386 THE WORLD MACHINE 



severant Kepler speculated about it, as he did upon nearly 

 everything else under the sun. Bruno, as we have seen, had 

 revived the Democritan idea that the stars are blazing suns ; it 

 lay but little further to suppose, as he did, that they have planets 

 revolving in their train as does our own. It was this thought 

 which inspired Fontenelle's brilliant volume on the Pluralite 

 des Mondes. Before the century had ended, and when the gran- 

 deur of our orb had been established beyond all cavil, Huyghens 

 had boldly announced the possibility that there might be other 

 suns as vast. Yet for his heresy he did not hang or burn. 



The same thought had come to Newton ; it is reflected in 

 the pages of Milton too. But the first definite presentation 

 of the idea that the stars might be arranged upon some definite 

 system like unto our own, seems to have come from an obscure 

 English schoolmaster, some time after all of these had passed 

 to earth. This was Thomas Wright of Durham. His volume 

 appeared in 1750, with a long-train title, as was the habit of 

 the day : " An original Theory or New Hypothesis of the 

 Universe, founded upon the Laws of Nature and solving by 

 Mechanical Principles the General Phenomena of Visible 

 Creation ; and particularly the Via Lactea." It was a godly 

 book, and the author felt properly constrained, after the fashion 

 of the time, to show that it tended towards the promotion of 

 virtue and piety. He says : 



" In a system naturally tending to propagate the Principles 

 of Virtue, and vindicate the Laws of Providence, we may indeed 

 say too little, but cannot surely say too much ; and to make 

 any apology for a work of such nature, where the Glory of the 

 Divine Being of course must be the principal object in view, 

 would be too like rendering virtue accountable to vice for any 

 author to expect to benefit by such an excuse." 



Thomas Wright was the author of the Grindstone Theory, 

 which, amid many vicissitudes, has more or less held the field 

 to the present time. His ideas were comprehensive. He com- 

 puted that the Milky Way must contain at the very least three 

 or four million stars, and he adds : 



" When we consider them all as flaming suns, progenitors 

 and primum mobiles of a still much greater number of peopled 

 worlds, what less than Infinity can circumscribe them, less 

 than an Eternity comprehend them, or less than Omniscience 

 produce and support them, and where can our wonder cease ? " 



