8 2 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



weeks, months, and years are fixed invariably for us by the calen- 

 dar ; the rising and setting of the great lights, the phases of the 

 moon, and even eclipses are in a certain way in everybody's hands, 

 and the whole general movement of the stars is simplified for us. 

 Ships arrive at their destination without having deviated from 

 their route, and that by means of celestial observations so rapidly 

 taken that the passenger hardly remarks them. All these opera- 

 tions, now become so simple, and of which the common man is una- 

 ware because they are made apart from him, were formerly the 

 charge of every one. Before there were clocks to keep the hour 

 and show it continuously, every person had to determine it every 

 time he wanted to know it. Instead of taking the time of year 

 from the almanac, he had to read it in the sky, the changes of 

 which he was obliged to follow. In journeys, whether across 

 inhabited countries or on the sea, only a few of the company 

 could give an account of the road they had passed over or could 

 decide upon that which should be followed. None of the profes- 

 sional services now placed in the hands of a few specialists ex- 

 isted then ; every man, on the contrary, at every moment, had to 

 be his own astronomer. 



If necessity no longer provokes continuous astronomical stud- 

 ies and observations, and the astronomer has no reward but the 

 pure pleasure that science gives, how comes it that astronomy, 

 more than any other science, has created so many adepts ? We 

 will attempt to explain it. Astronomy, beyond every other sci- 

 ence, offers phenomena which, while they are within the domain 

 of the highest researches of philosophy, can both arrest the atten- 

 tion of persons having some scientific ideas and excite the curi- 

 osity of little-instructed observers. Chemistry, in its investiga- 

 tion of the constituent elements of the universe ; physiology, in its 

 delicate researches in the secrets of animal life ; the transcendent 

 logic of geometry enthusiastic over a formula that deters those 

 who are not initiated pass the comprehension of the vulgar. But 

 the glories of the rising and setting sun, the serene majesty of the 

 moon when it crosses the celestial vault, the mild luster of Venus, 

 the splendor of the firmament on a cloudless night, the appear- 

 ance of a comet with its long tail floating in the skies like a re- 

 splendent banner, are spectacles that can charm both the philoso- 

 pher and the peasant, the mathematician who measures worlds 

 and traces their routes, and the shepherd who sees only their 

 figures. Further, if the object of all science is to enlarge and 

 purify thought, to fill the mind with noble contemplations and 

 give it a calm quiet, astronomy, from this point of view, is supe- 

 rior to all other sciences. No other science includes in itself so 

 manifestly the abstractions that form the basis of our intelligence 

 and so grand ideas of time, space, number, motion, and force. 



