132 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Fee. 1, 1886. 



•whatsoever soul it be that doeth any manner of work in 

 that same day, that soul -will I destroy from among his 

 people. Ye shall do no manner of work ; it is a statute 

 for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. 

 It shall be unto you a sabbath of solemn rest, and ye shall 

 afflict your souls ; in the ninth day of the month at even, 

 from even unto even, shall ye keep your sabbath." Even 

 until now the whole day of atonement is k-jpt as a day of 

 affliction by the Jews, a fast for twenty-four hours, — 

 even by many Jews who are careless about all the other 

 observances of Judaism. But while this day, marking 

 the descent of the sun to the winter half of his caret r 

 was a solemn fast and a day of mourning, the day of the 

 Passover was a feast, — " This day shall be unto you for a 

 memorial," said Moses, " and ye shall keep it a feast to 

 the Lord ; throughout your generations ye shall keep it 

 a feast by an ordinance for ever." 



«- * * 



It seems to me about as likely that the morning .ind 

 evening- sacrifices did not refer to the rising and setting 

 sun, or the monthly sacrifices to the moon, as that 

 originally the Feast of the Passover and the Fast of the 

 Atonement did not refer to the ascension of the sun above 

 the equator and his descent below it. I expect, however, 

 that the day of the Passover was originally so fixed as to 

 follow by three days (clear) the day of the actual crossing 

 of the equator as determined by the astronomical priests 

 of Egypt and Assyi'ia, while in like manner the dp.y of 

 m.ourning preceded by three days (clear) the day of 

 crossing the equator descendingly. The days of crossing, 

 then, would be the tenth day of the first month and the 

 fourteenth day of the seventh. We have traces of this in 

 the killing of the Paschal Lamb on the tenth day of the 

 first month, the day of the Passover, the fourteenth being 

 immediately followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread 

 lasting for seven days beginning with the fifteenth ; 

 while the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the 

 seventh month was also followed by a feast of seven 

 dp.ys beginning with the fifteenth day. This arrange- 

 ment would leave an interval, from the killing of the 

 Paschal Lamb to the beginning of the Feast of Taber- 

 nacles, almost exactly equal to the interval f:"om the day 

 of exactly twelve hours in spring to the day of exactly 

 twelve hours in autumn. 



* * * 



It might be interesting to inquire how much farther 

 the ideas originally connected with sun-worship jiene- 

 trated into at least the ceremonial of the religions of 

 to-day. It is tolerably well known that the earlier 

 teachings of Christianity were associated with — some 

 even have gone so far as to say that they had their origin 

 in — the teachings of races farther east than Palestine, 

 who at any rate in ceremonial retained the traditions of 

 sun-worship. There is curious evidence on this point in 

 a letter from the Emperor Hadrian to his brother-in-law 

 Servianus, A.D. 134 in which he says, " The worshippers 

 of Ser.ipis" (the Sun-god) "are Christians, and those are 

 consecr.ited to the god Serapis, who, I find, call themselves 

 bishops of Christ." Of course, he must in some way have 

 been misled by the resemblance between what he hnd heard 

 about the birth, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of 

 Christ, and what he knew about the birth of the Sun-god 

 in Virgo,* his crossing (or Passover), recognised rising 



* In the Buddhist books we find the tradition that the Buddha 

 was born of a virgin interpreted in like manner. In their story 

 it is presented in its seemingly most monstrous form that the 

 Buddha entered the side of the virgin in the form of a white 



three days later (retained in the Jewish interval from the 

 Passover to the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened 

 Bread) and ascension to the glorious part of his — the Sun- 

 god's — annual career. So also when he goes on to say 

 " there is no presbyter of the Christians who is not either 

 an astrologer or a soothsayer," he doubtless misinter- 

 preted those matters of ceremonial observance which the 

 Christians of his day retained from the ceremonial of 

 sun-worship, on the same principle which led the early 

 Jewish legislators to retain much of the same ctremonial, 

 in fact the whole of its sacrificial portion, rather than 

 disturb their people's minds by changes in unimportant 

 matter.^, while they nevertheless zealously purified their 

 actual teachings from r.U that they deemed incon; istent 

 with the worship of one only God. 



Me. Wallace has I conceive done good service in 

 calling attention to certain causes of depression in trade 

 for which we are ourselves in large jjart responsible, 

 instead of humouring that feeling which has led many 

 to see no faiilt save in other nations. Of course there 

 are some who will take exception to Mr. Wallace's argu- 

 ments for no better reason than that being an eminent 

 naturalist he has no right to form or expre.'s any opinion 

 at all about trade or commerce. Others again may argue 

 that because he has been deluded about certain spiri 

 tualislic matters over which many enthusiasts have gone 

 astray, and about which some of the most learned have 

 entertained str,ange .siiperstitions, his opinion about 

 national well-being can by no means be worth listening 

 to. For my own part I hold all such objections as futile ; 

 and .although as readers of Knowledge may have noticed 

 I am by no means a believer in spiritualism (regarding 

 many phenomena associated with it, however, as real, 

 though natural) I cxn see no reason why either his skill 

 as a naturalist should be regarded as a reason against his 

 forming or expressing an opinion on that subject, nor on 

 the other why because on that misleading and time- 

 wasting subject he has erred he therefore should neces- 

 sarily form erroneous opinions about trade depre.'sion, 

 a matter which falls within the department of observa- 

 tional and indeed of experimental research. 



* * * 



A VALDED correspondent, — one of a rather large number 

 who h."ve discussed the question about Force and Energy, 

 touched on in last month's " Gcssip," notes that beside 

 the more common misapprehensions into which Huxley, 

 Romanes, Mivart, Hivckcl, and others have fallen, being 

 followed by many, there is one mistake which even 

 special teachers of mechanics — as Tait and Balfour 

 Stewart — have fallen into. They describe Kinetic Energy 

 as Active, and Potential Energy as Passive. Now at a 

 first view this seems right. A bullet flying from the 

 mouth of a cannon or a stone flying swiftly through the 

 air seems to tell us of very active energy ; gas at high 

 pressure or a compressed spring seems passive. Water 

 at a height, in a reservoir, seems passive, water swiftly 

 moving (upwards, downwards, or horizontally) seems 

 active. But in reality it is the potential energy which is 

 rerJly .active, the body whicli manifests kinetic energy is 

 passive. The circumstance that a moving mass nia.y at any 

 moment communicate motion to some other hodj, or may 

 even while it is moving be communicating motion, gene- 

 elephant. But so soon as we note that the white elephant was 

 the recognised Buddhist emblem of the sun, we see that the 

 tradition belonged to sun- worship and is to be interpreted astro- 

 nomicallv. 



