illions of years to reach our earth--to
distances for whose measurement the dimensions (the distance of
Sirius, or the calculated distances of the binary stars in Cygnus
and the Centaur) of our nearest stratum of fixed stars scarcely
suffice."

In this confused sentence there is implied a belief, that the distances
of the nebulae from our galaxy of stars as much transcend the distances
of our stars from one another, as these interstellar distances transcend
the dimensions of our planetary system. Just as the diameter of the
Earth's orbit, is a mere point when compared with the distance of our
Sun from Sirius; so is the distance of our Sun from Sirius, a mere point
when compared with the distance of our galaxy from those far-removed
galaxies constituting nebulae. Observe the consequences of this
assumption.

If one of these supposed galaxies is so remote that its distance dwarfs
our interstellar spaces into points, and therefore makes the dimensions
of our whole sidereal system relatively insignificant; does it not
inevitably follow that the telescopic power required to resolve this
remote galaxy into stars, must be incomparably greater than the
telescopic power required to resolve the whole of our own galaxy into
stars? Is it not certain that an instrument which can just exhibit with
clearness the most distant stars of our own cluster, must be utterly
unable to separate one of these remote clusters into stars? What, then,
are we to think when we find that the same instrument which decomposes
hosts of nebulae into stars, _fails_ to resolve completely our own Milky
Way? Take a homely comparison. Suppose a man who was surrounded by a
swarm of bees, extending, as they sometimes do, so high in the air as to
render some of the individual bees almost invisible, were to declare
that a certain spot on the horizon was a swarm of bees; and that he knew
it because he could see the bees as separate specks. Incredible as the
assertion would be, it would not exceed in incredibility this which we
are criticising. Reduce the dimensions to figures, and the absurdity
becomes still more palpable. In round numbers, the distance of Sirius
from the Earth is half a million times the distance of the Earth from
the Sun; and, according to the hypothesis, the distance of a nebula is
something like half a million times the distance of Sirius. Now, our own
"starry island, or nebula," as Humboldt calls it, "forms a lens-shaped,