1876.] 
Sidereal Astronomy. 
6 7 
habitable it is necessary that it should be in just the same 
astronomical, meteorological, geological, and even geo- 
graphical condition (Id., p. 485) as the earth which we 
inhabit ? Ought we not, on the contrary, to feel that it 
would be presumption on our part to impose limits to the 
power of Nature, and, above all, to take our little planet 
as the absolute type of creation ? — -presumption to pretend 
that the entire universe must be only a vast and useless 
desert, and that, because we are here collected round our 
grain of dust, it follows of course that the whole creation is 
here accumulated ? Can we suppose that prolific and inex- 
haustible Nature, who, long before the appearance of man, 
peopled our poor planet with beings in climatalogical condi- 
tions quite different from those which to-day exist, — who 
filled the ocean with living beings, contrary to all the deduc- 
tions of Science previous to the discovery of these beings, — 
who formed vegetable and animal life with exhaustless pro- 
fusion on the face of the entire globe, from the polar snows 
to the heat of the tropics, — and who shows us the earth as 
all too narrow a field for the life which overflows it all 
around ; ought we to suppose, say I, that this same Nature 
is everywhere else barren and sterile, and that all the suns 
of infinity are shining, uselessly spreading round them a 
light which illuminates nothing, a heat which warms nothing , 
an energy which brings forth nothing ? — attraction, light, 
heat, magnetism, physical and chemical forces, scattered 
without objeCt and without effeCt over the immensity of the 
universe ! When we know that the earth is only an atom 
in creation, can we pretend that it alone bears on its surface 
beings who feel, eyes which see, thoughts which elevate 
them towards Truth, and that the rest of infinity must be 
void, dumb, and blind ? No, a thousand times, No. Never 
shall we come to such a conclusion from the study of 
Nature ; never shall we be led to suppose that our miserable 
grain of dust constitutes in itself alone all infinity, and 
contains in this imperfeCt fragment the whole power of the 
eternal Creator. 
What ! Do all these splendid suns which we have been 
studying exist without an objeCt ? Do all these sidereal 
revolutions which have given them birth, these conflagra- 
tions of atoms, these fertilisations of worlds, these appalling 
geneses, these gigantic displays of power, these systems 
ruled by immutable laws, — all these powers, all these splen- 
dours, have they .... only brought forth a mouse ? 
Still less — since the earth does not belong to their system — 
must we say that all this exists in vain ? Must we decree 
