2l6 CELESTIAL MEASURINGS AND WEIGHINGS. 



tude of other phenomena, less clearly intelligible, which 

 the sidereal heavens present, and to which our subject 

 has not led us to refer), we trace the same inexhaustible 

 fecundity of design realized and embodied in the same 

 unity of workmanship which in this our planetary system 

 we find luxuriating in so surprising a variety of forms, 

 magnitudes, and mutual relations among its primaries, 

 satellites, rings, comets, and asteroids. 



(43.) Is the material universe finite or infinite ? The 

 question is as old as Aristotle ; and the answer, though 

 unanswerable, never yet convinced mortal man. A 

 material universe must consist of material objects, each 

 individual of which, being a really existing thing, must 

 possess that attribute of all real existing things, place. 

 Every two objects then, be they where they will at any 

 certain moment of time, mark two definite places, and the 

 distance between them, or the straight line joining 

 them, has two definite terminations. It is not therefore 

 infinite in length, but finite, i.e., terminated. Now an 

 assemblage of objects, every two of which are distant 

 from each other by a finite interval, cannot be infinite in 

 extent. The speculation is unprofitable enougli in 

 itself, and the difficulty it involves turns on the mental 

 substitution of a positive and conceivable notion of " the 

 infinite " for the purely negative and utterly inconceivable 

 one which it carries with it into all matters where the 

 term is employed in its logical sense. Our only reason 

 for at all alluding to it is, that to us, practically speak- 

 ing, the material universe must be regarded as infinite : 

 seeing that we can perceive no reason which can place 



