CHAPTER I
THE DAY AND ITS DIVISIONS
There is a difference of opinion at the present day amongst astronomers as to the time in which the planet Venus rotates upon her axis. This difference arises through the difficulty of perceiving or identifying any markings on her brilliantly lighted surface. She is probably continually cloud-covered, and the movements of the very faint shadings that are sometimes seen upon her have been differently interpreted. The older observers concurred in giving her a rotation period of 23h 21m, which is not very different from that of the earth. Many astronomers, amongst them Schiaparelli, assign a rotation period of 225 days, that is to say the same period as that in which she goes round the sun in her orbit. The axis on which she rotates is almost certainly at right angles to the plane in which she moves round the sun, and she has no moon.
We do not know if the planet is inhabited by intelligent beings, but assuming the existence of such, it will be instructive to inquire as to the conditions under which they must live if this view be correct, and the rotation period of Venus, and her revolution period be the same.
Venus would then always turn the same face to the sun, just as our moon always turns the same face to us and so never appears to turn round. Venus would therefore have no "days," for on her one hemisphere there would be eternal light, and on the other eternal darkness. Since she has no moon, she has no "month." Since she moves round the sun in a circle, and the axis through her north and south poles lies at right angles to her ecliptic, she has no "seasons," she can have no "year." On her daylight side, the sun remains fixed in one spot in the sky, so long as the observer does not leave his locality; it hangs overhead, or near some horizon, north, south, east, or west, continually. There are no "hours," therefore no divisions of time, it might be almost said no "time" itself. There are no points of the compass even, no north, south, east or west, no directions except towards the place where the sun is overhead or away from it. There could be no history in the sense we know it, for there would be no natural means of dating. "Time" must there be artificial, uncertain and arbitrary.
On the night side of Venus, if her men can see the stars at all for cloud, they would perceive the slow procession of stars coming out, for Venus turns continually to the heavens—though not to the sun. Mazzaroth would still be brought out in his season, but there would be no answering change on Venus. Her men might still know the ordinances of heaven, but they could not know the dominion thereof set upon their earth.
This imaginary picture of the state of our sister planet may illustrate the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis:—
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years."
The making of the calendar is in all nations an astronomical problem: it is the movements of the various heavenly bodies that give to us our most natural divisions of time. We are told in Deuteronomy:—
"The sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, . . . the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven."