When he adds: "Nothing remains but to
consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes.... having some
sort of solidity.... Be they what they may, they are evidently the
immediate sources of the solar light and heat"--he utters a grander
physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer. And
when, furthermore, we find him postulating--"looked at in this point of
view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and
amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such
organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that
vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and
electricity," Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an
occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar
physics. These "wonderful objects" are not, as a modern astronomer
interprets Sir J. Herschel's words, "solar inhabitants, whose fiery
constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole
solar system," but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the
vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and
breathes, and has its being.
Pages:
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355