712 AN APOLOGUE OF CORPOREAL AND COSMICAL INFINITY. 
does not blackball the greater number of his days, which lie yet thinks all too 
few ?” 
Not caring to remind my companion that what he was pleased to call our 
discourse was, in effect, a monologue, I begged him to proceed, and to deliver 
himself of all that was upon his mind, assuring him that I should continue to 
be an attentive and interested listener. 
“ Let me first ask you a question,” he began. “We are, most of us, very 
ready to talk of the Infinite and of Infinity, though with a very faint compre¬ 
hension of what we are talking about. Now, what is your conception of the 
infinity of creation ?” 
“ That is a question very easily answered,” I replied. “ I conceive that 
every separate star is a complete solar system ; that beyond those which appear 
to the naked eye, are myriads of telescopic stars ; that beyond these, again, as 
in the nebulae and in the galaxy, there are yet other and more numerous 
myriads, which, some day, may possibly be brought within human ken ; and 
that yet beyond these,—sunk into still greater depths,—soaring to still greater 
heights in the realms of space, and spreading to infinitude on every hand, are 
myriads of myriads, which never, by any possibility, can be brought within 
the scope of human observation ; that, in fact, the number of worlds is abso¬ 
lutely infinite.” 
“ Very good,” he nodded, “ and this you suppose to be an adequate concep¬ 
tion of cosmical infinity ?” 
“ Is it not so then ?” I inquired. 
“ You shall be your own judge,” he returned. “ You have given me your 
notion of an infinite universe, but what have you to allege against the possibility 
of an infinity of such infinite universes?” 
“ Truly nothing,” said I, “ either for or against such an imagination.” 
“ But even this,” he continued, “ would not exhaust the possibilities of the 
case. And, since the utmost of whatever we can conceive to be possible must 
ever fall infinitely short of the actual, i. e. of that which is possible to omnipo¬ 
tence, you must admit that even the conception of an infinity of infinite uni¬ 
verses still remains an inadequate conception of full infinity, as will be any, 
even the grandest, conception the mind of man can possibly form.” 
“ Since I fall so far short of your expectation in my attempt to conceive the 
nature of infinity, you had better favour me with your own ideas on the sub¬ 
ject,” I remarked. 
“ That is precisely what I am about to do,” he rejoined. 
“Since, in the presence of Infinity,” he proceeded, “ there is neither great 
nor small, long nor short; and a moment is as a thousand years, and a thousand 
years bjut a moment; an atom as a w r orld, and a world only an atom, who shall 
venture to say that the stone which I just now cast away, and whose interior 
we had been examining, is not a miniature universe, as complete and as tho¬ 
roughly furnished as that which we are accustomed to call our universe; that 
the molecules which we saw in it are not true and actual solar systems,—its 
atoms, revolving globes, peopled—as we suppose our globes to be peopled—with 
intelligent beings, entire generations of whom shall have passed away during 
the minutes of our time that we were engaged in regarding it ? In a few of 
our days or weeks,—seons of their time, it may, perhaps, be crushed to pieces be¬ 
neath the heavy wheels of a w 7 aggon, or burned in a lime-kiln ; and it,—one out 
of countless universes, be for ever destroyed. 
“ And if that stone may be such a universe, why not every fragment of stone, 
mineral, or rock, every grain of sand, every particle of substance? and this, 
not only on our native Earth ; but, secondly, in every globe of our solar 
system ; and not only in this our system; but, thirdly, in every globe, of every 
system, throughout our universe; comprehending in the term ‘our universe, 1 
