DAILY INFLUENCES OF ASTRONOMY CAMPBELL. 149 



which it appears to be to the naked eye, or when viewed in the tele- 

 scope, but that it is a double sun, the two bodies revolving continu- 

 ously about their mutual center of mass. These hundreds of binary 

 systems are so far away that even under the highest telescopic mag- 

 nification they blend into a common and essentially mathematical 

 point. It is the expectation that the future, possibly the present 

 century, will establish that one star in three, on the average, is a 

 double solar system. It may even prove to be the truth that our 

 solar system, consisting of one great central sun and many attendant 

 planets, is not the average and prevailing system, but is the exception 

 and not the rule. However, we have no good reason to doubt that 

 tens of thousands, more probably tens of millions, of distant suns 

 are the centers of planetary systems, and that countless planets are 

 the abode of life. As our sun is but one of hundreds of millions of 

 suns, it is absurd and essentially inconceivable that our planet, or 

 two or three of our planets, should be the only bodies throughout 

 the universe supporting life. It is vastly more probable that if our 

 vision could penetrate to other stellar systems, lying in all direc- 

 tions from us, we should there find life in abundance, with degrees 

 of intelligence and civilization from which we could learn much, and 

 with which xve could sympathize. The spectroscope proves abso- 

 lutely that dozens of chemical elements in the earth's surface strata 

 exist' in our sun: that iron, the silicon of our rocks, hydrogen, helium, 

 magnesium and so forth exist m the distant reaches of our stellar 

 system. If there is a unity of materials, unity of laws governing 

 those materials throughout the universe, why may we not speculate 

 somewhat confidently upon life universal? 



In the days of my youth, here in northern Ohio, the opinion pre- 

 vailed throughout the community, and widely over the earth, that 

 comets were the forerunners of wars, plagues or other forms of dire 

 distress. Did not the great comet of 1811 herald the war of 1812, 

 and that of 1843 the Mexican War and Donati's comet of 1858 our 

 Civil War.? Even in the twentieth century the fear that a comet 

 may collide with the earth and destroy its inhabitants comes to the 

 surface, here and there, every time a comet is visible to the naked 

 eye. The findings of astronomers concerning these visitors to our 

 region of space have taught that we have nothing to fear from them, 

 and that their close approaches may be welcomed, for they are in- 

 teresting members of our sun's family. They revolve around our 

 sun as the planets do, and render unto it homage and obedience. It 

 is undoubtedly true that the earth has plunged through the tails of 

 comets many a time and without appreciable effects upon our health 

 and happiness. In fact, the inhabitants have at the time been bliss- 

 fully unaware of the passage. It is true that a collision of the con- 

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