--------
* Verily, “absolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of
distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of
the question.”
----------

The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the more within the scope of our physical vision.  Truly remarks Sir W. Herschel that the sun “has been called a globe of fire, perhaps metaphorically!” It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid bodies revolving near the sun’s surface.  “They have been conjectured to be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid matter....  They have been taken for clouds .... explained to be opaque masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun....”  When all his anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all astronomers comes near the truth—­far nearer than any of those modern astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his “imaginative and fanciful theories.”  His only mistake, now shared by most astronomers, was that he regarded the “opaque body” occasionally observed through the curtain of the “luminous envelope” as the sun itself.  When saying in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth willow-leaf theory—­“the definite shape of these objects, their exact similarity one to another.... all these characters seem quite repugnant to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid nature”—­his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable knowledge of physical science.  When he adds:  “Nothing remains but to consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes.... having some sort of solidity....  Be they what they may, they are evidently the immediate sources of the solar light and heat”—­he utters a grander physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer.  And when, furthermore, we find him postulating—­“looked at in this point of view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and electricity,” Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar physics.  These “wonderful objects” are not, as a modern astronomer interprets Sir J. Herschel’s words, “solar inhabitants, whose fiery constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole solar system,” but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and breathes, and has its being.  The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a much as it gives out.  Were the astronomers to be asked—­what definite and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory—­what knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere—­they might, perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present theories.  For it is sufficient to make a resume of what the solar physicists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the heavenly bodies.  We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate:—­