ABOUT THE STARS 223 



methods which astronomers have invented, but cannot be 

 described here, it is actually known how they differ in 

 size from one another (many are far bigger than our sun), 

 and with some approach to certainty, how far off they are. 

 Stars of four, five, ten, and more " light-years " away from 

 us are well known. Astronomers actually estimate the 

 decreasing abundance in space of stars as one passes from 

 a sphere or spatial envelope of fifty light-years' distance 

 to one of 250 light-years. Finally, reasons have been 

 given of late for considering many of the " photographic " 

 stars to be at a distance of 32,000 light-years. I will not 

 produce the awful figure in miles, but the reader can refer 

 back to the number of billion miles in a light-year ! And 

 what is beyond that ? No one has seen, nor can any one 

 guess. We cannot imagine a limit to space ; neither can 

 we imagine unending space dotted with an infinity of 

 suns ! 



It is a legitimate and, indeed, a necessary inference, 

 from what we know of these millions of suns intensely 

 hot, light-giving spheres that they, too, like our own 

 sun, are accompanied by much smaller bodies, planets 

 which circle round them, as our sun's planets circle round 

 him. Those planets have cooled down, as have those of 

 the solar system, and so do not give out light. In any 

 case, they are too small to be seen at so vast a distance. 

 It is, on the whole, probable that the changes on some 

 indeed, many of these planets have led to the production 

 of living material similar to, but not necessarily identical 

 with, that on this earth. It is, on the whole, more likely 

 than not that there are intelligent beings existing on the 

 planets of thousands of suns invisible to our eyes : suns 

 revealed only by the print on a photographic plate of 

 their light, which has taken thousands of years to travel 

 from the regions of unseen obscurity to us. To have 

 arrived by sober observation and reasoning at this con- 



