JOURNAI, AND PROCEEDINGS. 81 
comes within the range of the telescope, spectroscope and camera 
plate, and perhaps sound, sensible speculation of what is beyond, if 
a beyond there is.” 
Differing from philosophy, astronomical science has facts for its 
data. These facts are determined from observation, From these 
facts combined the astronomer gets working theories, from working 
theories he gets data, and by the combination of these he 
discovers nature’s laws, which to him are facts. Thus in this 
way the astronomer learns the laws that govern those worlds and 
suns, and thus in time he will be able to trace nature’s operations 
back to Alpha, and look forward to Omega, if there be an Omega, 
at the same time to pry into those secrets which reach beyond Hamil- 
ton’s philosophy, and discover facts relevant to the size of the 
universe which the finite mind cannot grasp, and which in my mind 
he need not grasp. Mortal mind can conceive of the distance of 
two objects separated from each other, the distance say of a mile or 
five miles, or even five hundred miles, but what mortal mind can 
conceive of the distance of the sun and A Centauri separated from 
each other 202 billions of miles, or 61 Cygnus three times that dis- 
tance, 606 billions of miles, or from Sirius 120 trillion, and yet these 
are some of the nearest fixed stars. Man cannot conceive of it, but 
this deficiency in man does not interfere with the facts that be. 
I will now seek to present to you some of the arguments which, 
if they do not enable us to come to some conclusion and enable us 
to have some idea of the extent of the universe, they will supply us 
with food for reflection and thought. 
That bright belt of glittering star dust known as the Milky 
Way is probably the groundwork of the universe, but I make 
this remark without reference to Dr. Wallace or his teaching. I 
may say, however, for the benefit of those who may not know much 
about Dr. Wallace’s particular holdings, that his most fatal fallacy is 
that our system is so related in its situation to the Milky Way that 
our sun is the only one of the myriads of suns that can have life- 
bearing planets. And, moreover, he states that the earth is the only 
life-bearing planet that our sun has, and this is because it is so 
peculiarly telated in size, position, atmospheric conditions, etc., to 
the sun, that this earth is the only celestial body that can possibly 
have life. It was stated about ten days ago by one of our Hamilton 
