Page images
PDF
EPUB

principles and modes of action have to be established, not by direct argument from acknowledged axioms, but by bringing forward and dwelling on simple and familiar instances in which the same principles and the same or similar modes of action take place; thus erecting, as it were, in each particular case, a separate induction, and constructing at each step a little body of science to meet its exigencies. The difference is that of pioneering a road through an untraversed country and advancing at ease along a broad and beaten highway; that is to say, if we are determined to make ourselves distinctly understood, and will appeal to reason at all. As for the method of assertion, or a direct demand on the faith of the student (though in some complex cases indispensable, where illustrative explanation would defeat its own end by becoming tedious and burdensome to both parties), it is one which we shall neither adopt ourselves nor would recommend to others.

(8.) On the other hand, although it is something new to abandon the road of mathematical demonstration in the treatment of subjects susceptible of it, and teach any considerable branch of science entirely or chiefly by the way of illustration and familiar parallels, it is yet not impossible that those who are already well acquainted with our subject, and whose knowledge has been acquired by that confessedly higher and better practice which is incompatible with the avowed objects of the present work, may yet find their account in its perusal,—for this reason, that it is always of advantage to present any given body of knowledge to the mind in as great a variety of different lights as possible. It is a property of illustrations of this kind to strike no two minds in the same manner, or with the same force; because no two minds are stored with the same images, or have acquired their notions of them by similar habits. Accordingly, it may very well happen, that a proposition, even to one best acquainted with it, may be placed not merely in a new and uncommon, but in a more impressive and satisfactory light by such a course-some obscurity may be dissi

[blocks in formation]

pated, some inward misgiving cleared up, or even some link supplied which may lead to the perception of connections and deductions altogether unknown before. And the probability of this is increased when, as in the present instance, the illustrations chosen have not been studiously selected from books, but are such as have presented themselves freely to the author's mind as being most in harmony with his own views; by which, of course, he means to lay no claim to originality in all or any of them beyond what they may really possess.

(9.) Besides, there are cases in the application of mechanical principles with which the mathematical student is but too familiar, where, when the data are before him, and the numerical and geometrical relations of his problems all clear to his conception,-when his forces are estimated and his lines measured, nay, when even he has followed up the application of his technical processes, and fairly arrived at his conclusion, there is still something wanting in his mind not in the evidence, for he has examined each link, and finds the chain completenot in the principles, for those he well knows are too firmly established to be shaken - but precisely in the mode of action. He has followed out a train of reasoning by logical and technical rules, but the signs he has employed are not pictures of nature, or have lost their original meaning as such to his mind: he has not seen, as it were, the process of nature passing under his eye in an instant of time, and presented as a whole to his imagination. A familiar parallel, or an illustration drawn from some artificial or natural process, of which he has that direct and individual impression which gives it a reality and associates it with a name, will, in almost every such case, supply in a moment this deficient feature, will convert all his symbols into real pictures, and infuse an animated meaning into what was before a lifeless succession of words and signs. We cannot, indeed, always promise ourselves to attain this degree of vividness in our illustrations, nor are the points to be elucidated themselves always capable of being so para

phrased (if we may use the expression) by any single instance adducible in the ordinary course of experience; but the object will at least be kept in view; and, as we are very conscious of having, in making such attempts gained for ourselves much clearer views of several of the more concealed effects of planetary perturbation than we had acquired by their mathematical investigation in detail, we may reasonably hope that the endeavour will not always be unattended with a similar success in others.

(10.) From what has been said, it will be evident that our aim is not to offer to the public a technical treatise, in which the student of practical or theoretical astronomy shall find consigned the minute description of methods of observation, or the formulæ he requires prepared to his hand, or their demonstrations drawn out in detail. In all these the present work will be found meagre, and quite inadequate to his wants. Its aim is entirely different; being to present in each case the mere ultimate rationale of facts, arguments, and processes; and, in all cases of mathematical application, avoiding whatever would tend to encumber its pages with algebraic or geometrical symbols, to place under his inspection that central thread of common sense on which the pearls of analytical research are invariably strung; but which, by the attention the latter claim for themselves, is often concealed from the eye of the gazer, and not always disposed in the straightest and most convenient form to follow by those who string them. This is no fault of those who have conducted the enquiries to which we allude. The contention of mind for which they call is enormous; and it may, perhaps, be owing to their experience of how little can be accomplished in carrying such processes on to their conclusion, by mere ordinary clearness of head; and how necessary it often is to pay more attention to the purely mathematical conditions which ensure success, the hooks-and-eyes of their equations and series, than to those which enchain causes with their effects, and both with the human

CHAP. I.

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

reason, that we must attribute something of that indistinctness of view which is often complained of as a grievance by the earnest student, and still more commonly ascribed ironically to the native cloudiness of an atmosphere too sublime for vulgar comprehension. We think we shall render good service to both classes of readers, by dissipating, so far as our power lies, that accidental obscurity, and by showing ordinary untutored comprehension clearly what it can, and what it cannot, hope to attain.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL NOTIONS. FORM AND MAGNITUDE OF THE EARTH.HORIZON AND ITS DIP. THE ATMOSPHERE. - REFRACTION.

TWILIGHT. — APPEARANCES RESULTING FROM DIURNAL MOTION. PARALLAX. FIRST STEP TOWARDS FORMING AN IDEA OF THE DISTANCE OF THE STARS. DEFINITIONS.

(11.) THE magnitudes, distances, arrangement, and motions of the great bodies which make up the visible universe, their constitution and physical condition, so far as they can be known to us, with their mutual influences and actions on each other, so far as they can be traced by the effects produced, and established by legitimate reasoning, form the assemblage of objects to which the attention of the astronomer is directed. The term astronomy itself, which denotes the law or rule of the astra (by which the ancients understood not only the stars properly so called, but the sun, the moon, and all the visible constituents of the heavens), sufficiently indicates this; and, although the term astrology, which denotes the reason, theory, or interpretation of the stars†, has become degraded in its application, and confined to

*

* Arng, a star; ropos, a law; or, to tend, as a shepherd his flock; so that aσrgovouos means" shepherd of the stars." The two etymologies are, however, coincident.

+ Aoyos, reason, or a word, the vehicle of reason; the interpreter of thought.

superstitious and delusive attempts to divine future events by their dependence on pretended planetary influences, the same meaning originally attached itself to that epithet.

(12.) But, besides the stars and other celestial bodies, the earth itself, regarded as an individual body, is one principal object of the astronomer's consideration, and, indeed, the chief of all. It derives its importance, in a practical as well as theoretical sense, not only from its proximity, and its relation to us as animated beings, who draw from it the supply of all our wants, but as the station from which we see all the rest, and as the only one among them to which we can, in the first instance, refer for any determinate marks and measures by which to recognize their changes of situation, or with which to compare their distances.

The

(13.) To the reader who now for the first time takes up a book on astronomy, it will no doubt seem strange to class the earth with the heavenly bodies, and to assume any community of nature among things apparently so different. For what, in fact, can be more apparently different than the vast and seemingly immeasurable extent of the earth, and the stars, which appear but as points, and seem to have no size at all? earth is dark and opaque, while the celestial bodies are brilliant. We perceive in it no motion, while in them we observe a continual change of place, as we view them at different hours of the day or night, or at different seasons of the year. The ancients, accordingly, one or two of the more enlightened of them only excepted, admitted no such community of nature; and, by thus placing the heavenly bodies and their movements without the pale of analogy and experience, effectually intercepted the progress of all reasoning from what passes here below, to what is going on in the regions where they exist and move. Under such conventions, astronomy, as a science of cause and effect, could not exist, but must be limited to a mere registry of appearances, unconnected with any attempt to account for them on rea

« PreviousContinue »