284 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



call atoms; whether, in other regions of the universe, other fortuitous 

 meetings had not engendered edifices entirely different. Now we know 

 that this is not so, that the laws of our chemistry are the general laws 

 of nature, and that they owe nothing to the chance which caused 

 us to be born on the earth. 



But, it will be said, astronomy has given to the other sciences 

 all it can give them, and now that the heavens have procured for 

 us the instruments which enable us to study terrestrial nature, they 

 could without danger veil themselves forever. After what we have 

 just said, is there still need to answer this objection? One could have 

 reasoned the same in Ptolemy's time; then also men thought they 

 knew everything, and they still had almost everything to learn. 



The stars are majestic laboratories, gigantic crucibles, such as no 

 chemist could dream. There reign temperatures impossible for us 

 to realize. Their only defect is being a little far away; but the tele- 

 scope will soon bring them near to us, and then we shall see how 

 matter acts there. What good fortune for the physicist and the 

 chemist ! 



Matter will there exhibit itself to us under a thousand different 

 states, from those rarefied gases which seem to form the nebula and 

 which are luminous with I know not what glimmering of mysterious 

 origin, even to the incandescent stars and to the planets so near and 

 yet so different. 



Perchance even, the stars will some day teach us something about 

 life; that seems an insensate dream and I do not at all see how it can 

 be realized; but, a hundred years ago, would not the chemistry of the 

 stars have also appeared a mad dream? 



But limiting our views to horizons less distant, there still will re- 

 main to us promises less contingent and yet sufficiently seductive. If 

 the past has given us much, we may rest assured that the future 

 will give us still more. 



After all, it could scarce be believed how useful belief in astrology 

 has been to humanity. If Kepler and Tycho Brahe made a living, 

 it was because they sold to naive kings predictions founded on the 

 conjunctions of the stars. If these princes had not been so credulous, 

 we should perhaps continue to believe that nature obeys caprice, and 

 we should still wallow in ignorance. 



