542 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



said ; only in that case it is desirable that an ex- 

 hibition of the logical ground should be less fre- 

 quently superseded by a simple appeal to emo- 

 tion. It is surely a misfortune that morality should 

 be ostensibly based upon a conception which is 

 avowedly little more than a vague " perhaps." 



The tendency to cling desperately to dream- 

 land is more frequently an utterance of that re- 

 fined Epicureanism which is one of the worst and 

 commonest tendencies of the day. It is the ten- 

 dency which in one direction generates the cant 

 of "art for art's sake" — the doctrine, that is, 

 which would encourage men to steep themselves 

 in luxurious dreaming, and explicitly renounce 

 the belief that art is valuable, as it provides a 

 worthy embodiment for the most strenuous 

 thought and highest endeavor of the age. In 

 politics it corresponds to the doctrine that men 

 should be diverted from dangerous aspirations 

 toward social reform by bribes administered to 

 their lower passions, and that acquiescence in 

 enervating despotism should be preserved by 

 lavish expenditure upon frivolous or corrupting 

 indulgence. The religion which falls in with such 

 conceptions is a fashionable accomplishment, 

 governed by the canons of good taste instead of 

 argument, and is equivalent to a systematic cul- 

 tivation of some agreeable emotion. The so- 

 called believer of this type is a cynic in a thin 

 disguise. He is partly aware that his belief is a 

 sham, but is not the less resolved to stick to so 

 pleasant a sham. He answers his opponents by 

 a shriek or a sneer. The sentiment which he 

 most thoroughly hates and misunderstands is the 

 love of truth for its own sake. He cannot con- 



ceive why any man should attack a lie simplv 

 because it is a lie, and supposes that the enemy 

 is prompted to disperse his dreams by coarse 

 brutality and malignant hatred of the beautiful. 

 His most effective weapon is the petulant sarcasm 

 which was once used by skeptics because thev 

 were not allowed to argue seriously, and is now 

 used by believers because they cannot. His in- 

 dignation is the growl of the sluggard who will 

 not be roused from his dreams. Why cannot 

 men be satisfied to amuse themselves with the 

 reverent phantoms of the past, instead of prying 

 into all manner of awkward questions, upsetting 

 established convictions, and pressing every com- 

 fortable old creed to give a rigid account of its 

 validity and utility ? An honest believer is not 

 necessarily or probably an obstructive or a bigot ; 

 but obstructive and repressive tendencies predis- 

 pose a man to accept the intellectual attitude 

 which justifies him in complacently asserting that 

 the actual world is going straight to the devil, 

 while he masks a selfish indifference under cover 

 of loftier aspirations toward the world of the im- 

 agination. Dream-land once provided a safe is- 

 sue for much discontent, for it sanctified a policy 

 of submission to tyranny and abnegation of social 

 duties. Though it has grown more shadowy, it 

 still provides a pleasant refuge for the far less vig- 

 orous sentiment of men who see that the world has 

 escaped from their guidance, and who welcome a 

 good excuse for folding their arms, sneering at 

 busy agitators, and declaring that the sole worthy 

 aim of human effort is to be found in dream- 

 land instead of amid the harsh shock of strug- 

 gling realities. — Fortnightly Review. 



THE SUN'S CORONA AND HIS SPOTS. 



By EICHAED A. PEOCTOE. 



1 The corona was ten times brighter than in the eclipse of 1871, thus indicating a variation with the maximum 

 and minimum sun-spot periods." — Telegram from the Eclipse observers, July 29, 1878. 



ONE of the most important results of observa- 

 tions made upon the eclipse of July 29th 

 last indicates the existence of a law of sympathy, 

 so to speak, between the solar corona and the 

 sun-spots. The inquiry into this relation seems 

 to me likely to lead to a very interesting series 

 of researches, from which may possibly result an 

 interpretation not only of the relation itself, 

 should it be found really to exist, but of the mys- 



tery of the sun-spot period. I speak of the sun- 

 spot period as mysterious, because even if we 

 admit (which I think we cannot do) that the sun- 

 spots are produced in some way by the action of 

 the planet's upon the sun, it would still remain 

 altogether a mystery how this action operated. 

 When -all the known facts respecting the sun- 

 spots are carefully considered, nothing yet ad- 

 vanced respecting them seems at all satisfactory, 



