WHAT THE SUN IS MADE OF. 



313 



tend by their exciting character to make the time 

 during which they occur seem slightly longer 

 than a similar interval of time spent in a some- 

 what less exciting way, nevertheless do not make 

 it seem so long as the same interval of time spent 

 in a condition of ennui. For, while the exciting 

 character of the events completely excludes all 

 inversion of consciousness upon its own sequence- 

 changes, the state of ennui consists in such an 

 inversion of consciousness whereby we are ren- 

 dered perpetually, though vagsely, cognizant of 

 subjective sequence-changes. Thus it would seem 

 that, when the contemplation of such subjective 



sequence-changes is completely shut out from 

 consciousness, even though these changes are re- 

 placed by the most vivid changes of another or- 

 der, our consciousness of the passage of time is 

 not so marked as it is in the presence of such 

 contemplation ; and hence the apparently rapid 

 passage of time during interesting work or ex- 

 citing action, as compared with the langweilig 

 character of ennui. To " kill time" is merely to 

 transfer our states of consciousness from refer- 

 ence to their own sequence, to a reference of 

 some other kind, however interesting or exciting} 



Mind. 



WHAT THE SUN IS MADE OF. 



By J. NORMAN LOCKYER, F. R. S. 



O LOWLY, but very surely, by means of quiet 

 ^-^ sap, but little of which meets the eye, are 

 we effecting an entrance into the treasure-houses 

 wherein are kept the secrets of the sun. How 

 different are they from those of Troy and Myce- 

 nae ! How changed the standpoint of human 

 thought and interest when we pass from one to 

 the other : the glorious past with a still glorious 

 future faces a future almost without a past : Re- 

 ligion, Art, and a Humanity which furnish us 

 with the spectacle of the apotheosis of a tribe on 

 the one hand ; views of an infinitely extended Na- 

 ture which dwarf the whole solar system on the 

 other. 



It is because the secrets of the sun include 

 the cipher in which the light-messages from ex- 

 ternal Nature in all its vastness are written that 

 those interested in the "new learning," as the 

 Chemistry of Space may certainly be considered, 

 are so anxious to get at and possess them. 



I purpose to show in the following pages that, 

 even if centuries must elapse before the ingenu- 

 ity of man will succeed in doing for celestial 

 hieroglyphics what it has already done for Egyp- 

 tian ones, in one direction, at least, an alphabet 

 is already being formulated. 



The attempts which are now being made to 

 " cull the secret," not " from the latest moon," 

 but from the brilliant orb of day in the various 

 new fields of thought and work recently opened 

 up, may be conveniently divided into three per- 

 fectly distinct branches. We have, first, that ex- 

 tremely important inquiry which has, as its re- 

 sult, the complete determination of the position 



of everythiug which happens on the sun. This, 

 of course, includes a complete cataloguing of the 

 spots on the sun which have been observed time 

 out of mind, and also of those solar prominences, 

 the means of observing which have not been so 

 long within our reach. It is of the highest im- 



1 Certain narcotic drugs, such as the extract of In- 

 dian-hemp, when taken in sufficient amount to cause 

 dreaming, are said to make time appear enormously 

 long. This effect is doubtless due to the stimulating 

 action of the drug causing an unusual number of vivid 

 changes in the states of consciousness ; for, on re- 

 covery, the intoxicated person is said often to remem- 

 ber having imagined a vast number and variety of suc- 

 cessive experiences. This distorted appreciation of 

 the passage of time, owing to increased activity of 

 cerebral action, may, I think, be instructively con- 

 trasted with the extraordinary accuracy of such ap- 

 preciation which is displayed by some idiots. Here 

 we have exactly the opposite mental condition to that 

 which is produced by Indian-hemp, etc. ; for among 

 idiots of a low type there is not much variation in the 

 degree of their mental activity at different times, and 

 as the stream of their consciousness is thus always 

 more or less on a dead level, an act of retrospection 

 affords a more trustworthy measure of time than it 

 does in the case of un individual whose intellectual 

 life is of a more varied character. Dr. Langdon Down 

 tells me that those of his patients who display the 

 faculty of " guessing the time" in a marked degree, 

 are so little prone to conscious mental effort that, in 

 order to insure a correct answer, they have to be first 

 aroused to reflect by shaking. This fact shows on 

 how dead a level their conscious life must be — thus al- 

 lowing no opportunity for the occurrence of great vari- 

 ations in either of the factors of time-consciousness. 

 And probably the same explanation applies to the ac. 

 curate appreciation of time which is displayed by cer- 

 tain animals. 



