Page:The Solar System - Six Lectures - Lowell.djvu/19

 

the long perspective of knowledge, which begins with the close at hand and stretches to the infinitely remote, the solar system marks a middle distance. Between the intimacy possible with objects on this Earth and the distant recognition of the universe of suns, it furnishes an acquaintanceship combining something of the interest of the one with the grandeur of the other. Our knowledge about the solar system has greatly increased during the last quarter of a century; and first in the recognition of what makes part of it. To our solar system we now know belongs every heavenly body we see except the fixed stars and the nebulæ. Not only are the Sun, Moon, and planets members of it, but meteors, shooting-stars, and comets we have found to be so, too. That all of these bodies are part and parcel of what the Sun controls, I shall first