xii TOWARDS INFINITY 313 



the rate of nearly a million miles a day, yet that is 

 certainly the case. 



Through every year, every hour, every minute of human 

 history from the first appearance of man on the earth, from the 

 era of the builders of the Pyramids, through the times of Caesar 

 and Hannibal, through the period of every event that history 

 records, not merely our earth, but the sun and the whole solar 

 system with it, have been speeding their way towards the star 

 Vega, on a journey of which we know neither the beginning nor 

 the end. During every clock-beat through which humanity has 

 existed, it has moved on this journey by an amount which we 

 cannot specify more exactly than to say that it is probably 

 between five and nine miles per second. We are at this moment 

 thousands of miles nearer to Vega than we were a few minutes 

 ago ; and through every future moment, for untold thousands 

 of years to come, the earth and all there is on it will be nearer 

 to that star, or nearer to the place where the star now is, by 

 hundreds of miles for every minute of time come and gone. 

 When shall we get there ? Probably in less than a million years ; 

 perhaps in half a million. We cannot tell exactly ; but get 

 there we must if the laws of Nature and the laws of motion 

 continue as they are. To attain to the stars was the seemingly 

 vain wish of the philosopher ; but the whole human race is, 

 in a certain sense, realising this wish as rapidly as a speed of 

 six or eight miles a second can bring it about. Prof. Simon 

 Newcomb. t 



The Sun itself deceives us by its appearance ; for 

 what we see of it is relatively small in comparison with 

 the vast sheets and rays of luminous matter that sur- 

 round the brightly visible disc, and are revealed only 

 during a total eclipse. If the Sun could be seen from a 

 point outside the Earth's atmosphere, it would appear 

 more blue than the yellow tint with which we are 

 familiar. Surrounding this bluish ball would be seen a 

 brilliant scarlet layer like a sea of flame, from five 

 thousand to ten thousand miles deep, out of which 

 enormous masses of incandescent gas would be tossed 



