Page:The Harveian oration (electronic resource) - Royal College of Physicians, 1881 (IA b20411911).pdf/17

 a few of the fixed stars. From these data, he is tempted, by the help of the more perfect instruments of the day, to guess at the possible intervals between our system and the more distant lights. The nebulae, which have been already resolved into countless myriads of stars, tempt him to conclude that those which he yet cannot solve are but more distant groups; and thus a faint glimmer is borne in upon his understanding of the utterly immeasurable distances at which some of these self-luminous bodies stand from our insignificant sphere. So long as a foothold, however slender, can tempt the philosopher to spring from point to point in the contemplation of this marvellous whole, his mind seems to grasp, though but faintly, a picture of its immensity. Myriads of miles, such as an untrained mind can barely conceive, become to him little more than the inches on a mechanic's rule. But, even by him, a point is at last reached where the mind has no object to contemplate, no resting-place from whence it can make a fresh start. Beyond his farthest-reaching speculations there is still a beyond, and yet a beyond more distant still! Surely the mind of man must recoil from any attempt to grasp the infinite. It is easy to argue in words that we ought to know the beyond from what we have already proved within the limits of our knowledge. But, if we ask ourselves the simple question what that beyond