THE HAMBURG ACCOUNT OF WRIGHT'S THEORY. 187 



to the nature of all external objects, but fully endowed 

 with every human sense and force of reason, suspended 

 in ether, exactly in the midway betwixt Sirius and the 

 Sun, in which case both of these luminaries would equally 

 appear much about the brightness of the largest of our 

 planets. Now, should such a being, determined either by 

 accident or choice, arrive at this our system of the sun, 

 and seeing all the planetary bodies moving round him, I 

 would ask you what you think he would imagine to be 

 round Sirius? Your answer, I think I may venture to 

 say, would not be, nothing; and methinks I already hear 

 you say, Why, Planets such as ours" The rest of this 

 letter is filled with purely moral reflections. 1 



THE FIFTH LETTER treats : " Of the order, distance, and 

 multiplicity of the stars, the Via Lactea, and extent of the 

 visible creation" Before the author comes to the solution 

 of the phenomena of the Milky Way, he presents the 

 ideas of the ancients regarding it. He holds that "The 

 light which naturally flows from this crowd of radiant 

 bodies is mixed and confused, chiefly occasioned by the 

 agitation of our atmosphere ; and from a union of their 

 rays of light, by a too near proximity of their beams, 

 altogether they appear like a river of milk, but more of 

 a pellucid nature, running all round the starry regions." 

 In confirmation of this, he shows that the various cloudy 

 stars [Nebulae] or light appearances in the heavens can 

 be nothing but a dense accumulation of small stars. He 

 then proceeds to say : " Now, admitting the breadth of 

 the Via Lactea to be at a mean but nine degrees, and 

 supposing only twelve hundred stars in every square degree, 

 there will be nearly in the whole orbicular area 3,888,000 

 stars, and all these in a very minute portion of the great 

 expanse of heaven. What a vast idea of endless beings 

 must this produce and generate in our minds ; and 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 Omni- 

 potence produce and support them, and where can our 



1 The remaining part of this account appeared in the next issue of the 

 Hamburg periodical of Friday, 8th January, 1751, headed : " London, 

 Conclusion of the Account," etc. 



