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meets our eyes in looking at the Milky Way. If it were 

 possible to impart to the boat and to the birds a comp- 

 lete uniformity of direction and movement we should 

 have before us a very lively image of the celestial ring. 

 In the creation as I said before there are two tides ; 

 one the cosmic current, the other the opposing stream, 

 of living worlds. Both these tides are steady and uni- 

 form, and though there is no doubt but that the progress 

 of the planets changes in accordance with their growth 

 and energy, the change is too gradual to be remarked 

 with any great success by men on earth. We have to 

 define as fixed stars globes which we know are rushing 

 through space with inexpressible velocity, but as this is 

 a velocity which is shared alike by all the spheres 

 around, it affects the visible scheme of the heavens but 

 little, and this scheme remains during all the era of hi- 

 story practically unchanged. 



So it is that our Milky Way having a common course 

 with all the solar systems and separate stars seems to 

 us a thing of mystery, and we strive to solve the 

 riddle of its changeless form in various cunning ways, 

 while in reality the solution is quite simple. 



Simple I say ; but I must add suggestive, for this 

 simplicity suggests much. If the Milky Way is after all 

 a flattened ring of stars, whilst all the other spheres are 

 points in a picturesque combination, it follows that the 

 movement of our solar system is not as we suppose a 

 movement through limitless cosmic space but movement 

 on a plane, in which case we are in the lake, sea or 

 perhaps ocean of some vaster organism. What can this 

 organism be like, seeing that the huge suns and stars 

 which we can see and measure can be but as grains of 

 sand in comparison with its unthinkable magnitude ? 



The cosmos is immeasureable and there is in it 

 no infinitely great, no infinitely little: its magnitudes are 

 relative, blending in a united picture of cosmic life and 

 motion. "Bring forth and multiply and replenish the 



