The Irish Astronomer-Royal, in a lecture delivered on Monday at
the Royal Institution, stated that there are known to be three times as many stars as the population of Great Britain. Now, as, of course, it is most probable that there are a vastly greater number which have never been seen by our astro- nomers than that have been seen, we may fairly conjecture that there is probably at least one sun in the heavens for every living inhabitant of earth,—indeed, very possibly for every in- habitant of earth dead or living. What a specific meaning any computation of this kind gives to the abstract notion of infini- tude! Conceive what a separate sun for every living inhabitant of Great Britain means,—and so much is absolutely known. And if for every sun in creation there be, as there well may be, a whole planetary system full of finite life, and if yet the universe, so far from being crowded, be as empty as eternity is empty when you measure it against the infinitesimal roll of human history, we certainly need not dream, as some of us are apt to do, that these few swarming ants'-nests of human beings, of which we make so much complaint, are too populous for the purposes of supreme wisdom.
Previous page
