Page:Sir William Herschel, his life and works (1881).djvu/176

154 His second paper on the Direction and Velocity of the solar system (1805) is the best example that can possibly be given of his marvellous skill in reaching the heart of a matter, and it may be the one in which his philosophical powers appear in their highest exercise. For sustained reflection and high philosophic thought it is to be ranked with the researches of in the Principia.

papers on the Construction of the Heavens, as he named it, extended over his whole scientific life. By this he specially means the method according to which the stars, the clusters, the nebulæ, are spread through the regions of space, the causes that have led to this distribution, and the laws to which it is subjected.

No single astronomical fact is unimportant in the light which it may throw on the scheme of the whole, and each fact is to be considered in this light. As an instance: his discovery of the variable star α