The
sun itself is almost as nothing compared with the dimensions of the solar
system. Sirius is calculated to be a thousand times as great as the Sun,
and a million times as far away. The solar system itself travels in one
region of space, sailing between worlds and worlds, and is surrounded by
many other systems as great and complex as itself; and we know that even
then we have not reached the limits of the Universe itself.
There are stars so distant that their light, though traveling 180,000
miles in a second, yet takes years to reach us; and beyond all these are
other systems of stars which are so far away that they cannot be perceived
singly, but even in our most powerful telescopes appear only as minute
clouds or nebulae. It is, indeed, but a feeble expression of the truth to
say that the infinities revealed to us by Science,--the infinitely great
in the one direction, and the infinitely small in the other,--go far
beyond anything which had occurred to the unaided imagination of Man, and
are not only a never-failing source of pleasure and interest, but seem to
lift us out of the petty troubles and sorrows of life.
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