XC1V NOTES, 



says, in the 12th chapter of the second book of a treatise which enjoyed great 

 celebrity at the time, "de docta Ignorantia" (Nicolai de Cusa, Opera, ed. 

 Basil. 1565, p. 39) : " neque color nigrediuis est argumentum vilitatis Terrse ; 

 iiam in Sole, si quis esset, uoa appareret ilia claritas quee nobis : considerate 

 enim corpore Solis, tune habet quandam quasi terrain centraiiorem, et quan- 

 dam luciditatem quasi ignilem circumferentialem, et in inedio quasi aqueam 

 uubcm et serem clariorem, quern admodum terra ista sua elementa." On the 

 margin is written " Paradoxa" and " Hypni :" the latter word must, there 

 fore, doubtless signify here also " dreams" (Ivvirvia) some hazardous specu- 

 ation. Again, in a figurative comparison occurring in a long writing Exerci- 

 tatioues ex Sermonibus Cardinalis (Opera, p. 579) I find " Sicut in Sole 

 considerari potest natura corporalis, et ilia de se non est magnse virtutis" 

 (notwithstanding mass-attraction or gravitation !) " et non potest virtutem 

 suam alb's corporibus commuuicare, quia non est radiosa. Et alia natnra 

 lucida illi unita, ita quod Sol ex unione utriusque naturae habet virtutem, quse 

 sufficit huic sensibili mundo, ad vitam innovandam in vegetabilibus et ani- 

 malibus, in elemeutis et mineralibus, per suam influentiain radiosam. Sic de 

 Christo, qui est Sol justitise . . . ." Dr. Clemens thinks that all this 

 be something more than a happy conjectural anticipation. It appears to him 

 * simply impossible that in the parts of the passage quoted (considerate 

 corpore Solis ; in Sole considerari potest . . . ) Cusa could have appealed to 

 experience, unless there had been some tolerably accurate observation of the 

 solar spots, both of their darker parts and of the penumbra." He conjec- 

 tures " that the philosophers of modern science had been anticipated in some 

 of the results obtained by them, and that the Cardinal's views may have been 

 influenced by discoveries which are generally, but erroneously, supposed to 

 have been first made at a later period." It is certainly not only possible, 

 but even very probable, that in districts where the sun is partially veiled for 

 several months as during the continuance of the " garua" on the coast of 

 Peru solar spots may have been seen even by uncivilised men with the 

 naked eye ; but we have no accounts from any travellers of such a circum- 

 stance having attracted attention, or of the spots of the sun having ever been 

 interwoven in the mythology of worshippers of that luminary. The mere, 

 and very rare, sight with the naked eye of a solar spot on the sun's disk, 

 when either low down near the horizon, or covered with a thin veil of mist, 

 and appearing white, red, or perhaps even of a greenish hue, would, I think, 

 never have led even men exercised in intellectual thought to conjecture the 

 existence of several successive coverings enveloping the dark body of the sun. 



