Part 11 (2/2)
But, on the discussion of the observations made at the different stations, it was found that there was not the accordance that could have been desired--the result varying from eighty-eight to one hundred and nine million. The celebrated mathematician, Encke, therefore reviewed them in 1822-'24, and came to the conclusion that the sun's horizontal parallax, that is, the angle under which the semi-diameter of the earth is seen from the sun, is 8 576/1000 seconds; this gave as the distance 95,274,000 miles. Subsequently the observations were reconsidered by Hansen, who gave as their result 91,659,000 miles. Still later, Leverrier made it 91,759,000. Airy and Stone, by another method, made it 91,400,000; Stone alone, by a revision of the old observations, 91,730,000; and finally, Foucault and Fizeau, from physical experiments, determining the velocity of light, and therefore in their nature altogether differing from transit observations, 91,400,000. Until the results of the transit of next year (1874) are ascertained, it must therefore be admitted that the distance of the earth from the sun is somewhat less than ninety-two million miles.
This distance once determined, the dimensions of the solar system may be ascertained with ease and precision. It is enough to mention that the distance of Neptune from the sun, the most remote of the planets at present known, is about thirty times that of the earth.
By the aid of these numbers we may begin to gain a just appreciation of the doctrine of the human destiny of the universe--the doctrine that all things were made for man. Seen from the sun, the earth dwindles away to a mere speck, a mere dust-mote glistening in his beams. If the reader wishes a more precise valuation, let him hold a page of this book a couple of feet from his eye; then let him consider one of its dots or full stops; that dot is several hundred times larger in surface than is the earth as seen from the sun!
Of what consequence, then, can such an almost imperceptible particle be?
One might think that it could be removed or even annihilated, and yet never be missed. Of what consequence is one of those human monads, of whom more than a thousand millions swarm on the surface of this all but invisible speck, and of a million of whom scarcely one will leave a trace that he has ever existed? Of what consequence is man, his pleasures or his pains?
Among the arguments brought forward against the Copernican system at the time of its promulgation, was one by the great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, originally urged by Aristarchus against the Pythagorean system, to the effect that, if, as was alleged, the earth moves round the sun, there ought to be a change of the direction in which the fixed stars appear. At one time we are nearer to a particular region of the heavens by a distance equal to the whole diameter of the earth's...o...b..t than we were six months previously, and hence there ought to be a change in the relative position of the stars; they should seem to separate as we approach them, and to close together as we recede from them; or, to use the astronomical expression, these stars should have a yearly parallax.
The parallax of a star is the angle contained between two lines drawn from it--one to the sun, the other to the earth.
At that time, the earth's distance from the sun was greatly under-estimated. Had it been known, as it is now, that that distance exceeds ninety million miles, or that the diameter of the orbit is more than one hundred and eighty million, that argument would doubtless have had very great weight.
In reply to Tycho, it was said that, since the parallax of a body diminishes as its distance increases, a star may be so far off that its parallax may be imperceptible. This answer proved to be correct. The detection of the parallax of the stars depended on the improvement of instruments for the measurement of angles.
The parallax of alpha Centauri, a fine double star of the Southern Hemisphere, at present considered to be the nearest of the fixed stars, was first determined by Henderson and Maclear at the Cape of Good Hope in 1832-'33. It is about nine-tenths of a second. Hence this star is almost two hundred and thirty thousand times as far from us as the sun.
Seen from it, if the sun were even large enough to fill the whole orbit of the earth, or one hundred and eighty million miles in diameter, he would be a mere point. With its companion, it revolves round their common centre of gravity in eighty-one years, and hence it would seem that their conjoint ma.s.s is less than that of the sun.
The star 61 Cygni is of the sixth magnitude. Its parallax was first found by Bessel in 1838, and is about one-third of a second. The distance from us is, therefore, much more than five hundred thousand times that of the sun. With its companion, it revolves round their common centre of gravity in five hundred and twenty years. Their conjoint weight is about one-third that of the sun.
There is reason to believe that the great star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, is about six times as far off as alpha Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through the telescope, he has no measurable diameter; he looks merely like a very bright spark.
The stars, then, differ not merely in visible magnitude, but also in actual size. As the spectroscope shows, they differ greatly in chemical and physical const.i.tution. That instrument is also revealing to us the duration of the life of a star, through changes in the refrangibility of the emitted light. Though, as we have seen, the nearest to us is at an enormous and all but immeasurable distance, this is but the first step--there are others the rays of which have taken thousands, perhaps millions, of years to reach us! The limits of our own system are far beyond the range of our greatest telescopes; what, then, shall we say of other systems beyond? Worlds are scattered like dust in the abysses in s.p.a.ce.
Have these gigantic bodies--myriads of which are placed at so vast a distance that our una.s.sisted eyes cannot perceive them--have these no other purpose than that a.s.signed by theologians, to give light to us?
Does not their enormous size demonstrate that, as they are centres of force, so they must be centres of motion--suns for other systems of worlds?
While yet these facts were very imperfectly known--indeed, were rather speculations than facts--Giordano Bruno, an Italian, born seven years after the death of Copernicus, published a work on the ”Infinity of the Universe and of Worlds;” he was also the author of ”Evening Conversations on Ash-Wednesday,” an apology for the Copernican system, and of ”The One Sole Cause of Things.” To these may be added an allegory published in 1584, ”The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast.” He had also collected, for the use of future astronomers, all the observations he could find respecting the new star that suddenly appeared in Ca.s.siopeia, A.D. 1572, and increased in brilliancy, until it surpa.s.sed all the other stars. It could be plainly seen in the daytime. On a sudden, November 11th, it was as bright as Venus at her brightest. In the following March it was of the first magnitude. It exhibited various hues of color in a few months, and disappeared in March, 1574.
The star that suddenly appeared in Serpentarius, in Kepler's time (1604), was at first brighter than Venus. It lasted more than a year, and, pa.s.sing through various tints of purple, yellow, red, became extinguished.
Originally, Bruno was intended for the Church. He had become a Dominican, but was led into doubt by his meditations on the subjects of transubstantiation and the immaculate conception. Not caring to conceal his opinions, he soon fell under the censure of the spiritual authorities, and found it necessary to seek refuge successively in Switzerland, France, England, Germany. The cold-scented sleuth-hounds of the Inquisition followed his track remorselessly, and eventually hunted him back to Italy. He was arrested in Venice, and confined in the Piombi for six years, without books, or paper, or friends.
In England he had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity; the impostures, of his persecutors--that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.
In his ”Evening Conversations” he had insisted that the Scriptures were never intended to teach science, but morals only; and that they cannot be received as of any authority on astronomical and physical subjects.
Especially must we reject the view they reveal to us of the const.i.tution of the world, that the earth is a flat surface, supported on pillars; that the sky is a firmament--the floor of heaven. On the contrary, we must believe that the universe is infinite, and that it is filled with self-luminous and opaque worlds, many of them inhabited; that there is nothing above and around us but s.p.a.ce and stars. His meditations on these subjects had brought him to the conclusion that the views of Averroes are not far from the truth--that there is an Intellect which animates the universe, and of this Intellect the visible world is only an emanation or manifestation, originated and sustained by force derived from it, and, were that force withdrawn, all things would disappear.
This ever-present, all-pervading Intellect is G.o.d, who lives in all things, even such as seem not to live; that every thing is ready to become organized, to burst into life. G.o.d is, therefore, ”the One Sole Cause of Things,” ”the All in All.”
Bruno may hence be considered among philosophical writers as intermediate between Averroes and Spinoza. The latter held that G.o.d and the Universe are the same, that all events happen by an immutable law of Nature, by an unconquerable necessity; that G.o.d is the Universe, producing a series of necessary movements or acts, in consequence of intrinsic, unchangeable, and irresistible energy.
On the demand of the spiritual authorities, Bruno was removed from Venice to Rome, and confined in the prison of the Inquisition, accused not only of being a heretic, but also a heresiarch, who had written things unseemly concerning religion; the special charge against him being that he had taught the plurality of worlds, a doctrine repugnant to the whole tenor of Scripture and inimical to revealed religion, especially as regards the plan of salvation. After an imprisonment of two years he was brought before his judges, declared guilty of the acts alleged, excommunicated, and, on his n.o.bly refusing to recant, was delivered over to the secular authorities to be punished ”as mercifully as possible, and without the shedding of his blood,” the horrible formula for burning a prisoner at the stake. Knowing well that though his tormentors might destroy his body, his thoughts would still live among men, he said to his judges, ”Perhaps it is with greater fear that you pa.s.s the sentence upon me than I receive it.” The sentence was carried into effect, and he was burnt at Rome, February 16th, A.D. 1600.
No one can recall without sentiments of pity the sufferings of those countless martyrs, who first by one party, and then by another, have been brought for their religious opinions to the stake. But each of these had in his supreme moment a powerful and unfailing support. The pa.s.sage from this life to the next, though through a hard trial, was the pa.s.sage from a transient trouble to eternal happiness, an escape from the cruelty of earth to the charity of heaven. On his way through the dark valley the martyr believed that there was an invisible hand that would lead him, a friend that would guide him all the more gently and firmly because of the terrors of the flames. For Bruno there was no such support. The philosophical opinions, for the sake of which he surrendered his life, could give him no consolation. He must fight the last fight alone. Is there not something very grand in the att.i.tude of this solitary man, something which human nature cannot help admiring, as he stands in the gloomy hall before his inexorable judges? No accuser, no witness, no advocate is present, but the familiars of the Holy Office, clad in black, are stealthily moving about. The tormentors and the rack are in the vaults below. He is simply told that he has brought upon himself strong suspicions of heresy, since he has said that there are other worlds than ours. He is asked if he will recant and abjure his error. He cannot and will not deny what he knows to be true, and perhaps--for he had often done so before--he tells his judges that they, too, in their hearts are of the same belief. What a contrast between this scene of manly honor, of unshaken firmness, of inflexible adherence to the truth, and that other scene which took place more than fifteen centuries previously by the fireside in the hall of Caiaphas the high-priest, when the c.o.c.k crew, and ”the Lord turned and looked upon Peter” (Luke xxii. 61)! And yet it is upon Peter that the Church has grounded her right to act as she did to Bruno. But perhaps the day approaches when posterity will offer an expiation for this great ecclesiastical crime, and a statue of Bruno be unveiled under the dome of St. Peter's at Rome.
<script>