154 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



of time if the phrase be allowable than any man 

 ever was before him. He marks an era in the progress 

 of human thought and experience, for his words leave 

 on the mind of a reader an awful impression of un- 

 speakable vastness in space and time, of multitudinous 

 arrangements for working out with singular ease and 

 success some vast whole, and of undiscovered purposes 

 in the designs of a Being to whose nature ours is of 

 kin, though we feel ourselves to be but nothings, or 

 less than nothings, in His presence. To ignore or deny 

 this impression is to do an injustice to humanity. 



