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142 its primitive nebula. Nor is this all. Astronomy has discovered numerous extinct suns, much larger than ours—such as the satellite of Algol and stars of that type, the half-extinct companion of Sirius, etc. For their evolution a still longer period is necessary; the vista of time extends as in definitely as the vista of space. In fact, astronomy unveils this panorama to our gaze. The universe, as far as we see it, is a collection of vast masses of matter in every stage of condensation—from the dark solid Algol star to the flocculent nebula in Orion. Condensation implies age, for the more solid bodies are the result of a secular condensation of attenuated nebulas. Dark stars are numerous, how numerous it is impossible to say from the nature of the case; and nebulae are found in thousands. Hence we must think that the great universe lived, as it now lives, ages before our solar system was born, and will live on ages indefinite after our sun and all planetary life are extinct. It is a vast procession of worlds, a drama of birth and life and death, of which science sees no beginning and no end, and has not the slightest reason to suspect either. Take the nebula in Orion: in the triangular space apparently cut out of it is a cluster of stars. It is impossible to resist the inference that they have been formed by condensation from the nebula: the thought that the rest of the great nebula will similarly condense into worlds opens out a dazing vista of futurity. Take, again, the cluster of more than 2,000 stars, called the Pleiades—more than 1,000 billion miles away. The wisps and faint wreaths of nebulous matter that still enwrap the vast cluster make us think that the whole group is a crystallization of a vast primitive nebula, and thus open out an equally unimaginable vista of past time. Worlds are being born, are in the prime of life, are burning down, and are quite extinct everywhere around us. Our sun happens to have just passed its prime. It has no prerogatives in the vast host of the heavens. Thus have all limits of time and space been swept away, and the bases of that imaginative vision of an encircling Infinity and Eternity been destroyed. The world now points to no past, no future, and no infinity but its own.

In the third place, science has undermined the theory that it is necessary to postulate a supreme Architect who formed the actual cosmos from the primeval chaos. All the