Sun-force
Daily the conviction deepens among those who have studied the matter, that with a few exceptions all the physical powers which man wields as movers or transformers of matter are modifications of Sun-force. It was bestowed upon antediluvian plants, and they locked it up for a season in the woody tissue which it enabled them to weave, and afterwards time changed that into coal; and the steam-engine which we complacently call ours, and claim patents for, burns that coal into lever-force and steam-hammer power, and is in truth a sun-engine. And the plants of our own day receive as liberally from the sun, and condense his force into the charcoal which we extract from them, and expend in smelting metallic ores. With the smelted metals we make voltaic batteries, and magnets, and telegraph wires; and call the modified, sun-force electricity and magnetism, and say it is ours, and ask if we may not do what we like with our own.
And again, the plants we cultivate concentrate Sun-force in grass, hay, oats, wheat, and other fibres and grains, which seem only suitable to feed cattle and beasts of burden with. But by and by a Spanish bull-fighter is transfixed by this force, through the horns of a bull, and dies unaware of his classical fate, pierced to the heart by an arrow from Apollo the Sun-god’s bow. On English commons prizes are run for, by steeds which are truly coursers of the sun, for his force is swelling in their muscles and throbbing in their veins, and horse-power is but another name for sun-power. Nor is it otherwise with their riders; for they too have been fed upon light, and made strong with fruits and flesh which have been nourished by the sun. His heat warms their blood, his light shines in their eyes; they cannot deal a blow which is not a coup-de-soleil, a veritable sun-stroke; nor express a thought without help from him.
In grave earnestness, let me remind you, that as force cannot be annihilated any more than matter, but can only be changed in its mode of manifestation, so it appears beyond doubt that the force generated by the sun, and conveyed by his rays in the guise of heat, light, and chemical power, to the earth, is not extinguished there, but only changes its form. It apparently disappears when it falls upon plants, which never grow without it; but we cannot doubt that it is working in a new shape in their organs and tissues, and reappears in the heat and light which they give out when they are burned. This heat, which is sun-heat at second hand, we again seem to lose when we use plants as fuel in our boiler-furnaces; but it has only disguised itself, without loss of power, in the elasticity of the steam, and will again seem lost, when it is translated into the momentum of the heavy piston, and the whirling power of a million of wheels.
The second-hand heat of the sun appears equally lost when vegetable fuel is expended in reducing metals; but oxidize these metals in a galvanic battery, and it will reappear as chemical force, as electricity, as magnetism, as heat the most intense; and, in the electro-carbon light, will return almost to the condition of sunshine again.—Prof. George Wilson.