Page:The Harveian oration (electronic resource) - Royal College of Physicians, 1881 (IA b20411911).pdf/16

 of the slightest consequence how long he makes the total of his figures. They all have a beginning; eternity has none.

Let us just for a moment, by an examination of one of our most acute and most prized faculties, the sense of sight, try to conceive what this idea means. Let us accompany the astronomer into his observatory, where, in the glory of a magnificent starlit night, he gazes out on the heavens, decked in the splendour of countless myriads of stars. Some meteor gleams in fitful brightness across the expanse as it enters the region of our atmosphere. Further off, he knows that our moon revolves in regular circuit round the earth. Sometimes nearer, sometimes at greater distance, each planet in its own orbit revolves round the centre of the system. Beyond all these, reaching into boundless space, minute scintillations of light gleam forth, each possibly the centre of other harmonious systems of perpetual motion. With his present knowledge, the star-gazer has almost forgotten that, in long bygone days, there were astronomers who could reconcile their minds to the idea that our world was enclosed by a sort of crystal sphere, which, day and night, ever rolled round and round. He has actually measured how far we are separated from the nearer bodies; he has got the length of computing, with some degree of accuracy, the more startling distances which intervene between us and