THE DEPTHS OF THE UNIVERSE. By George Ellery Hale. (Scribner'a
7s. 6d. net.) Though these chapters were written for a periodical Press, there is no pseudo-science about them. They form a little book which seriously attempts to survey our present position in- astronomical knowledge. In a previous review we said riomething about the spiral nebulae, and the theory that they are separate universes, just as the Milky Way, which includes all the stars to be seen by the naked eye, is a universe. We also said that the Light-Year, the astronomical unit, is the distance covered in one year by a light-ray travelling at 186,000 miles per second. The diameter of our Galactic Universe is 300,000 light-years. Some of our family are thus quite distant. The Pleiades, those little friends of one's childhood, are 350 light-years away. The distance of some of the other spiral universes is estimated to range from 500,000 to 10 million light-years. All this is numbing to the intelligence, for all sense of love and divinity is crushed ; and this sight of the hem of the robe of that Eternity which we so glibly name destroys us. But what is more proud than this humiliation ? What greater proof can we have of the fact of Godhead within us ? As we increase our know- - ledge, we find that we only confirm the basis upon which our ' ancestors' emotions were founded. There is a quality of pride and self-unification in us which is constant, and is always shown anew in its fine simplicity by the light of fresh knowledge. What can that defiant power be but God ? In such assurance we challenge the stars.
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