visit. The same is really true of the sky
by day, though in that case we cannot actually see the stars, for their
light is quite overpowered by the dazzling light of the sun.

We thus reach the conclusion that our earth, that our solar system in
fact, lies plunged within the midst of a great tangle of stars. What
position, by the way, do we occupy in this mighty maze? Are we at the
centre, or anywhere near the centre, or where?

It has been indeed amply proved by astronomical research that the stars
are bodies giving off a light of their own, just as our sun does; that
they are in fact suns, and that our sun is merely one, perhaps indeed a
very unimportant member, of this great universe of stars. Each of these
stars, or suns, besides, may be the centre of a system similar to what
we call our solar system, comprising planets and satellites, comets and
meteors;--or perchance indeed some further variety of attendant bodies
of which we have no example in our tiny corner of space. But as to
whether one is right in a conjecture of this kind, there is up to the
present no proof whatever. No telescope has yet shown a planet in
attendance upon one of these distant suns; for such bodies, even if they
do exist, are entirely out of the range of our mightiest instruments. On
what then can we ground such an assumption? Merely upon analogy; upon
the common-sense deduction that as the stars have characteristics
similar to our particular star, the sun, it would seem unlikely that
ours should be the only such body in the whole of space which is
attended by a planetary system.

"The Stars," using that expression in its most general sense, do not lie
at one fixed distance from us, set here and there upon a background of
sky. There is in fact no background at all. The brilliant orbs are all
around us in space, at different distances from us and from each other;
and we can gaze between them out into the blackness of the void which,
perhaps, continues to extend unceasingly long after the very outposts of
the stellar universe has been left behind. Shall we then start our
imaginary express train once more, and send it out towards the nearest
of the stars? This would, however, be a useless experiment. Our
express-train method of gauging space would fail miserably in the
attempt to bring home to us the mighty gulf by which we are now faced.
Let us therefore halt for a moment and look back upon the orders of
distance with which we have been deal