THE HERSCHELS AND THE STAR-DEPTHS. 7 



reasoning. And inquiring where that flaw could be, 

 he presently saw that his assumption of the relatively 

 enormous distance of the faint star must be ill-founded. 

 Then he went farther, beginning to believe that the 

 fainter and the brighter star lay at the same distance, 

 in other words, that they formed a physically asso- 

 ciated pair. This view since firmly established by his 

 own labours and his son's changed altogether the 

 meaning of the lessons taught by the stars. For 

 hitherto men had believed that the stars are distri- 

 buted through space in such sort as to be independent 

 of each other. A few thoughtful men as Wright, 

 Kant, Lambert, and Mitchel, had ventured to ex- 

 press doubts as to the justice of this view; and Mitchel, 

 indeed, had by the mere force of abstract reasoning, 

 anticipated the very conclusion to which observation 

 had now led Sir W. Herschel. But it is in the nature 

 of men, of scientific men as well as others, to turn an 

 almost deaf ear to abstract reasoning, however sound, 

 and to note only what is established by observation ; 

 so that, as we have said, the general belief among as- 

 tronomers had been that the stars are distributed 

 throughout space, not in systems, but singly. 



In the meantime Sir W. Herschel had turned his 

 attention to the general architecture of the heavens. 

 He had sought in particular to determine the figure of 

 that vast scheme of orbs of which our sun is a member. 

 The method he employed for this purpose was simple 

 in the extreme. 



Let it be supposed that the system of stars has 



