92 TWO NEW WORLDS 



workmanship, floating in space, or falling through it. 

 We cannot even remotely guess what is becoming of 

 the ring, since its fate for a single supra-second takes 

 a thousand billion of our years to evolve itself. But 

 we can see it on every starlight night. The ring is 

 known as the Milky Way. Its density is much 

 greater than that of the rest of the starry heavens. 

 Indeed, it probably is the only object we should 

 perceive at all, the rest of the stars being as 

 negligible as the air contained within a ring lying 

 on a table. 



What else should we see ? What would the rest 

 of the supra-world be like ? 



According to Newcomb and Wallace, there is 

 nothing else to see, or, if there is, it is quite invisible 

 from our earth. It seems presumptuous for any 

 mere mortal to assert that our universe is limited 

 by the ring of the Milky Way, but the argument 

 is convincing enough. Miss A. M. Clerke, in her 

 "Systems of the Stars," puts it as follows: "The 

 sidereal world presents us, to all appearance, with 

 a finite system. . . . The probability amounts almost 

 to certainty that star-strewn space is of measurable 

 dimensions. For from innumerable stars a limitless 

 sum total of radiation should be derived, by which 

 darkness would be banished from our skies ; and the 

 ' intense inane/ glowing with the mingled beams of 

 suns individually indistinguishable, would bewilder 

 our feeble senses with its monotonous splendour. . . . 



