But these conclusions, however vast their comprehension, carry us but
another step forward in the realms of sidereal astronomy. A proper
motion in space of our sun, and of the fixed stars as we call them,
has long been believed to exist. Their vast distances only prevent its
being more apparent. The great improvement of instruments of measurement
within the last generation has not only established the existence of
this motion, but has pointed to the region in the starry vault around
which our whole solar and stellar system, with its myriad of attendant
planetary worlds, appears to be performing a mighty revolution. If,
then, we assume that outside of the system to which we belong and in
which our sun is but a star like Aldebaran or Sirius, the different
nebulæ of which we have spoken,--thousands of which spot the
heavens--constitute a distinct family of universes, we must, following
the guide of analogy, attribute to each of them also, beyond all the
revolutions of their individual attendant planetary systems, a great
revolution, comprehending the whole; while the same course of analogical
reasoning would lead us still further onward, and in the last analysis,
require us to assume a transcendental connection between all these
mighty systems--a universe of universes, circling round in the infinity
of space, and preserving its equilibrium by the same laws of mutual
attraction which bind the lower worlds together.
It may be thought that conceptions like these are calculated rather to
depress than to elevate us in the scale of being; that, banished as he
is by these contemplations to a corner of creation, and there reduced
to an atom, man sinks to nothingness in this infinity of worlds. But a
second thought corrects the impression. These vast contemplations are
well calculated to inspire awe, but not abasement. Mind and matter are
incommensurable. An immortal soul, even while clothed in "this muddy
vesture of decay," is in the eye of God and reason, a purer essence than
the brightest sun that lights the depths of heaven. The organized human
eye, instinct with life and soul, which, gazing through the telescope,
travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of Orion's sword, and bids
it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours, stands higher in the order
of being than all that host of luminaries. The intellect of Newton which
discovered the law that holds the revolving worlds together, is a nobler
work of God than a universe of universes of unthinking matter.
If, still treading the loftiest paths of analogy, we adopt the
supposition,--to me I own the grateful supposition,--that the countless
planetary worlds which attend these countless suns, are the abodes of
rational beings like man, instead of bringing back from this exalted
conception a feeling of insignificance, as if the individuals of our
race were but poor atoms in the infinity of being, I regard it, on the
contrary, as a glory of our human nature, that it belongs to a family
which no man can number of rational natures like itself. In the order of
being they may stand beneath us, or they may stand above us; _he_ may
well be content with his place, who is made "a little lower than the
angels."