Simon Newcomb

“ At the time it had seemed intensely comical to see two enraged combatants—for so I amused myself by fancying them—hurling algebraic formulæ, of frightful complexity, at each other's heads. I did not then dream that I should live to be an object of the same sort of attack, and that from Hansen himself.
To be revised, pulled to pieces, or superseded, as science advances, is the common fate of most astronomical work, even the best. It does not follow that it has been done in vain; if good, it forms a foundation on which others will build. ”

“ Astronomy may fairly claim to be that science which transcends all others in its demands upon the practical application of our reasoning powers. Look at the stars that stud the heavens on a clear evening. What more hopeless problem to one confined to earth than that of determining their varying distances, their motions, and their physical constitution? Everything on earth we can handle and investigate. But how investigate that which is ever beyond our reach, on which we can never make an experiment? On certain occasions we see the moon pass in front of the sun and hide it from our eyes. ”

“ If he is destined to advance the science by works of real genius, he must, like the poet, be born, not made. The born astronomer, when placed in command of a telescope, goes about using it as naturally and effectively as the babe avails itself of its mother's breast. He sees intuitively what less gifted men have to learn by long study and tedious experiment. He is moved to celestial knowledge by a passion which dominates his nature. He can no more avoid doing astronomical work, whether in the line of observations or research, than a poet can chain his Pegasus to earth. ”

“ The soul of generosity and the pink of honor, ever ready to lend a hand to a struggling youth whom he found deserving of help, enthusiastically devoted to his favorite science, pursuing it in the most exalted spirit, animated by not a single mean motive, it might have been supposed that all the facilities the world could offer would have been open to him in his career. ”

“ The building of a ship from the time that her keel is laid until she is making her way across the ocean is a slow and gradual process; yet there is a cataclysmic epoch opening up a new era in her history. It is the moment when, after lying for months or years a dead, inert, immovable mass, she is suddenly endowed with the power of motion, and, as if imbued with life, glides into the stream, eager to begin the career for which she was designed. ”

“ Quite recently an illustrated account of his observatory and its work has appeared in a splendid folio volume, in which the rigor of science is tempered with a gentle infusion of art which tempts even the non-scientific reader to linger over its pages.
In England, the career of Professor Cayley affords an example of the spirit that impels a scientific worker of the highest class, and of the extent to which an enlightened community may honor him for what he is doing. One of the creators of modern mathematics, he never had any ambition beyond the prosecution of his favorite science. ”

“ True, they did not know that the earth revolved on its axis, but thought that the heavens and all that in them is performed a daily revolution around our globe, which was, therefore, the centre of the universe. It was the cynosure, or constellation of the Little Bear, by which the sailors used to guide their ships before the discovery of the mariner's compass. Thus we see both a practical and contemplative side to astronomy through all history. The world owes two debts to that science: one for its practical uses, and the other for the ideas it has afforded us of the immensity of creation. ”

“ Through every year, every hour, every minute, of human history from the first appearance of man on the earth, from the era of the builders of the Pyramids, through the times of Caesar and Hannibal, through the period of every event that history records, not merely our earth, but the sun and the whole solar system with it, have been speeding their way towards the star of which I speak on a journey of which we know neither the beginning nor the end. ”

“ Consequently they never ask in what way their science is going to benefit mankind. As the great captain of industry is moved by the love of wealth, and the political leader by the love of power over men, so the astronomer is moved by the love of knowledge for its own sake, and not for the sake of its useful applications. Yet he is proud to know that his science has been worth more to mankind than it has cost. He does not value its results merely as a means of crossing the ocean or mapping the country, for he feels that man does not live by bread alone. ”

“ We have reached a stage where we know much of the heavenly bodies. We have mapped out our solar system with great precision. But how with that great universe of millions of stars in which our solar system is only a speck of star-dust, a speck which a traveller through the wilds of space might pass a hundred times without notice? We have learned much about this universe, though our knowledge of it is still dim. ”

“ It matters not for us whether Columbus ever knew that he had discovered a new continent. His work was to teach that neither hydra, chimera nor abyss—neither divine injunction nor infernal machination—was in the way of men visiting every part of the globe, and that the problem of conquering the world reduced itself to one of sails and rigging, hull and compass. The better part of Copernicus was to direct man to a view-point whence he should see that the heavens were of like matter with the earth. ”

“ The so-called problems of astronomy are not separate and independent, but are rather the parts of one great problem, that of increasing our knowledge of the universe in its widest extent. Nor is it easy to contemplate the edifice of astronomical science as it now stands, without thinking of the past as well as of the present and future. The fact is that our knowledge of the universe has been in the nature of a slow and gradual evolution, commencing at a very early period in human history, and destined to go forward without stop, as we hope, so long as civilization shall endure. ”

“ Ask not whether he was a very great one, for in our science we have no infallible gauge by which we try men and measure their stature. He was a lover of science and an indefatigable worker, and he did what in him lay to advance our knowledge of the stars. Let that suffice. I love to fancy that in some other sphere, either within this universe of ours or outside of it, all who have successfully done this may some time gather and exchange greetings. Should this come about there will be a few—Hipparchus and Ptolemy, Copernicus and Newton, Galileo and Herschel—to be surrounded by admiring crowds. ”

“ If, a hundred years ago, the most sagacious of mortals had been told that before the nineteenth century closed the face of the earth would be changed, time and space almost annihilated, and communication between continents made more rapid and easy than it was between cities in his time; and if he had been asked to exercise his wildest imagination in depicting what might come—the airship and the flying-machine would probably have had a prominent place in his scheme, but neither the steamship, the railway, the telegraph, nor the telephone would have been there. ”

“ I think it is thus in the development of humanity. Long ages may pass during which a race, to all external observation, appears to be making no real progress. Additions may be made to learning, and the records of history may constantly grow, but there is nothing in its sphere of thought, or in the features of its life, that can be called essentially new. Yet, Nature may have been all along slowly working in a way which evades our scrutiny, until the result of her operations suddenly appears in a new and revolutionary movement, carrying the race to a higher plane of civilization. ”

“ It is a striking example of how easily we may fail to realize our knowledge when I say that I have thought many a time how deliciously one might pass those hundred millions of years in a journey to the star a Lyrae, without its occurring to me that we are actually making that very journey at a speed compared with which the motion of a steamship is slow indeed. ”

“ Hundreds of millions of years is indeed a long time, and yet, when we contemplate the changes supposed to have taken place during that time, we do not look out on eternity itself, which is veiled from our sight, as it were, by the unending succession of changes that mark the progress of time. But in the motions of the stars we are brought face to face with eternity and infinity, covered by no veil whatever. It would be bold to speak dogmatically on a subject where the springs of being are so far hidden from mortal eyes as in the depths of the universe. ”

“ I therefore hold that the world's greatest debt to astronomy is that it has taught us what a great thing creation is, and what an insignificant part of the Creator's work is this earth on which we dwell, and everything that is upon it. That space is infinite, that wherever we go there is a farther still beyond it, must have been accepted as a fact by all men who have thought of the subject since men began to think at all. ”