SUCCESSIVE PROPAGATION OF LIGHT. 145 



peared even before it became visible to our eyes, and in 

 much the arrangement and order may have varied. The 

 spectacle of the starry heavens presents to our view objects 

 not contemporaneous ; and however much we may diminish 

 both the supposed distance whence the faint light of the 

 nebulae, or the barely discernible glimmer of the remotest 

 cluster of stars, reaches us, and the thousands of years which 

 serve as the measure of that distance, it will still remain 

 true that, according to the knowledge which we possess of 

 the velocity of light, it is more than probable that the light 

 of the most distant cosmical bodies offers us the oldest 

 sensible evidence of the existence of matter. Thus, resting 

 on simple premises, the reflecting mind rises to graver and 

 loftier views of nature's forms, in those boundless fields 

 which light traverses, and where " myriads of worlds spring j 

 like grass in the night/' ( 122 ) 



We will now descend from the region of celestial forms to 

 the more restricted sphere of terrestrial forces; from the 

 children of Uranus to those of Gea. A mysterious bond 

 unites the two classes of phenomena. In the ancient sym- 

 bolical meaning of the Titanic mythus, ( 123 ) the forces 

 of the universe, and the systematic order of nature, depend 

 on the union of the heavens and the earth. If our 

 terrestrial spheroid, as well as each of the other planets, 

 belongs originally to the Sun, as having been formed from 

 detached nebulous rings of the solar atmosphere, a con- 

 nection is still maintained, by means of light and radiant 

 heat, both with the Sun of our own system, and with all 

 those remoter suns which glitter in the firmament. The 

 verv different measure of these effects must not prevent the 



