The Earth--speaking roundly--is 8000 miles in diameter; the atmosphere
is calculated to be fifty miles in altitude; the loftiest mountain peak
is estimated at five miles above the level of the sea, for this height
has never been visited by man; the deepest mine that he has formed is
1650 feet; and his own stature does not average six feet. Therefore, if
it were possible for him to construct a globe 800 feet--or twice the
height of St. Paul’s Cathedral--in diameter, and to place upon any one
point of its surface an atom of 1/4380th of an inch in diameter, and
1/720th of an inch in height, it would correctly denote the proportion
that man bears to the earth upon which he moves.
When by measurements, in which the evidence of the method advances
equally with the precision of the results, the volume of the earth
is reduced to the millionth part of the volume of the sun; when
the sun himself, transported to the region of the stars, takes
up a very modest place among the thousands of millions of those
bodies that the telescope has revealed to us; when the 38,000,000
of leagues which separate the earth from the sun have become, by
reason of their comparative smallness, a base totally insufficient
for ascertaining the dimensions of the visible universe; when even
the swiftness of the luminous rays (77,000 leagues per second)
barely suffices for the common valuations of science; when, in
short, by a chain of irresistible proofs, certain stars have
retired to distances that light could not traverse in less than a
million of years;--we feel as if annihilated by such immensities.
In assigning to man and to the planet that he inhabits so small a
position in the material world, astronomy seems really to have made
progress only to humble us.--_Arago._