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Article THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE HEAVENS. ← Page 2 of 4 →
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The Architecture Of The Heavens.
career of utility and happiness . Such a philosopher might be pardoned if , beyond all merely selfish thoughts , he desired lengthened life in order more " thoroughly to ' understand those wonders , thc completer development of which is destined for his successors ; and carrying with him the fact , that , within the last half century , mankind has far o ' erleaped the boundaries of former knowledge , and advancing beyond that which had previouslformed thc extreme confine not alone of reach and
obsery vation , but of imagination and reasoning—the so called solar systemdived into some of the mysteries of the universe itself in the outer space , he might well look forward to a millenium of scientific attainment in this world , which would render him in some degree fit for the perception of that flood of revelation which it is not arrogant in such a mind to anticipate , when its purer elements shall have been disentangled from the grosser matter that encumbers it in its present shape .
The possessor of such a mind might indeed , contemplating what has been achieved through the agency of the telescope in the hands of the Herschels , repeat in the language oFNewton—language which until these latter days seemed either unintelligible in one who had , according to the limitted notions of the world at tlie period , fathomed the mysteries of the system of which he was a sentient particle , or looked like the words of affected pride , when he said , ** I am but as a child standing upon the
shore of the vast undiscovered ocean and playing with a little pebble , which the waters have washed to my feet . " And yet that Newton spoke within the truth when he so described his own ignorance , is now as evident as that he was the propoundei of the system of gravitation . This familiar illustration of his immortal mind suggests one which we have on many recent occasions adopted from Coleridge , when endeavouring to convey to others some faint idea of space , such as that into which recent discoveries have , so to speak , already mapped the Infinite Beyond ; and we cannot do this better than in the words of that
inspired man . ' - It is surely not impossible , " says Coleridge , " that to some infinitely superior Being ' the whole universe may be as one plain , the distance between . planet and planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand , and the spaces between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent !" Previous to this century , the planetary orbits were supposed to encircle all they had letely bounded all discovery beyondand it
space ; comp , was only through the agency of Herschel's immense telescope , * which increased the visual power of man in the same proportion as its size , four feet in diameter , bears to that of the pupil of the human eye , that worlds before unheard of , became palpable to the senses . " This period , " says Mr . Nichol , " was distinguished by the occurrence of two events which couid not exist in combination without ensuring important
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
The Architecture Of The Heavens.
career of utility and happiness . Such a philosopher might be pardoned if , beyond all merely selfish thoughts , he desired lengthened life in order more " thoroughly to ' understand those wonders , thc completer development of which is destined for his successors ; and carrying with him the fact , that , within the last half century , mankind has far o ' erleaped the boundaries of former knowledge , and advancing beyond that which had previouslformed thc extreme confine not alone of reach and
obsery vation , but of imagination and reasoning—the so called solar systemdived into some of the mysteries of the universe itself in the outer space , he might well look forward to a millenium of scientific attainment in this world , which would render him in some degree fit for the perception of that flood of revelation which it is not arrogant in such a mind to anticipate , when its purer elements shall have been disentangled from the grosser matter that encumbers it in its present shape .
The possessor of such a mind might indeed , contemplating what has been achieved through the agency of the telescope in the hands of the Herschels , repeat in the language oFNewton—language which until these latter days seemed either unintelligible in one who had , according to the limitted notions of the world at tlie period , fathomed the mysteries of the system of which he was a sentient particle , or looked like the words of affected pride , when he said , ** I am but as a child standing upon the
shore of the vast undiscovered ocean and playing with a little pebble , which the waters have washed to my feet . " And yet that Newton spoke within the truth when he so described his own ignorance , is now as evident as that he was the propoundei of the system of gravitation . This familiar illustration of his immortal mind suggests one which we have on many recent occasions adopted from Coleridge , when endeavouring to convey to others some faint idea of space , such as that into which recent discoveries have , so to speak , already mapped the Infinite Beyond ; and we cannot do this better than in the words of that
inspired man . ' - It is surely not impossible , " says Coleridge , " that to some infinitely superior Being ' the whole universe may be as one plain , the distance between . planet and planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand , and the spaces between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent !" Previous to this century , the planetary orbits were supposed to encircle all they had letely bounded all discovery beyondand it
space ; comp , was only through the agency of Herschel's immense telescope , * which increased the visual power of man in the same proportion as its size , four feet in diameter , bears to that of the pupil of the human eye , that worlds before unheard of , became palpable to the senses . " This period , " says Mr . Nichol , " was distinguished by the occurrence of two events which couid not exist in combination without ensuring important