rvatories of the country
astronomical observations are made on every clear night for the express
purpose of regulating an astronomical clock with the greatest
exactness. Every day at noon a signal is sent to various parts of the
country by telegraph, so that all operators and railway men who hear
that signal can set their clock at noon within two or three seconds.
People who live near railway stations can thus get their time from it,
and so exact time is diffused into every household of the land which is
at all near a railway station, without the trouble of watching the sun.
Thus increased exactness is given to the time on all our railroads,
increased safety is obtained, and great loss of time saved to every
one. If we estimated the money value of this saving alone we should no
doubt find it to be greater than all that our study of astronomy costs.

It must therefore be conceded that, on the whole, astronomy is a
science of more practical use than one would at first suppose. To the
thoughtless man, the stars seem to have very little relation to his
daily life; they might be forever hid from view without his being the
worse for it. He wonders what object men can have in devoting
themselves to the study of the motions or phenomena of the heavens. But
the more he looks into the subject, and the wider the range which his
studies include, the more he will be impressed with the great practical
usefulness of the science of the heavens. And yet I think it would be a
serious error to say that the world's greatest debt to astronomy was
owing to its usefulness in surveying, navigation, and chronology. The
more enlightened a man is, the more he will feel that what makes his
mind what it is, and gives him the ideas of himself and creation which
he possesses, is more important than that which gains him wealth. I
therefore hold that the world's greatest debt to astronomy is that it
has taught us what a great thing creation is, and what an insignificant
part of the Creator's work is this earth on which we dwell, and
everything that is upon it. That space is infinite, that wherever we go
there is a farther still beyond it, must have been accepted as a fact
by all men who have thought of the subject since men began to think at
all. But it is very curious how hard even the astronomers found it to
believe that creation is as large as we now know it to be. The Greeks
had their gods on or not very far above Olympus, which was a sort of
foots