PROGRESS OF MODERN ASTRONOMY 



the cosmic organism. Reduced in size, as becomes a 

 germ-cell, to a mere fraction of the nebular body from 

 which it sprang, it yet retains within its seemingly non- 

 vital body all the potentialities of the original organ- 

 ism, and requires only to blend with a fellow -cell to 

 bring a new generation into being. Thus may the 

 cosmic race, whose aggregate census makes up the 

 stellar universe, be perpetuated individual solar sys- 

 tems, such as ours, being born, and growing old, and 

 dying to live again in their descendants, while the uni- 

 verse as a whole maintains its unified integrity through- 

 out all these internal mutations passing on, it may be, 

 by infinitesimal stages, to a culmination hopelessly be- 

 yond human comprehension. 



