It would be rent by
the strain. The action of gravitation is the all-sustaining
power. Once introduce that idea, and the great ocean of ether
might stretch illimitably on every side, and the vastest bodies
might be scattered over it and traverse it in stupendous paths.
Thus it came about that, as the little optic tube of Galilei
slowly developed into the giant telescope of Herschel, and then
into the powerful refracting telescopes of the United States of
our time; as the new science of photography provided observers
with a new eye--a sensitive plate that will register messages,
which the human eye cannot detect, from far-off regions; and as a
new instrument, the spectroscope, endowed astronomers with a
power of perceiving fresh aspects of the inhabitants of space,
the horizon rolled backward, and the mind contemplated a universe
of colossal extent and power.
Let us try to conceive this universe before we study its
evolution. I do not adopt any of the numerous devices that have
been invented for the purpose of impressing on the imagination
the large figures we must use. One may doubt if any of them are
effective, and they are at least familiar.
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