THE OVERCOMING OF APPEARANCES 27 



Such is the grandiose perspective spread before our view. 

 We may not greatly wonder that when it came to the mind of 

 him who imagined it first, Immanuel Kant, he should exclaim, 

 in an intoxication of the imagination such as possessed Archi- 

 medes of old : 



" Give me matter and I will build the world ! " 



If from out this fire-mist the earth, the moon, the sun have 

 come, were these alone ? Holds space no others ? And if 

 from chaos other worlds were born, where are they now ? 



When on the plains of Mesopotamia, or by the turbid 

 current of the Nile, priests and herdsmen lifted their eyes to the 

 firmament of stars, circling through the serene sky above them, 

 and, as it were, striking the hours of the night, there was little 

 enough to suggest to them that amid these points of light were 

 other planets like unto our own. There is little enough now. 

 But watching their course night after night as they wheel the 

 heavens, the shepherds noted that there were some which failed 

 to keep an even course. From night to night their pathway 

 in the sky changed subtly. There seemed a place where these 

 errant stars would pause and go back again. So they were 

 named planets the wanderers. Now and then the moon hid 

 them from view. Now and then a dark spot was seen to march 

 across the face of the sun. 



After a thousand years the course of these wanderers had 

 been mapped. After a thousand vague conjectures, the idea 

 began to grow up that they moved in circles, one behind the 

 other, some between the moon and sun and some beyond. There 

 came at last great organising minds like Aristarchus and 

 Coppernicus to set these puzzling motions in order, to conceive 

 this earth as a " wanderer " like the rest, and to picture them 

 all as whirling round the sun. 



If from somewhere in the zenith of the system, and dowered 

 with telescopic eyes, we might watch them, what a curious 

 picture they would present ! nine spheres, if we count the 

 four hundred asteroids of " the shattered planet " as one, 

 racing round and round ever so like the petites cheveaux of the 

 spas and fairs with which Continental travellers are so familiar. 

 Indeed we might conceive the huge Sirian of Voltaire's fanciful 

 tale, off on a vacation from his native dog-star, mistaking these 



