GREAT QUESTIONS IN LITTLE 
we see light and splendor and eternal repose. But 
the astronomer knows that the light and splendor 
are shed by inert matter, obeying the inexorable 
laws of celestial physics. If the stars sang in their 
courses, and the whole universe were alive, as some 
European scientists have audaciously affirmed, the 
facts would seem more in accord with the impression 
they give us than does the mechanistic conception of 
them. But the bare facts of astronomy are beyond 
our power of humanization; in their naked grandeur 
they strike us dumb. Whitman gives us a fresh im- 
pression of this when he opens his scuttle at night 
and sees far-sprinkled systems. He does not add to 
or take from the facts, but by his art he quickens our 
sense of limitless space and the wild dance and whirl 
of the heavenly hosts. 
Celestial mechanics are certainly the same as 
terrestrial mechanics, and if we fancy that matter 
up there is any more spiritual than it is here under- 
foot, we are giving way to our humanistic tenden- 
cies. Starlight does not differ in its nature from 
lamplight, and the flight to us across the gulf of 
space has not changed its character. If the stars 
sing in their courses, then the earth sings in its 
course; if the celestial bodies thrill with life, the 
earth, too, thrills with life. 
The universe is one, and not two or three. It is 
not symbolized by a straight line, but by the curve, 
which goes not in one direction, but in all directions, 
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