stated that we have found, at all events, that some of the doubtful light is now solar; we have turned the opinion into a fact. Bear in mind that close to the sun you have a white layer composed of vapours of many substances, including all the outer ones; outside this is a yellow region; above that a region of hydrogen, incandescent and red at the base, cooler, and therefore blue, higher up, the red and blue commingling and giving us violet; and then another element thinning out and giving us green. Take these colours in connection with those which are thrown on our landscapes or on the sea during eclipses, each region being lit up in turns with varying, more or less monochromatic light, and that light of the very colour composing the various layers, each layer being, as I have shown, so much brighter than the outer ones that its light predominates over them. Is it too much to suggest to those who may be anxious to attempt to elucidate this subject, that probably if they would consider all the conditions of the problem presented by that great screen, the moon, allowing each of these layers by turn to throw its light earthwards, the inequalities of the edge of the globular moon allowing here light to pass from a richer region, here stopping light from even the dimmer ones, they would be able to explain the rays, their colours, variations, apparent twistings, and change of side? I do not hesitate to ask this question, because it is a difficult one to answer, since the whole question is one of enormous difficulty. But difficult though it be, I trust I have shown you that we are on the right track, and that in spite of our bad weather, the observations made by the English and American Government Eclipse Expedition of 1870 have largely increased our knowledge. With increase of knowledge generally comes a necessity for changing the nomenclature belonging to a time when it was imperfect. The researches to which I have drawn your attention form no exception to this rule. A few years ago our science was satisfied with the terms prominences, sierra, and corona, to represent the phenomena I have brought before you, the nature of both being absolutely unknown, as is indicated by the fact that the term sierra was employed, and aptly so, when it was imagined the prominences might be solar mountains! We now know many of the constituent materials of these strange things; we know that we are dealing with the exterior portion of the solar atmosphere, and a large knowledge of solar meteorology is already acquired, which shows us the whole mechanism. of these prominences. But we also know that part of the corona is not at the sun at all. Hence the terms leucosphere and halo have been suggested to designate in the one case the regions where the general radiation, owing to a reduced pressure and temperature, is no longer subordinate to the selective radiation, and in the other, that part of the corona which is non-solar. Neither of these terms is apt, nor is either necessary. All purposes will be served if the term corona be retained as a name for the exterior region, including the rays, rifts, and the like, about which doubt still exists, though it is now proved that some part is non-solar, while for the undoubted solar portion the term Chromosphere-the bright-line region-as it was defined in this theatre now two years ago, exactly expresses its characteristic features, and differentiates it from the photosphere and the associated portion of the solar atmosphere. Here my discourse would end, if it were not incumbent on me to state how grateful I feel to Her Majesty's Government for giving us the opportunity of going to the eclipse; to place on record the pleasure we all felt in being so closely associated in our work with the distinguished American astronomers who from first to last aided us greatly; and to express our great gratitude to all sorts of new friends whom we found wherever we went, and who welcomed us as if they had known us from our childhood. [J. N. L.] WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, March 31, 1871. SIR HENRY HOLLAND, Bart. M.D. D.C.L. F.R.S. President, PROFESSOR MAX MÜLLER, LL.D. On Mythology. (Abstract deferred.) GENERAL MONTHLY MEETING, Monday, April 3, 1871. WARREN DE LA RUE, Esq. D.C.L. F.R.S. Vice-President, William Cubitt, Esq. William Gould, Esq. Robert Hannah, Esq. John Henry Mackenzie, Esq. Rev. John Macnaught, M.A Joseph Reynolds Masters, Esq. George Borwick Robertson, Esq. F.C.S. were elected Members of the Royal Institution. The special thanks of the Members were returned for the following Donations to "The Fund for the Promotion of Experimental Researches" T. Williams Helps, Esq. (6th Donation) £10 The PRESENTS received since the last Meeting were laid on the table, and the thanks of the Members returned for the same, viz. : FROM 1870. Agricultural Society of England, Royal-No. 13. 8vo. 1871. 1871. Benson, W. Esq. (the Author)-Principles of the Science of Colour. 4to. 1868. British Architects, Royal Institute of-Sessional Papers, 1870-1, No. 5. 4to. Comitato Geologico d'Italia—Bollettini. 1871. Nos. 1, 2. 8vo. Firenze. American Journal of Science, Feb. 1871. 8vo. Artizan for March, 1871. 4to. Athenæum for March, 1871. 4to. Chemical News for March, 1871. 4to. Engineer for March, 1871. fol. Horological Journal for March, 1871. 8vo. Journal of Gas-Lighting for March, 1871. 4to. Mechanics' Magazine for March, 1871. 8vo. Nature for March, 1871. 4to. Pharmaceutical Journal for March, 1871. 8vo. Photographic News for March, 1871. 4to. Scientific Review for March, 1871. fol. Grove, W. R. Esq. Q.C. F.R.S. M.R.I. (the Author)-Die Verwandschaft der Naturkrafte, von Dr. W. R. Grove: herausgegeben durch E. von Schraper : mit einem Anhang von R. Clausius. 8vo. Braunschweig. 1871. Meteorological Office-Barometrical Manual. 8vo. 1871. Meteorological Society-Proceedings, No. 52. 8vo. 1871. Photographic Society-Journal, No. 223. 8vo. 1871. Royal Society of London-Proceedings, No. 126. 8vo. 1871. Symons, G. J. Esq. (the Author)-Symons' Monthly Meteorological Magazine, March, 1871. 8vo. Symons British Rainfall, 1870. 8vo. 1871, Vereins zur Beförderung des Gewerbfleisses in Preussen-Verhandlungen, Sept.Dez. 1870. 4to. Victoria Institute-Journal, No. 17. 8vo. 1871. Title, &c. to Vol. IV. Willis, M. A. (the Authoress, wife of Rev. R. Willis,-Short Sketch about Washing Linen, and other Tracts. 16mo. 1869–71. WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, April 21, 1871. WARREN DE LA RUE, Esq. LL.D. F.R.S. Vice-President, PROFESSOR BLACKIE, F.R.S.E. On the pre-Socratic Philosophy. THE history of origins is always interesting and generally obscure; but in the case of the early Greek philosophy a sufficient number of fragments has been saved from the wreck of tradition to enable us to have a clear view of the salient doctrines of the pre-Socratic thinkers, though not certainly an accurate knowledge of the complete organism of their speculation. The pre-Homeric poetry of Greece, of the existence of which in rich abundance there can be little doubt, can be separated from the new organism into which it was worked by the genius of Homer, only by a process more or less conjectural and slippery; but on some of the most interesting and significant utterances of the school of Greek thinkers who flourished in Asia Minor, Magna Grecia, and Sicily for the century and a half that preceded Socrates, we are able to lay our fingers with as much certainty as on the discourses of Socrates himself reported by the pious discipleship of Xenophon; and the fragments which two hundred years ago lay scattered and untested, have in recent times been so laboriously collected, critically sifted, and organically arranged by the diligent, intelligent, and sober-minded workers of erudite Germany, that it is in the power of every fairly equipped scholar to re-create, in a more or less complete form, the main features of pre-Socratic speculation. With the aid of the learned works of Preller, Karsten, Zeller,* to give a rounded completeness to the information on this subject which we gather from Aristotle, Plato, Eusebius, Hippolytus, Clemens, Plutarch, and Stobæus, I have set myself to present in one broad view whatever of most general human significance and scientific interest seemed to shine clearly out from these early speculations; and the result of my labours is the bird's eye of pre-Socratic thinking which the present discourse contains. *Karsten: Philosoph. Græc. Vet. Reliq.' Bruxelles, 1830. Ritter et Preller: 'Historia Philos. Græc. Rom.' Gothæ, 1869. Zeller: Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie.' With regard to the whole of this early period of Greek thought two general remarks may be made: first, in reference to its locality, that it is more Asiatic than European, the Greek colonies of Asia Minor being its cradle; and second, with respect to its character, that in those early times all knowledge, thinking, and feeling was less specialized than at the present day; in such fashion that, if the things known and speculated on were much fewer, the men who knew and speculated on them were more complete. In our time the gulf that separates the scientific from the metaphysical, the imaginative, and the religious man, and all these from the man of business and affairs, is often very great, and practically impassable. The scholar will have nothing to do with physical science; the student of mind ignores matter; the dissector of brain ignores mind; and both seem either unable or unwilling to bridge over the space that separates the special province of cognition from the general domain of human spiritual instincts, aspirations, and emotions. It seems indeed the inevitable tendency of the division of labour, while it improves and multiplies the product, to narrow and to dwarf the producer. The ancient intellect grew up more like a rich leafy tree with many branches, spreading themselves out towards the sun on all sides; the modern man is taught to live only in a straight line, and to extend himself, as J. S. Mill says of Jeremy Bentham, infinitely in one direction. He thus loses the central point of philosophic survey altogether, or at best works out only one idea, which he is inclined to impose on the universal system of things, and cultivating assiduously one side of his nature, cheats himself of the beautiful symmetry and balance of a complete growth. More particularly we must observe that the opposition betwixt physical science and metaphysical speculation, so common in modern times, was not known to the ancients; their physics was always mixed largely with metaphysics; or rather we now are in the habit of treating separately subjects which then had not begun to be even thought of as separate; the man of physical science was at the same time a metaphysical thinker; the materialist was also a spiritualist; and science stood before men, not naked as now with the exposures of a cunning dissector, but festooned with the flowers of poetry and fragrant with the breath of piety. Hence it comes that in Empedocles, for instance, we find that complex combination of physician, poet, priest, and politician, so difficult for us moderns to understand. Nature was constantly speaking to those ancient Greek sages in the language of morals; and morals on the other hand did not disdain to use the language of nature. That which had never been divorced could not be looked on as antagonistic. It is not therefore altogether true-certainly not to be taken in a strict and literal sense-w -when we read that Socrates was the father of Moral Philosophy. Pythagoras was a great moralist and a pious man more than a hundred years before him; the so-called seven wise men, as Laertius well notes, were all not merely or mainly speculative thinkers, but active citizens, and often practical statesmen, and so |