ATOMIC WORLDS AND THEIR MOTIONS. 191 



lision of two gas-molecules — time enougli for thousands and tens 

 of thousands of generations of living beings to rise, flourish, and 

 decay, before a perceptible alteration of their starry firmament 

 can be recorded. 



It remains to fancy to picture further how those atom-inhabit- 

 ants imagine their world as the only world civilized and blessed 

 by divine ordaining, for they know as little of other worlds as we 

 do. Millions of their years may ;^ass — by thousands the rise and 

 fall of their nations, the dynasties of their rulers, the triumphs of 

 their philosophers and poets may be recorded — before the water- 

 glass with the little air-bubble, in which their planet is merely the 

 tiniest atom, is seized by human hands, and billions of worlds are 

 drawn in by human lips. 



What an endless vista of life is here presented to us ! Not 

 enough that the vast space which surrounds us is peopled by in- 

 numerable worlds like ours, but untliin the latter neiv worlds are 

 presented in the atoms, which in their turn again may harbor 

 others still smaller, and so on in infinite succession. 



And now the same step upward ! Let us regard our earth as 

 an atom, our solar system as a molecule. Of what larger body 

 may it, with all the galaxies and star-clusters, constitute a par- 

 ticle ? What a giant-world may fhat be, what creatures may in- 

 habit it ? Our universe, encircled by its galaxy of myriad suns, is 

 it but a stray bubble floating on some mighty ocean of that greater 

 world ? This stellar system of ours, does it perhaps, in that giant- 

 world, represent a molecule in some complicated organic structure 

 — a nerve-cell in a giant organism, perhaps a brain-particle in the 

 head of a Titan, whose feet rest on ground in the abysmal dis- 

 tances of space ? 



That Titan would have a height, if his body were proportional 

 to ours, equal to a billion Sirius-distances ! What thoughts, what 

 sensations may move him, when, in his brain-cells, our suns clash 

 in stupendous conflict and meet their doom in universal confla- 

 gration ! And those Titans, whose bodies, whose terra firma is 

 composed of veritable oceans of star-clusters, what a starry world 

 may they behold above them ! On the atoms now vibrating in 

 our oivn brains, in the blood coursing through our veins, the des- 

 tinies of nations may be fulfilled, destinies on the planets, which 

 again are but the atoms of a higher world, destinies on the giant- 

 worlds, and none of the beings is aware of the existence of the 

 others ; each has the solid ground beneath him, and above him 

 the silence of the stars. 



Therefore, if this thought should make us feel uneasy — the 

 thought that this cherished world of ours is but an atom in a 

 giant-world — let us take consolation in this : the giants are in no 

 way better situated than we are in reference to the dwarfs which 



