THE SUSCEPTIBILITY OF THE SUN.
TWO striking articles on the Sun's relation to the material universe, written in partnership by an eminent astronomer, Mr. Norman Lockyer, and Dr. Balfour Stewart, haveappearedin the July and August numbers of Macmillan's Magazine. These papers seem to us to have a more than common interest, not only for the general observer of the still unfolding laws of science, but even for the student of those deeper analogies which connect mind and matter. The new point in these articles is the popular exposition of what has only recently been suspected on anything like evi- dence by astronomers, namely, the exceeding delicacy of the Sun's structure, a delicacy so great that the vast physical changes which go on in that enormous mass which both holds together and warms our whole planetary system, are now all but known to depend on influences exerted over the Sun's mass by planets as insignificant as Venus and as distant as Jupiter,—and very probably also on causes which seem so little adequate to the effect as the magnetic condition of our own tiny planet. When we consider that the Sun is so big that, to use Mr. Lockyer's own illustration in another most attractive little work,* it would take nine years for a railway train to go rotuirt at the rate of thirty miles an hour (while a train going at the same rate round our earth would only take a month), and that, even in weight, the Sun is 300,000 times the weight of our Earth ; in short, that our planet (and still more Venus, which is smaller and lighter) might easily drop into one of the holes or vortices which we call the "spots on the Sun" without adding anything considerable to the San's bulk or attractive power,—it seems hardly credible that those gigan- tic changes in the sun's constitution which we know to be indicated by the appearance of what we term the spots, should be caused by what is called the " approach " of a body so small as Venus, or even, considering its enormous minimum distance, so feeble as Jupiter, to its surface. Yet Messrs. Lockyer and Balfour Stewart evidently hold this to be all but proved. Theyremind us, that "just as a poker thrust into a hot furnace will create a greater disturbance of the heat than if thrust into a chamber very little hotter than itself. . . . the mole- cular state of the sun, just as of that of the cannon or of fulmi- nating powder, may be externally sensitive to impressions from , without." " We may thus very well suppose," they say, "that an extremely small withdrawal of heat from the sun might cause a copious condensation ; and this change of molecular state would, of course, by means of altered reflection, &c., alter, to a consider- able extent, the distribution over the various particles of the sun's surface of an enormous quantity of heat, and great mechanical changes might very easily result." These learned men seem con- vinced that what we call the spots on the sun are really caused by the down-rush of comparatively cold vapour from the surface of the sun's atmosphere into its infinitely hotter interior, and that this formation of comparatively cold vapour on the surface which then rushes down like a falling cloud into the body of the sun, is more or less caused by the approach of Venue and other planets to their minimum distance from the sun. Should any two or three of those planets which are known to affect the sun's spots "be acting together at the same place upon the sun, we may expect," say these writers, "a very large amount of spots, which will attain their maximum at that position of the sun most remote from these planets. When we say that very good evidence has been shown for this statement, we mean that it would have. been reckoned conclusive had the statement been of a less wonder- ful character." In short, it would seem that the centre of our system, the centre not only of its mechanical but of its luminous and heating influence, is a great mass of matter in so highly sensitive and susceptible a state, that even the little satellites, which are nothing in comparison with it, produce what we may almost call gigantic solar tides in the atmospheric and, vapourous- envelope of the Sun'slumittous surface. From this our essayistsdraw the conclusion that "there seems to be great molecular delicacy of construction in the sun, and probably also, to an inferior extent, in the various planets, and the bond between the sun and the various members of our system appears to be a more intimate one than has hitherto been imagined. The result of all this will be that a disturbance from without is very easily communicated to our luminary, and that when it takes place, it communicates a thrill to the very extremity of the system." In the second article, Dr. Balfour Stewart and Mr. Lockyer apply these facts to a dis- cussion of the possible influence of mind on matter. Their notion seems to be that the highest and most delicately organized forms of energy are most suseel]tible of enormous variety and flexibility of effect from the slightest alteration of the governing purpose. As the mere touch of a finger will sometimes alter the issue of a war and of a whole planet's civilization, if that finger-touch is applied through the deli- cately constructed rifled cannon of our modern warfare,—as the mere turn of a wheel an inch or two more one way or the other will direct the expenditure of the enormous force of an iron steam ram, and so change, perhaps, the fate of a campaign ; so the very slightest influence brought to bear on a body of such intensity of energy as the Sun, produces an effect of a magnitude far more than proportional to the seeming cause, namely, the one new con- dition which is freshly introduced, and which determines the direc- tion of expenditure of that energy. Our essayists point out that although no energy of any sort is ever lost, yet energy of a high intensity and efficiency has a constant tendency to degrade into energy of a low, diffused, and worthless sort, which, as far as is yet known, (so the men of science say), can never be again restored • Elementary Essays on Astronomy. By J. Norman Lockyer. London : Macmillan to the intense and efficient state. Mechanical force and high-tem- perature heat are, they say, representatives of superior energy, cap- able of being so directed as to produce great results. "On the other band, when heat is equally diffused, or spread about, it represents the most degraded and worthless of all forms of energy. Nothing of value can be accomplished by its means. Thus, for instance, there is abundance of heat spread throughout the walls of the -chamber in which we now write,, but not a particle of all this can be converted into useful mechanical effect." We may remark, parenthetically, that we do not quite understand this assertion, since direct and immediate mechanical effect is in no sense the sole measure of energy ; surely, a mild climate, which is low-tempera- ture heat universally diffused over a great space, is the chief condi- tion of a high organization for innumerable plants and animals,— which plants and animals may well determine the whole future of mankind, and even in some respects the mechanical organizations of the future ; and we should have supposed, therefore, that such 40w-temperature heat might be regarded as really transformed into the energy of all the life of which it is an essential condi- tion. But we understand the main drift of the essayists to be this, that very intense forces and very highly organized forces are far more capable of yielding great immediate results to what seem the most trivial directing influences, than widely diffused and poorly -organized forces, however great they may be in their total magni- tude. A directing mind, acting on intense forces of the highest -organization, may, by a mere stroke of the finger, alter the destinies of the whole race. So a directing mind, acting on such All immeasurable store of highly concentrated and intense force as the sun, may produce the most gigantic results by the very :smallest direction of an insignificant physical agency.
This drift of our essayists is a very interesting drift ; but -their physical illustrations seem to us to suggest an analogy -of quite another order and, to us, of much higher and more novel interest. It is this,—that both in mind and matter, immutability of form_ is a note not of the highest and most intense, but of the lowest, and poorest form of -energy. The vulgar view of the Bur is, that it is the im- mutable centre of our system, round which all its satellites -revolve. Mathematicians and. astronomers, of course, have always .known„ since the force of gravity has been understood at all, that in proportion to its vastly inferior mass, every one of the planets moves the sun as much as the sun moves it ; but, gravity -being one of the lower orders of force, the analogies it has suggested have been in some degree false, and the notion of the sun's com- parative immutability as compared with the planets, has been -considered a sort of dignified privilege of its superior size. Now, we know, or seem very likely to know, that by virtue of its very intensity of constitution, by virtue of the enormous store of forces -which it concentrates, it is far more impressible, and undergoes, we -will not say a far vaster series of changes under the influence of many of the planets, than those planets themselves undergo in -consequence of its influence,—for heat and material life, so far as life depends on heat, are derived by the planets almost -solely from the sun,—but, at any rate, a far vaster series of -changes than we should have supposed it possible for very in- .significant bodies to produce in one of such enormous magnitude. Has not this fact both a moral and a theological application? Is that really, even among men, the greatest mind which is least influenced, we do not say in character and purpose, but in action .and emotion, by small causes? or that which is open to the most intense influences from causes which minds of a lower calibre would not even recognize at all? Is not the highest energy also the high- -eat susceptibility ? As the planet receives from the lam, for the most part, not only a store of possible high-temperature heat, but a -vast and perennial amount of low-temperature heat, which our authors (we think rather unguardedly) call the most worthless and -degraded form of energy, so the " toiliug millions of men sunk in labour and pain " receive from great and gifted minds a vast amount of what may be called low-temperature thought and feeling, which, though essential to their happiness, they are scarcely aware of, so quietly and slowly does it dribble in. But these great and gifted minds, on the contrary, receive from the masses the most intense and visible influence,— tides of feeling and thought which may be almost com- pared for intensity to those great solar tides said to be caused in the sun by the approach of a few petty planets. And may we not go further still, and say that while the life of God flows out to men in what we can only call low-temperature heat of spirit, because we are too poor for anything better, and that that low-temperature heat of spirit is of the very essence of the lest we are,—our life, poor and petty as it it, has its reflection in Him in infinite and eternal tides of thought and emotion, of which we can gain only at a distance a faint glimpse through the earthly life of the Incarnation. At all events, we see that in physical things, immutability of form is the sign not of the highest but of the lowest forma of power. In human life IA is the same. The highest minds are far more consciously agitated by the in- fluences which come to them from the lower, than the lower by those which come to them from the higher. Is it not so, also, as between God and man? We receive from Him, it is true, life, and breath, and all things,—still, it is in a dull way, in which we hardly know what we receive,—it is a " degraded " form of energy. But He, because He is perfect, is not thus slow and languid of nature,—what the foolish metaphysicians call "immutable." Though there is "no variableness nor shadow of turning" in Him, yet all that in us is poor and feeble is reflected in Him in the most intense and vivid life; and great tides of divine life are stirred by the poorest approaches of human infirmity. Impassibility, far from being a dtvine attribute, is the poorest of human ineapacities ; and human sin, instead of being the nothing it is supposed in our poor philosophical inversions of infinitude, is truly imaged only in the divine sufferings of the Cross.
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