CHAPTER I 



THE UNIVERSE IN WHICH WE LIVE 



Why does not someone teach me the constellations and make me at 

 home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead and which I don't 

 half know to this day. CARLYLE. 



Were you so fortunate as a child as to have some older 

 companion father, mother, big brother, or teacher who took 

 you out under the sparkling night sky and taught you to know 

 the conspicuous stars by name, pointed out some of the constella- 

 tions, and told you the marvelous myths connected with them 

 that have come down from the childhood of the race to delight 

 the modern child? Was the night a source of terror to you, 

 or was it a source of pleasure because the stars had come to seem 

 like old friends and you knew their names and some of the marvels 

 of their existence ? To how many a modern adult has the starry 

 sky come to be so commonplace that he is unaware of its 

 existence perfectly oblivious to the glory of the heavens. If as 

 a child you had a speaking acquaintance with the stars, if you 

 knew them as distant suns, if you were made aware of their 

 immensity and the immeasurable distance of these familiar yet 

 usually unknown companions of the night, if you learned to 

 recognize the wandering planets, then the infinity of the universe, 

 the mystery, the awesomeness, made so deep an impression on 

 your childhood imagination that the nightly pageant can never 

 be commonplace. It seems as if some such impression should 

 be one of the inalienable heritages of childhood. 



The sun, the moon, the stars, and the other heavenly bodies 

 have always been objects of great interest to man. Indeed, they 

 have been objects of mystery, of reverence, and of worship. 

 Primitive man recognized in the splendid sun the source of light, 

 of comfort, and of life. The stars were his guides by night, the 



