THE VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE.
LORD KELVLN, who may now be described as the grand old man of the scientific world, delivered ten days ago a lecture before the British Association the object of which, he stated, was to show that "our universe, and by universe he meant not the solar system, but the wider space from which the light of the most distant star could reach our telescopes, was a small affair." His argument was a little beyond the grasp of non-scientific minds ; but there is such a thing as authority, though so many deny it nowadays, and we are quite content to believe, on the strength of Lord Kelvin's opinion, that the visible universe, even as the learned know it, is very small. What we want to discuss is not that, forwhieh we have not the equipment, but the very palpable fact that the smallness of the universe which Lord Kelvin describes is to ordinary minds a vastness so inconceivable that they can scarcely think out the meaning of• the terms employed to convey a general idea of its size. They can read, and perhaps remember, that the light of the farthest star of which we are cognisant takes to reach the earth a period equal to three and a half million times the life of our sun, but the words convey to them no clearer meaning than a quintillion conveys to the boy who is learning notation. It is utterly beyond the reach of their imaginations, and nothing, not even an object beyond the reach of our eyes, is so completely hidden from us as that which, while we acknowledge its existence, our imaginations do not reach. Yet they may reach it some day. There is a growth in man's mental power, slow as it is, and a generation may come, and that speedily, which realises the greatness of Lord Kelvin's universe as fully as some of us now realise that of the solar system. What, we wonder, being in the wondering mood, will be the effect of that widening of the mental horizon ? Shall we, to begin with, feel depressed in the scale of creation or elevated ?—an important question, for men who feel themselves hopelessly unequal to their environment soon lose energy, one reason at least why Asiatics are unequal to Europeans. One would reply, almost without thinking, that men would feel depressed, for if, as Lord Kelvin supposes, there are in our universe, or fraction of the universe, a thousand million suns, each with its probable dependencies or planets, there may be—many would
—billions of sentient beings like ourselves, or above say must be ourselves, and men must lose to themselves something of their value in the great scheme. An elector in Marylebone can • hardly think himself as politically potent as an elector 04
• say, Newry, and if Marylektone contained a million peo$03 odd hardly reckon his vote as anything at all. He can be in- that universe only an infinitesimal fraction, less than a
in of sand, and what, when it comes to building, is the worth of a grain of sand ? Why worry at being blown bout, or be glad at being blown upwards instead of down- or try to think whether the builder cares about us or is indifferent to our fate ? If we pass what matter is it, or if we remain ? That seems to us the instinctive reply which every man at first would make; and yet it is a false reply, and, *what better, can be proved to be false. The higher the being is
in the scale of creation the more clearly would he realise that vastness, and the less would he be depressed by it. Lord Kelvin realises it, for example, as his cabman does not and cannot, and is not depressed ; and if men ever arrive who may justly regard Lord Kelvin as an igno- ramus, and who realise the whole stellar universe as he realises, say, the city he lives in, they will be still less de- pressed than he is. To say otherwise is to depreciate all knowledge, and to declare that the Digger Indian thinks better of his place in creation than the cultivated English- man. Man really measures himself by his intellectual posi- tion, and is depressed or elevated as he perceives the extent of his own powers. He is the bigger being, not the smaller being, because he finds in himself the capacity to realise by sheer mental power a vastness in the universe of which his eyes and his experience and his instincts tell him nothing. The planet Neptune is a Large ball, but is it great as com- pared with the greatness of the brain which found it, though invisible from distance, and had even before that accurately ascertained its weight? A mountain is vast, as Kingsley once wrote in other words, but is it greater than the engineer who tunnels it? The really depressing thing would not be to realise the true vastness of even that small fraction of the universe which is within our ken, but to discover, as some observers do, high mental powers in insects which we regard almost as things. That might make us doubt whether we were not things too, wholly de- ceived by our own vanity in imagining ourselves great and separate or specially endowed. Yet there must be, if analogy is any guide, beings within the universe to whom we are as insects, yet whom knowledge of our powers does not depress at all. The grades of intellect must be endless, and the more perfectly we understand the lowest the loftier must become our appreciation of our own for being able to understand them. We need not add that in infinity there is no great or little, for, in spite of Be Quincey's angels, we have no proof that created substance is infinite—if it were, how could it be increased, or what would remain for creative power to do ?- and most men use the word " infinity " as if it were a rope stretching endlessly only one way, and we may still, without speculating on that problem, affirm that a full recognition of the bewildering vastness even of what we know need not daunt the spirit which recognises it. The sense of vastness should be, and is, a stimulant, not a drug causing mental paralysis.
We are excluding the religious argument, the certainty that with wider knowledge there must come a truer concep- tion and rintore close realisation of the creating mind, and content ourselves with humbler evidence of our statement. There is, for instance, a bit of human history which con- firms it directly. It happened to the men of Western Europe at the end of the fifteenth century—how one wishes that one had lived then—to be suddenly made conscious that the physical world around them was far vaster than they had Previously dreamed. The heavens rolled back, the earth was seen to be on travel through space, a New World rose out of the bosom of the previously impassable ocean, and the few civilised men who understood what these changes in knowledge meant realised that the habitat which they had thought so great was but a morsel even in the world, less than a morsel in the universe. The result, so far from depression, was such an exaltation of the human mind among those who perceived the new facts that it seemed for a time as if in its new vanity and joy and energy of being it would destroy itself in very gladness. The rejoicing spirit of "humanism" threatened for a moment to extinguish most that was good in the most intelligent races. Southern 4nrc'Pe. in particular, always quicker, than the North, "went fey" with its new knowledge. Fortunately, the movement was accompanied by a religious revival, or the white race might have been composed of Borgias, the nearest approach to demons in intelligence and in the liking for evil that the world has seen, and in a short time the dangerous mood passed away ; but ever since the Western world has been stronger, brighter, more intelligent, and better for that wonderful spring forward in the knowledge of our fraction of the universe. What need, however, of arguing when we all . know it is not the Newtons who are necessarily cowed by recognising the vastness which to them, as to us, must be the first impression derived from broader knowledge of the universe. Ours is a poor little planet, and we are probably low down in the hierarchy of sentient beings, but we are part of a mighty federation, and we may rise,—we may rise,
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