tless
millions of suns has dwindled down to a mere point of light, almost
invisible to the naked eye. But look forward: the luminous cloud to
which we are urging our flight has expanded, until what, at one time,
was a mere patch of brightness, has now swelled into a mighty star
cluster; myriads of suns burst into sight--we have traversed a
distance which even on the wings of light would take hundreds of
thousands of years, and have reached the confines of another Milky Way
as glorious and mighty as the one we have left; whose limits light
would require 10,000 years to traverse; and yet, in whatever direction
the telescope is placed, star clusters are to be seen strewn over the
surface of the heavens.

Let us take now the utmost limit of telescopic power in all
directions. Where are we after all but in the centre of a sphere whose
circumference is 100,000 times as far from us as one of the nearest
fixed stars, a distance that light would take over a million years to
traverse, and beyond whose circuit, infinity, boundless infinity,
still stretches unfathomed as ever? We have made a step, indeed, but
perhaps only towards acquaintance with a new order of infinitesimals.
Once the distances of our Solar System seemed almost infinite
quantities; compare them with the intervals between the fixed stars,
and they become no quantities at all. And now when the spaces between
the stars are contrasted with the gulfs of dark spaces separating
firmaments, they absolutely vanish away. Can the whole firmamental
creation in its turn be nothing but a corner of some mightier scheme?
But let us not go on to bewilderment: we have passed from planet to
planet, star to star, universe to universe, and still infinite space
extends for ever beyond our grasp. We have gone as far towards the
infinite as our sight, aided by the most powerful telescope, can hope
to go. Is there no way then by which we can continue our journey
further towards the appreciation of this infinity? A few years ago we
should probably have denied that it was possible for man to go
further; but quite lately a new method of observation has been
developed, and we will try and use this to continue our flight.

The reason why, to our sight, an object becomes apparently smaller and
smaller as it is withdrawn from the eye, until it at last disappears
entirely, is that the eye is a very imperfect instrument for viewing
objects at a great distance; it can only form an image of an ob