BEYOND THE STARS 93 



Unless, that is to say, light suffers some degree 

 of enfeeblement in space. . . . But there is not a 

 particle of evidence that any such toll is exacted ; 

 contrary indications are strong ; and the assertion 

 that its payment is inevitable depends upon ana- 

 logies which may be wholly visionary. We are 

 then, for the present, entitled to disregard the 

 problematical effect of a more than dubious 

 cause." 



Wallace 1 advances three other arguments in 

 support of the finality of our stellar universe : 



" (1) In various parts of the heavens there are areas 

 of considerable extent, besides rifts, lanes, or circular 

 patches, where stars are either quite absent or very 

 faint and few in number. We look, in fact, through 

 these ' holes in the heavens ' into the starless depths 

 of space beyond. 



" (2) There is a steady increase in the number of 

 stars down to the ninth or tenth magnitudes. Then 

 it suddenly changes, and the number of stars of 

 magnitudes down to the seventeenth is only about 

 one-tenth of what it would have been had the same 

 ratio of increase continued. The conclusion is 

 that the fainter stars are more thinly scattered in 

 space. 



" (3) The total amount of light given by all stars 

 of a given magnitude is twice as much as that of 

 all stars two magnitudes higher in the scale. If 

 1 Sir A. R. Wallace, F.R.8., " Man's Place in the Universe." 



