its wheels to begin to revolve.
Astronomy offers us many illustrations of the scale upon which the world
is constructed as to time, as well as that upon which it is constructed
as to space.

[Sidenote: Dominion of law in the universe.] From what has been said,
the conclusion forces itself upon us that the general laws obtaining as
respects the earth, hold good likewise for all other parts of the
universe; a conclusion sustained not only by the mechanism of such
motions as we have been considering, but also by all evidence of a
physical kind accessible to us. The circumstances under which our sun
emits light and heat, and thereby vivifies his attendant planets, are
indisputably the same as those obtaining in the case of every fixed
star, each of which is a self-luminous sun. There is thus an aspect of
homogeneousness in the structure of all systems in the universe, which,
though some have spoken of it as if it were the indication of a
uniformity of plan, and therefore the evidence of a primordial idea, is
rather to be looked upon as the proof of unchangeable and resistless
law.

[Sidenote: Ruin of anthropocentric ideas.] What, therefore, now becomes
of the doctrine authoritatively put forth, and made to hold its sway for
so many centuries, that the earth is not only the central-body of the
universe, but in reality, the most noble body in it; that the sun and
other stars are mere ministers or attendants for human use? In the place
of these utterly erroneous and unworthy views, far different conceptions
must be substituted. Man, when he looks upon the countless multitude of
stars--when he reflects that all he sees is only a little portion of
those which exist, yet that each is a light and life-giving sun to
multitudes of opaque, and therefore, invisible worlds--when he considers
the enormous size of these various bodies and their immeasurable
distance from one another, may form an estimate of the scale on which
the world is constructed, and learn therefrom his own unspeakable
insignificance.

[Sidenote: Aids for measurements in the universe.] In one beat of a
pendulum a ray of light would pass eight times round the circumference
of the earth. Thus we may take the sunbeam as a carpenter does his
measuring-rule; it serves as a gauge in our measurements of the
universe. A sunbeam would require more than three years to reach us from
alpha Centauri; nine and a quarter years from 61 Cygni; from alpha Lyrae
twelve years. The