GREAT QUESTIONS IN LITTLE 



we see light and splendor and eternal repose. But 

 the astronomer knows that the light and splendor 

 are shed by inert matter, obeying the inexorable 

 laws of celestial physics. If the stars sang in their 

 courses, and the whole universe were alive, as some 

 European scientists have audaciously affirmed, the 

 facts would seem more in accord with the impression 

 they give us than does the mechanistic conception of 

 them. But the bare facts of astronomy are beyond 

 our power of humanization; in their naked grandeur 

 they strike us dumb. Whitman gives us a fresh im- 

 pression of this when he opens his scuttle at night 

 and sees far-sprinkled systems. He does not add to 

 or take from the facts, but by his art he quickens our 

 sense of limitless space and the wild dance and whirl 

 of the heavenly hosts. 



Celestial mechanics are certainly the same as 

 terrestrial mechanics, and if we fancy that matter 

 up there is any more spiritual than it is here under- 

 foot, we are giving way to our humanistic tenden- 

 cies. Starlight does not differ in its nature from 

 lamplight, and the flight to us across the gulf of 

 space has not changed its character. If the stars 

 sing in their courses, then the earth sings in its 

 course; if the celestial bodies thrill with life, the 

 earth, too, thrills with life. 



The universe is one, and not two or three. It is 

 not symbolized by a straight line, but by the curve, 

 which goes not in one direction, but in all directions, 

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