A few astronomers think
that they are, as is popularly supposed, the craters of extinct
volcanoes. Our craters, on the earth, are generally deep cups, whereas
these ring-formations on the moon are more like very shallow and broad
saucers. Clavius, the largest of them, is 123 miles across the interior,
yet its encircling rampart is not a mile high.
The mountains on the moon (Fig. 16) rise to a great height, and are
extraordinarily gaunt and rugged. They are like fountains of lava,
rising in places to 26,000 and 27,000 feet. The lunar Apennines have
three thousand steep and weird peaks. Our terrestrial mountains are
continually worn down by frost acting on moisture and by ice and water,
but there are none of these agencies operating on the moon. Its
mountains are comparatively "everlasting hills."
The moon is interesting to us precisely because it is a dead world. It
seems to show how the earth, or any cooling metal globe, will evolve in
the remote future. We do not know if there was ever life on the moon,
but in any case it cannot have proceeded far in development. At the most
we can imagine some strange lowly forms of vegetation lingering here and
there in pools of heavy gas, expanding during the blaze of the sun's
long day, and frozen rigid during the long night.
METEORS AND COMETS
We may conclude our survey of the solar system with a word about
"shooting stars," or meteors, and comets. There are few now who do not
know that the streak of fire which suddenly lights the sky overhead at
night means that a piece of stone or iron has entered our atmosphere
from outer space, and has been burned up by friction. It was travelling
at, perhaps, twenty or thirty miles a second. At seventy or eighty miles
above our heads it began to glow, as at that height the air is thick
enough to offer serious friction and raise it to a white heat. By the
time the meteor reached about twenty miles or so from the earth's
surface it was entirely dissipated, as a rule in fiery vapour.
Millions of Meteorites
It is estimated that between ten and a hundred million meteorites enter
our atmosphere and are cremated, every day. Most of them weigh only an
ounce or two, and are invisible. Some of them weigh a ton or more, but
even against these large masses the air acts as a kind of "torpedo-net."
They generally burst into fragments and fall without doing damage.
It is clear that "empty space" is, at least within the limits of our
solar system, full of these things. They swarm like fishes in the seas.
Like the fishes, moreover, they may be either solitary or gregarious.
The solitary bit of cosmic rubbish is the meteorite, which we have just
examined. A "social" group of meteorites is the essential part of a
comet. The nucleus, or bright central part, of the head of a comet (Fig.
19) consists of a swarm, sometimes thousands of miles wide, of these
pieces of iron or stone. This swarm has come under the sun's
gravitational influence, and is forced to travel round it. From some
dark region of space it has moved slowly into our system. It is not then
a comet, for it has no tail. But as the crowded meteors approach the
sun, the speed increases. They give off fine vapour-like matter and the
fierce flood of light from the sun sweeps this vapour out in an
ever-lengthening tail. Whatever way the comet is travelling, the tail
always points away from the sun.
A Great Comet
The vapoury tail often grows to an enormous length as the comet
approaches the sun. The great comet of 1843 had a tail two hundred
million miles long. It is, however, composed of the thinnest vapours
imaginable. Twice during the nineteenth century the earth passed through
the tail of a comet, and nothing was felt. The vapours of the tail are,
in fact, so attenuated that we can hardly imagine them to be white-hot.
They may be lit by some electrical force. However that may be, the comet
dashes round the sun, often at three or four hundred miles a second,
then may pass gradually out of our system once more. It may be a
thousand years, or it may be fifty years, before the monarch of the
system will summon it again to make its fiery journey round his throne.
[Illustration: _Photo: Harvard College Observatory._
FIG. 21.--TYPICAL SPECTRA
Six main types of stellar spectra. Notice the lines they have in common,
showing what elements are met with in different types of stars. Each of
these spectra corresponds to a different set of physical and chemical
conditions.] [Illustration: _Photo: Mount Wilson Observatory._
FIG. 22.--A NEBULAR REGION SOUTH OF ZETA ORIONIS
Showing a great projection of "dark matter" cutting off the light from
behind.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, British
Columbia._
FIG. 23.--STAR CLUSTER IN HERCULES
A wonderful cluster of stars. It has been estimated that the distance of
this cluster is such that it would take light more than 100,000 years to
reach us.]
THE STELLAR UNIVERSE
§ 1
The immensity of the Stellar Universe, as we have seen, is beyond our
apprehension. The sun is nothing more than a very ordinary star, perhaps
an insignificant one. There are stars enormously greater than the sun.
One such, Betelgeux, has recently been measured, and its diameter is
more than 300 times that of the sun.
The Evolution of Stars
The proof of the similarity between our sun and the stars has come to us
through the spectroscope. The elements that we find by its means in the
sun are also found in the same way in the stars. Matter, says the
spectroscope, is essentially the same everywhere, in the earth and the
sun, in the comet that visits us once in a thousand years, in the star
whose distance is incalculable, and in the great clouds of "fire-mist"
that we call nebulæ.
In considering the evolution of the stars let us keep two points clearly
in mind. The starting-point, the nebula, is no figment of the scientific
imagination. Hundreds of thousands of nebulæ, besides even vaster
irregular stretches of nebulous matter, exist in the heavens. But the
stages of the evolution of this stuff into stars are very largely a
matter of speculation. Possibly there is more than one line of
evolution, and the various theories may be reconciled. And this applies
also to the theories of the various stages through which the stars
themselves pass on their way to extinction.
The light of about a quarter of a million stars has been analysed in the
spectroscope, and it is found that they fall into about a dozen classes
which generally correspond to stages in their evolution (Fig. 21).
The Age of Stars
In its main lines the spectrum of a star corresponds to its colour, and
we may roughly group the stars into red, yellow, and white. This is also
the order of increasing temperature, the red stars being the coolest and
the white stars the hottest. We might therefore imagine that the white
stars are the youngest, and that as they grow older and cooler they
become yellowish, then red, and finally become invisible--just as a
cooling white-hot iron would do. But a very interesting recent research
shows that there are two kinds of red stars; some of them are amongst
the oldest stars and some are amongst the youngest. The facts appear to
be that when a star is first formed it is not very hot. It is an immense
mass of diffuse gas glowing with a dull-red heat. It contracts under the
mutual gravitation of its particles, and as it does so it grows hotter.
It acquires a yellowish tinge. As it continues to contract it grows
hotter and hotter until its temperature reaches a maximum as a white
star. At this point the contraction process does not stop, but the
heating process does. Further contraction is now accompanied by cooling,
and the star goes through its colour changes again, but this time in the
inverse order. It contracts and cools to yellow and finally to red. But
when it again becomes a red star it is enormously denser and smaller
than when it began as a red star. Consequently the red stars are divided
into two classes called, appropriately, Giants and Dwarfs. This theory,
which we owe to an American astronomer, H. N. Russell, has been
successful in explaining a variety of phenomena, and there is
consequently good reason to suppose it to be true. But the question as
to how the red giant stars were formed has received less satisfactory
and precise answers.
The most commonly accepted theory is the nebular theory.
THE NEBULAR THEORY
§ 2
Nebulæ are dim luminous cloud-like patches in the heavens, more like
wisps of smoke in some cases than anything else. Both photography and
the telescope show that they are very numerous, hundreds of thousands
being already known and the number being continually added to. They are
not small. Most of them are immensely large. Actual dimensions cannot be
given, because to estimate these we must first know definitely the
distance of the nebulæ from the earth. The distances of some nebulæ are
known approximately, and we can therefore form some idea of size in
these cases. The results are staggering. The mere visible surface of
some nebulæ is so large that the whole stretch of the solar system would
be too small to form a convenient unit for measuring it. A ray of light
would require to travel for years to cross from side to side of such a
nebula. Its immensity is inconceivable to the human mind.
There appear to be two types of nebulæ, and there is evidence suggesting
that the one type is only an earlier form of the other; but this again
we do not know.
The more primitive nebulæ would seem to be composed of gas in an
extremely rarified form. It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of
the rarity of nebular gases. The residual gases in a vacuum tube are
dense by comparison. A cubic inch of air at ordinary pressure would
contain more matter than is contained in millions of cubic inches of the
gases of nebulæ. The light of even the faintest stars does not seem to
be dimmed by passing through a gaseous nebula, although we cannot be
sure on this point. The most remarkable physical fact about these gases
is that they are luminous. Whence they derive their luminosity we do not
know. It hardly seems possible to believe that extremely thin gases
exposed to the terrific cold of space can be so hot as to be luminous
and can retain their heat and their luminosity indefinitely. A cold
luminosity due to electrification, like that of the aurora borealis,
would seem to fit the case better.
Now the nebular theory is that out of great "fire-mists," such as we
have described, stars are born. We do not know whether gravitation is
the only or even the main force at work in a nebula, but it is supposed
that under the action of gravity the far-flung "fire-mists" would begin
to condense round centres of greatest density, heat being evolved in the
process. Of course the condensation would be enormously slow, although
the sudden irruption of a swarm of meteors or some solid body might
hasten matters greatly by providing large, ready-made centres of
condensation.
Spiral Nebulæ
It is then supposed that the contracting mass of gas would begin to
rotate and to throw off gigantic streamers, which would in their turn
form centres of condensation. The whole structure would thus form a
spiral, having a dense region at its centre and knots or lumps of
condensed matter along its spiral arms. Besides the formless gaseous
nebulæ there are hundreds of thousands of "spiral" nebulæ such as we
have just mentioned in the heavens. They are at all stages of
development, and they are visible to us at all angles--that is to say,
some of them face directly towards us, others are edge on, and some are
in intermediate positions. It appears, therefore, that we have here a
striking confirmation of the nebular hypothesis. But we must not go so
fast. There is much controversy as to the nature of these spiral nebulæ.
Some eminent astronomers think they are other stellar universes,
comparable in size with our own. In any case they are vast structures,
and if they represent stars in process of condensation, they must be
giving birth to huge agglomerations of stars--to star clusters at least.
These vast and enigmatic objects do not throw much light on the origin
of our own solar system. The nebular hypothesis, which was invented
by Laplace to explain the origin of our solar system, has not yet met
with universal acceptance. The explanation offers grave difficulties,
and it is best while the subject is still being closely investigated, to
hold all opinions with reserve. It may be taken as probable, however,
that the universe has developed from masses of incandescent gas.
[Illustration: _Photo: Yerkes Observatory._
FIG. 24.--THE GREAT NEBULA IN ORION
The most impressive nebula in the heavens. It is inconceivably greater
in dimensions than the whole solar system.]
[Illustration: _Photo: Lick Observatory._
FIG. 25--GIANT SPIRAL NEBULA, March 23, 1914
This spiral nebula is seen full on. Notice the central nucleus and the
two spiral arms emerging from its opposite directions. Is matter flowing
out of the nucleus into the arms or along the arms into the nucleus? In
either case we should get two streams in opposite directions within the
nucleus.]
THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF STARS
§ 3
Variable, New, and Dark Stars: Dying Suns
Many astronomers believe that in "variable stars" we have another star,
following that of the dullest red star, in the dying of suns. The light
of these stars varies periodically in so many days, weeks, or years. It
is interesting to speculate that they are slowly dying suns, in which
the molten interior periodically bursts through the shell of thick
vapours that is gathering round them. What we saw about our sun seems to
point to some such stage in the future. That is, however, not the
received opinion about variable stars. It may be that they are stars
which periodically pass through a great swarm of meteors or a region of
space that is rich in cosmic dust of some sort, when, of course, a great
illumination would take place.
One class of these variable stars, which takes its name from the star
Algol, is of special interest. Every third night Algol has its light
reduced for several hours. Modern astronomy has discovered that in this
case there are really two stars, circulating round a common centre, and
that every third night the fainter of the two comes directly between us
and its companion and causes an "eclipse." This was until recently
regarded as a most interesting case in which a dead star revealed itself
to us by passing before the light of another star. But astronomers have
in recent years invented something, the "selenium-cell," which is even
more sensitive than the photographic plate, and on this the supposed
dead star registers itself as very much alive. Algol is, however,
interesting in another way. The pair of stars which we have discovered
in it are hundreds of trillions of miles away from the earth, yet we
know their masses and their distances from each other.
The Death and Birth of Stars
We have no positive knowledge of dead stars; which is not surprising
when we reflect that a dead star means an invisible star! But when we
see so many individual stars tending toward death, when we behold a vast
population of all conceivable ages, we presume that there are many
already dead. On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that the
universe as a whole is "running down." Some writers have maintained
this, but their argument implies that we know a great deal more about
the universe than we actually do. The scientific man does not know
whether the universe is finite or infinite, temporal or eternal; and he
declines to speculate where there are no facts to guide him. He knows
only that the great gaseous nebulæ promise myriads of worlds in the
future, and he concedes the possibility that new nebulæ may be forming
in the ether of space.
The last, and not the least interesting, subject we have to notice is
the birth of a "new star." This is an event which astronomers now
announce every few years; and it is a far more portentous event than the
reader imagines when it is reported in his daily paper. The story is
much the same in all cases. We say that the star appeared in 1901, but
you begin to realise the magnitude of the event when you learn that the
distant "blaze" had really occurred about the time of the death of
Luther! The light of the conflagration had been speeding toward us
across space at 186,000 miles a second, yet it has taken nearly three
centuries to reach us. To be visible at all to us at that distance the
fiery outbreak must have been stupendous. If a mass of petroleum ten
times the size of the earth were suddenly fired it would not be seen at
such a distance. The new star had increased its light many hundredfold
in a few days.
There is a considerable fascination about the speculation that in such
cases we see the resurrection of a dead world, a means of renewing the
population of the universe. What happens is that in some region of the
sky where no star, or only a very faint star, had been registered on our
charts, we almost suddenly perceive a bright star. In a few days it may
rise to the highest brilliancy. By the spectroscope we learn that this
distant blaze means a prodigious outpour of white-hot hydrogen at
hundreds of miles a second. But the star sinks again after a few months,
and we then find a nebula round it on every side. It is natural to
suppose that a dead or dying sun has somehow been reconverted in whole
or in part into a nebula. A few astronomers think that it may have
partially collided with another star, or approached too closely to
another, with the result we described on an earlier page. The general
opinion now is that a faint or dead star had rushed into one of those
regions of space in which there are immense stretches of nebulous
matter, and been (at least in part) vaporised by the friction.
But the difficulties are considerable, and some astronomers prefer to
think that the blazing star may merely have lit up a dark nebula which
already existed. It is one of those problems on which speculation is
most tempting but positive knowledge is still very incomplete. We may be
content, even proud, that already we can take a conflagration that has
occurred more than a thousand trillion miles away and analyse it
positively into an outflame of glowing hydrogen gas at so many miles a
second.
THE SHAPE OF OUR UNIVERSE
§ 4
Our Universe a Spiral Nebula
What is the shape of our universe, and what are its dimensions? This is
a tremendous question to ask. It is like asking an intelligent insect,
living on a single leaf in the midst of a great Brazilian forest, to say
what is the shape and size of the forest. Yet man's ingenuity has proved
equal to giving an answer even to this question, and by a method exactly
similar to that which would be adopted by the insect. Suppose, for
instance, that the forest was shaped as an elongated oval, and the
insect lived on a tree near the centre of the oval. If the trees were
approximately equally spaced from one another they would appear much
denser along the length of the oval than across its width. This is the
simple consideration that has guided astronomers in determining the
shape of our stellar universe. There is one direction in the heavens
along which the stars appear denser than in the directions at right
angles to it. That direction is the direction in which we look towards
the Milky Way. If we count the number of stars visible all over the
heavens, we find they become more and more numerous as we approach the
Milky Way. As we go farther and farther from the Milky Way the stars
thin out until they reach a maximum sparseness in directions at right
angles to the plane of the Milky Way. We may consider the Milky Way to
form, as it were, the equator of our system, and the line at right
angles to point to the north and south poles.
Our system, in fact, is shaped something like a lens, and our sun is
situated near the centre of this lens. In the remoter part of this lens,
near its edge, or possibly outside it altogether, lies the great series
of star clouds which make up the Milky Way. All the stars are in motion
within this system, but the very remarkable discovery has been made that
these motions are not entirely random. The great majority of the stars
whose motions can be measured fall into two groups drifting past one
another in opposite directions. The velocity of one stream relative to
the other is about twenty-five miles per second. The stars forming these
two groups are thoroughly well mixed; it is not a case of an inner
stream going one way and an outer stream the other. But there are not
quite as many stars going one way as the other. For every two stars in
one stream there are three in the other. Now, as we have said, some
eminent astronomers hold that the spiral nebulæ are universes like our
own, and if we look at the two photographs (Figs. 25 and 26) we see that
these spirals present features which, in the light of what we have just
said about our system, are very remarkable. The nebula in Coma Berenices
is a spiral edge-on to us, and we see that it has precisely the
lens-shaped middle and the general flattened shape that we have found in
our own system. The nebula in Canes Venatici is a spiral facing towards
us, and its shape irresistibly suggests motions along the spiral arms.
This motion, whether it is towards or away from the central, lens-shaped
portion, would cause a double streaming motion in that central portion
of the kind we have found in our own system. Again, and altogether apart
from these considerations, there are good reasons for supposing our
Milky Way to possess a double-armed spiral structure. And the great
patches of dark absorbing matter which are known to exist in the Milky
Way (see Fig. 22) would give very much the mottled appearance we notice
in the arms (which we see edge-on) of the nebula in Coma Berenices. The
hypothesis, therefore, that our universe is a spiral nebula has much to
be said for it. If it be accepted it greatly increases our estimate of
the size of the material universe. For our central, lens-shaped system
is calculated to extend towards the Milky Way for more than twenty
thousand times a million million miles, and about a third of this
distance towards what we have called the poles. If, as we suppose, each
spiral nebula is an independent stellar universe comparable in size with
our own, then, since there are hundreds of thousands of spiral nebulæ,
we see that the size of the whole material universe is indeed beyond our
comprehension.
[Illustration: _Photo: Mount Wilson Observatory._
FIG. 26.--A SPIRAL NEBULA SEEN EDGE-ON
Notice the lens-shaped formation of the nucleus and the arm stretching
as a band across it. See reference in the text to the resemblance
between this and our stellar universe.]
[Illustration: _Photo: H. J. Shepstone._
100-INCH TELESCOPE, MOUNT WILSON
A reflecting telescope: the largest in the world. The mirror is situated
at the base of the telescope.]
[Illustration:
________________________________________________________________
| |
| THE SOLAR SYSTEM |
|________________________________________________________________|
| | | | | |
| | MEAN DISTANCE | PERIOD OF | | |
| NAME | FROM SUN (IN | REVOLUTION | DIAMETER | NUMBER OF |
| | MILLIONS OF | AROUND SUN | (IN MILES) | SATELLITES |
| | MILES) | (IN YEARS) | | |
|_________|_______________|____________|____________|____________|
| | | | | |
| MERCURY | 36.0 | 0.24 | 3030 | 0 |
| VENUS | 67.2 | 0.62 | 7700 | 0 |
| EARTH | 92.9 | 1.00 | 7918 | 1 |
| MARS | 141.5 | 1.88 | 4230 | 2 |
| JUPITER | 483.3 | 11.86 | 86500 | 9 |
| SATURN | 886.0 | 29.46 | 73000 | 10 |
| URANUS | 1781.9 | 84.02 | 31900 | 4 |
| NEPTUNE | 2971.6 | 164.78 | 34800 | 1 |
| SUN | ------ | ------ | 866400 | -- |
| MOON | ------ | ------ | 2163 | -- |
|_________|_______________|____________|____________|____________|
FIG. 27]
[Illustration:
______________________________________
| |
| STAR DISTANCES |
|______________________________________|
| |
| DISTANCE IN |
| STAR LIGHT-YEARS |
| |
| POLARIS 76 |
| CAPELLA 49.4 |
| RIGEL 466 |
| SIRIUS 8.7 |
| PROCYON 10.5 |
| REGULUS 98.8 |
| ARCTURUS 43.4 |
| [ALPHA] CENTAURI 4.29 |
| VEGA 34.7 |
|______________________________________|
| |
| SMALLER MAGELLANIC CLOUD 32,600[A] |
| GREAT CLUSTER IN HERCULES 108,600[A] |
|______________________________________|
[A] ESTIMATED
FIG. 28
The above distances are merely approximate and are subject to further
revision. A "light-year" is the distance that light, travelling at the
rate of 186,000 miles per second, would cover in one year.]
In this simple outline we have not touched on some of the more debatable
questions that engage the attention of modern astronomers. Many of these
questions have not yet passed the controversial stage; out of these will
emerge the astronomy of the future. But we have seen enough to convince
us that, whatever advances the future holds in store, the science of the
heavens constitutes one of the most important stones in the wonderful
fabric of human knowledge.
ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS
§ 1
The Telescope
The instruments used in modern astronomy are amongst the finest triumphs
of mechanical skill in the world. In a great modern observatory the
different instruments are to be counted by the score, but there are two
which stand out pre-eminent as the fundamental instruments of modern
astronomy. These instruments are the telescope and the spectroscope, and
without them astronomy, as we know it, could not exist.
There is still some dispute as to where and when the first telescope was
constructed; as an astronomical instrument, however, it dates from the
time of the great Italian scientist Galileo, who, with a very small and
imperfect telescope of his own invention, first observed the spots on
the sun, the mountains of the moon, and the chief four satellites of
Jupiter. A good pair of modern binoculars is superior to this early
instrument of Galileo's, and the history of telescope construction, from
that primitive instrument to the modern giant recently erected on Mount
Wilson, California, is an exciting chapter in human progress. But the
early instruments have only an historic interest: the era of modern
telescopes begins in the nineteenth century.
During the last century telescope construction underwent an
unprecedented development. An immense amount of interest was taken in
the construction of large telescopes, and the different countries of the
world entered on an exciting race to produce the most powerful possible
instruments. Besides this rivalry of different countries there was a
rivalry of methods. The telescope developed along two different lines,
and each of these two types has its partisans at the present day. These
types are known as _refractors_ and _reflectors_, and it is necessary to
mention, briefly, the principles employed in each. The _refractor_ is
the ordinary, familiar type of telescope. It consists, essentially, of a
large lens at one end of a tube, and a small lens, called the eye-piece,
at the other. The function of the large lens is to act as a sort of
gigantic eye. It collects a large amount of light, an amount
proportional to its size, and brings this light to a focus within the
tube of the telescope. It thus produces a small but bright image, and
the eye-piece magnifies this image. In the _reflector_, instead of a
large lens at the top of the tube, a large mirror is placed at the
bottom. This mirror is so shaped as to reflect the light that falls on
it to a focus, whence the light is again led to an eye-piece. Thus the
refractor and the reflector differ chiefly in their manner of gathering
light. The powerfulness of the telescope depends on the size of the
light-gatherer. A telescope with a lens four inches in diameter is four
times as powerful as the one with a lens two inches in diameter, for the
amount of light gathered obviously depends on the _area_ of the lens,
and the area varies as the _square_ of the diameter.
The largest telescopes at present in existence are _reflectors_. It is
much easier to construct a very large mirror than to construct a very
large lens; it is also cheaper. A mirror is more likely to get out of
order than is a lens, however, and any irregularity in the shape of a
mirror produces a greater distorting effect than in a lens. A refractor
is also more convenient to handle than is a reflector. For these reasons
great refractors are still made, but the largest of them, the great
Yerkes' refractor, is much smaller than the greatest reflector, the one
on Mount Wilson, California. The lens of the Yerkes' refractor measures
three feet four inches in diameter, whereas the Mount Wilson reflector
has a diameter of no less than eight feet four inches.
[Illustration: THE YERKES 40-INCH REFRACTOR
(The largest _refracting_ telescope in the world. Its big lens weighs
1,000 pounds, and its mammoth tube, which is 62 feet long, weighs about
12,000 pounds. The parts to be moved weigh approximately 22 tons.
The great _100-inch reflector_ of the Mount Wilson reflecting
telescope--the largest _reflecting_ instrument in the world--weighs
nearly 9,000 pounds and the moving parts of the telescope weigh about
100 tons.
The new _72-inch reflector_ at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory,
near Victoria, B. C., weighs nearly 4,500 pounds, and the moving parts
about 35 tons.)]
[Illustration: _Photo: H. J. Shepstone._
THE DOUBLE-SLIDE PLATE HOLDER ON YERKES 40-INCH REFRACTING TELESCOPE
The smaller telescope at the top of the picture acts as a "finder"; the
field of view of the large telescope is so restricted that it is
difficult to recognise, as it were, the part of the heavens being
surveyed. The smaller telescope takes in a larger area and enables the
precise object to be examined to be easily selected.]
[Illustration: MODERN DIRECT-READING SPECTROSCOPE
(_By A. Hilger, Ltd._)
The light is brought through one telescope, is split up by the prism,
and the resulting spectrum is observed through the other telescope.]
But there is a device whereby the power of these giant instruments,
great as it is, can be still further heightened. That device is the
simple one of allowing the photographic plate to take the place of the
human eye. Nowadays an astronomer seldom spends the night with his eye
glued to the great telescope. He puts a photographic plate there. The
photographic plate has this advantage over the eye, that it builds up
impressions. However long we stare at an object too faint to be seen, we
shall never see it. With the photographic plate, however, faint
impressions go on accumulating. As hour after hour passes, the star
which was too faint to make a perceptible impression on the plate goes
on affecting it until finally it makes an impression which can be made
visible. In this way the photographic plate reveals to us phenomena in
the heavens which cannot be seen even through the most powerful
telescopes.
Telescopes of the kind we have been discussing, telescopes for exploring
the heavens, are mounted _equatorially_; that is to say, they are
mounted on an inclined pillar parallel to the axis of the earth so that,
by rotating round this pillar, the telescope is enabled to follow the
apparent motion of a star due to the rotation of the earth. This motion
is effected by clock-work, so that, once adjusted on a star, and the
clock-work started, the telescope remains adjusted on that star for any
length of time that is desired. But a great official observatory, such
as Greenwich Observatory or the Observatory at Paris, also has _transit_
instruments, or telescopes smaller than the equatorials and without the
same facility of movement, but which, by a number of exquisite
refinements, are more adapted to accurate measurements. It is these
instruments which are chiefly used in the compilation of the _Nautical
Almanac_. They do not follow the apparent motions of the stars. Stars
are allowed to drift across the field of vision, and as each star
crosses a small group of parallel wires in the eye-piece its precise
time of passage is recorded. Owing to their relative fixity of position
these instruments can be constructed to record the _positions_ of stars
with much greater accuracy than is possible to the more general and
flexible mounting of equatorials. The recording of transit is
comparatively dry work; the spectacular element is entirely absent;
stars are treated merely as mathematical points. But these observations
furnish the very basis of modern mathematical astronomy, and without
them such publications as the _Nautical Almanac_ and the _Connaissance
du Temps_ would be robbed of the greater part of their importance.
§ 2
The Spectroscope
We have already learnt something of the principles of the spectroscope,
the instrument which, by making it possible to learn the actual
constitution of the stars, has added a vast new domain to astronomy. In
the simplest form of this instrument the analysing portion consists of a
single prism. Unless the prism is very large, however, only a small
degree of dispersion is obtained. It is obviously desirable, for
accurate analytical work, that the dispersion--that is, the separation
of the different parts of the spectrum--should be as great as possible.
The dispersion can be increased by using a large number of prisms, the
light emerging from the first prism, entering the second, and so on. In
this way each prism produces its own dispersive effect and, when a
number of prisms are employed, the final dispersion is considerable. A
considerable amount of light is absorbed in this way, however, so that
unless our primary source of light is very strong, the final spectrum
will be very feeble and hard to decipher.
Another way of obtaining considerable dispersion is by using a
_diffraction grating_ instead of a prism. This consists essentially of a
piece of glass on which lines are ruled by a diamond point. When the
lines are sufficiently close together they split up light falling on
them into its constituents and produce a spectrum. The modern
diffraction grating is a truly wonderful piece of work. It contains
several thousands of lines to the inch, and these lines have to be
spaced with the greatest accuracy. But in this instrument, again, there
is a considerable loss of light.
We have said that every substance has its own distinctive spectrum, and
it might be thought that, when a list of the spectra of different
substances has been prepared, spectrum analysis would become perfectly
straightforward. In practice, however, things are not quite so simple.
The spectrum emitted by a substance is influenced by a variety of
conditions. The pressure, the temperature, the state of motion of the
object we are observing, all make a difference, and one of the most
laborious tasks of the modern spectroscopist is to disentangle these
effects from one another. Simple as it is in its broad outlines,
spectroscopy is, in reality, one of the most intricate branches of
modern science.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(The following list of books may be useful to readers wishing to pursue
further the study of Astronomy.)
BALL, _The Story of the Heavens_.
BALL, _The Story of the Sun_.
FORBES, _History of Astronomy_.
HINCKS, _Astronomy_.
KIPPAX, _Call of the Stars_.
LOWELL, _Mars and Its Canals_.
LOWELL, _Evolution of Worlds_.
MCKREADY, _A Beginner's Star-Book_.
NEWCOMB, _Popular Astronomy_.
NEWCOMB, _The Stars: A Study of the Universe_.
OLCOTT, _Field Book of the Stars_.
PRICE, _Essence of Astronomy_.
SERVISS, _Curiosities of the Skies_.
WEBB, _Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes_.
YOUNG, _Text-Book of General Astronomy_.
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