Complete Essays, Literary Criticism, Cryptography, Autography, Translations & Letters
We comprehend, then, the insulation of our Universe. We perceive the isolation of that — of all that which we grasp with the senses. We know that there exists one cluster of clusters — a collection around which, on all sides, extend the immeasurable wildernesses of a Space to all human perception untenanted. But because upon the confines of this Universe of Stars we are compelled to pause, through want of farther evidence from the senses, is it right to conclude that, in fact, there is no material point beyond that which we have thus been permitted to attain? Have we, or have we not, an analogical right to the inference that this perceptible Universe; that this cluster of clusters, is but one of a series of clusters of clusters, the rest of which are invisible through distance — through the diffusion of their light being so excessive, ere it reaches us, as not to produce upon our retinae a light-impression — or from there being no such emanation as light at all, in those unspeakably distant worlds — or, lastly, from the mere interval being so vast that the electric tidings of their presence in Space, have not yet — through the lapsing myriads of years — been enabled to traverse that interval?
Have we any right to inferences — have we any ground whatever for visions such as these? If we have a right to them in any degree, we have a right to their infinite extension.
The human brain has obviously a leaning to the “Infinite,” and fondles the phantom of the idea. It seems to long with a passionate fervor for this impossible conception, with the hope of intellectually believing it when conceived. What is general among the whole race of Man, of course no individual of that race can be warranted in considering abnormal; nevertheless, there may be a class of superior intelligences, to whom the human bias alluded to may wear all the character of monomania.
My question, however, remains unanswered:— Have we any right to infer — let us say, rather, to imagine — an interminable succession of the “clusters of clusters,” or of “Universes” more or less similar?
I reply that the “right,” in a case such as this, depends absolutely upon the hardihood of that imagination which ventures to claim the right. Let me declare, only, that, as an individual, I myself feel impelled to the fancy — without daring to call it more — that there does exist a limitless succession of Universes, more or less similar to that of which we have cognizance, to that of which alone we shall ever have cognizance, at the very least until the return of our own particular Universe into Unity. If such clusters of clusters exist, however — and they do — it is abundantly clear that, having had no part in our origin, they have no portion in our laws. They neither attract us, nor we them. Their material, their spirit is not ours — is not that which obtains in any part of our Universe. They could not impress our senses or our souls. Among them and us — considering all, for the moment, collectively — there are no influences in common. Each exists, apart and independently,in the bosom of its proper and particular God.
In the conduct of this Discourse, I am aiming less at physical than at metaphysical order. The clearness with which even material phenomena are presented to the understanding depends very little, I have long since learned to perceive, upon a merely natural, and almost altogether upon a moral, arrangement. If then I seem to step somewhat too discursively from point to point of my topic, let me suggest that I do so in the hope of thus the better keeping unbroken that chain of graduated impression by which alone the intellect of Man can expect to encompass the grandeurs of which I speak, and, in their majestic totality, to comprehend them.
So far, our attention has been directed, almost exclusively, to a general and relative grouping of the stellar bodies in space. Of specification there has been little; and whatever ideas of quantity have been conveyed — that is to say, of number, magnitude, and distance — have been conveyed incidentally and by way of preparation for more definitive conceptions. These latter let us now attempt to entertain.
Our solar system, as has been already mentioned, consists, in chief, of one sun and seventeen planets certainly, but in all probability a few others, revolving around it as a centre, and attended by seventeen moons of which we know, with possibly several more of which as yet we know nothing. These various bodies are not true spheres, but oblate spheroids — spheres flattened at the poles of the imaginary axes about which they rotate; the flattening being a consequence of the rotation. Neither is the Sun absolutely the centre of the system; for this Sun itself, with all the planets, revolves about a perpetually shifting point of space, which is the system’s general centre of gravity. Neither are we to consider the paths through which these different spheroids move — the moons about the planets, the planets about the Sun, or the Sun about the common centre — as circles in an accurate sense. They are, in fact, ellipses — one of the foci being the point about which the revolution is made. An ellipse is a curve, returning into itself, one of whose diameters is longer than the other. In the longer diameter are two points, equidistant from the middle of the line, and so situated otherwise that, if from each of them a straight line be drawn to any one point of the curve, the two lines, taken together, will be equal to the longer diameter itself. Now let us conceive such an ellipse. At one of the points mentioned, which are thefoci, let us fasten an orange. By an elastic thread let us connect this orange with a pea; and let us place this latter on the circumference of the ellipse. Let us now move the pea continuously around the orange, keeping always on the circumference of the ellipse. The elastic thread, which, of course, varies in length as we move the pea, will form what in geometry is called a radius vector. Now, if the orange be understood as the Sun, and the pea as a planet revolving about it, then the revolution should be made at such a rate — with a velocity so varying — that the radius vector may pass over equal areas of space in equal times. The progress of the pea should be — in other words, the progress of the planet is, of course, — slow in proportion to its distance from the Sun, swift in proportion to its proximity. Those planets, moreover, move the more slowly which are the farther from the Sun; the squares of their periods of revolution having the same proportion to each other, as have to each other the cubes of their mean distances from the Sun.
The wonderfully complex laws of revolution here described, however, are not to be understood as obtaining in our system alone. They everywhere prevail where Attraction prevails. They control the Universe of Stars. Every shining speck in the firmament is, no doubt, a luminous Sun, resembling our own, at least in its general features, and having in attendance upon it a greater or less number of planets, greater or less, whose still lingering luminosity is not sufficient to render them visible to us at so vast a distance, but which, nevertheless, revolve, moon-attended, about their starry centres, in obedience to the principles just detailed — in obedience to the three omniprevalent laws of revolution, the three immortal laws guessed by the imaginative Kepler, and but subsequently demonstrated and accounted for by the patient and mathematical Newton. Among a tribe of philosophers who pride themselves excessively upon matter-of-fact, it is far too fashionable to sneer at all speculation under the comprehensive sobriquet, “guess-work.” The point to be considered is, who guesses. In guessing with Plato, we spend our time to better purpose, now and then, than in hearkening to a demonstration by Alcmaeon.
In many works on Astronomy I find it distinctly stated that the laws of Kepler are the basis of the great principle, Gravitation. This idea must have arisen from the fact that the suggestion of these laws by Kepler, and his proving them a posteriori to have an actual existence, led Newton to account for them by the hypothesis of Gravitation, and, finally, to demonstrate them a priori, as necessary consequences of the hypothetical principle. Thus, so far from the laws of Kepler being the basis of Gravity, Gravity is the basis of these laws, as it is, indeed, of all the laws of the material Universe which are not referable to Repulsion alone.
The mean distance of the Earth from the Moon — that is to say, from the heavenly body in our closest vicinity — is two hundred and thirty-seven thousand miles. Mercury, the planet nearest the Sun, is distant from him thirty-seven millions of miles. Venus, the next, revolves at a distance of sixty-eight millions; the Earth, which comes next, at a distance of ninety-five millions; Mars, then, at a distance of one hundred and fourty-four millions. Now come the nine Asteroids (Ceres, Juno, Vesta, Pallas,