Cosmography

“ Of the works of creation which occupied so much of his thoughts, the Professor's views may be had by reading the following concluding remarks found in his "Physical Astronomy:"
"Whatever doubts may hang over all speculations respecting distant events, either of past or future time, we have reason to believe that our universe will ever exhibit great and useful operations throughout its extensive domains. From the ruins of some celestial bodies others will rise to act a part in the drama of the physical creation in future ages. ”

“ Astronomy,—which tells them that this so vast and seemingly solid earth is but an atom among atoms, whirling, no man knows whither, through illimitable space; which demonstrates that what we call the peaceful heaven above us, is but that space, filled by an infinitely subtle matter whose particles are seething and surging, like the waves of an angry sea; which opens up to us infinite regions where nothing is known, or ever seems to have been known, but matter and force, operating according to rigid rules ”

“ It would be just as reasonable to make the study of the heat of the sun a science preliminary to the rest of thermotics, as to place the study of the attraction of the bodies, which compose the universe in general, before that of the particular terrestrial bodies, which alone we can experimentally know. Astronomy, in fact, owes its perfection to the circumstance that it is the only branch of natural history, the phænomena of which are largely expressible by mathematical conceptions, and which can be, to a great extent, explained by the application of very simple physical laws. ”

“ Let it be supposed that the point to which this hypothesis leads us, is the ultimate point of physical science: that the farthest glimpse we can obtain of the material universe by our natural faculties, shows it to us occupied by a boundless abyss of luminous matter: still we ask, how space came to be thus occupied, how matter came to be thus luminous? If we establish by physical proofs, that the first fact which can be traced in the history of the world, is that “there was light;” ”

“ The very material universe exists infinitely, and we behold with the eyes of the flesh. We do not comprehend it, yet we know that it really is.
In the hollow vault of night we behold countless myriads of huge and flaming suns, scattered like dust through the sky, or sparkling in points of radiance, and we know that that created stellar system extends, without limit, into the emptiness of limitless space. We know that each incredibly gigantic sun–flaming with light and heat–follows a perfect and well-assigned orbit. ”

“ Since I presented Worlds in the Making and Life of the Universe as Conceived by Man from Earliest Ages to the Present Time to the public—which received them with far greater interest and appreciation than I could foresee—I have had repeated occasions to treat new questions of a cosmological nature, questions largely arisen from new discoveries and observations within the scope of astronomy. ”

“ The new astronomy makes much of the three cosmic laws. Our earth, by a form of self-love called molecular attraction, ceases to be scattered dust, and takes on the shape of a rich and beautiful planet. ”

“ If I were called upon to convey, within the compass of a single sentence, an idea of the trend of recent astronomical and physical science, I should say that it was in the direction of showing the universe to be a connected whole. The farther we advance in knowledge, the clearer it becomes that the bodies which are scattered through the celestial spaces are not completely independent existences, but have, with all their infinite diversity, many attributes in common. ”

“ Thus may the cosmic race, whose aggregate census makes up the stellar universe, be perpetuated—individual solar systems, such as ours, being born, and growing old, and dying to live again in their descendants, while the universe as a whole maintains its unified integrity throughout all these internal mutations—passing on, it may be, by infinitesimal stages, to a culmination hopelessly beyond human comprehension. ”

“ Everything that is created is subject to destruction. And further, since the Cosmos exists by the goodness of God it follows that God must always be good and the world exist. Just as light coexists with the Sun and with fire, and shadow coexists with a body.
Of the bodies in the Cosmos, some imitate Mind and move in orbits; some imitate Soul and move in a straight line, fire and air upward, earth and water downward. Of those that move in orbits the fixed sphere goes from the east, the Seven from the west. ”

“ All creation is in motion, we know. So we are taught. Earth moves about the sun, sun about the great hub of the galaxy, the galaxy in a mighty circle about its own directrix—space itself, 'ether,' so called, is like a mighty ball rolling and tumbling through unimaginable chaos. To this outside of space we cannot attain, for to go to the end of space is to return to the starting point. ”

“ Heaven and earth are simply contained in the great whole of the infinite Universe. How, he asks, can we know that there is not a larger Cosmos, over and above the manifestation of Cosmos that we can see? ”

“ And this is only natural, for the trend of recent research has made clear the fact that one of the three greatest problems of modern astronomy and astrophysics, ranking with the structure of the universe and the evolution of celestial bodies, is the constitution of matter. ”

“ From the great central mass, heat may again be summoned to exhale nebulous matter; chemical forces may again produce motion, and motion may again generate systems; but, as in the recurring catastrophes which have desolated our earth, the great First Cause must preside at the dawn of each cosmical cycle; and, as in the animal races which were successively reproduced, new celestial creations of a nobler form of beauty and of a higher form of permanence may yet appear in the sidereal universe. “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered.” ”

“ The astronomer, I assert, can neither from any data at his command postulate nor prove the beginning nor the end of the reverberating motion that exists in his solar system, which is itself the fragment of a system that is circulating and revolving in and about itself, and in which, since the birth of man, the universe he knows has not passed the first milestone in the road that universe is traveling in space immensity. ”

“ It has also to deduce the laws of the material world from its first appearances, and, armed with these, it must transport itself from the earth to the true centre of the system, from which its wonderful order and beauty may be contemplated, and revealed to the world. Then these innumerable twinkling points of light, which sparkle in the heavens like so many atoms, become to the eye of reason the stupendous suns and centres of other worlds and systems. ”

“ Ever since the great discovery of the immortal Newton, it has been known that all celestial bodies attract one another, and that this attraction is the greater, the greater the attracting body is. Not only such celestial bodies as the sun, the earth, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars, but all bodies have this power of attraction ”

“ But to us, who have the experience of some additional thousands of years, the question of permanence is already, in a great measure, decided in the affirmative. The refined speculations of modern astronomy, grounding their conclusions on observations made at very remote periods, have proved to demonstration, that one at least of the great powers of nature, the force of gravitation, the main bond and support of the material universe, has undergone no change in intensity from a high antiquity. ”

“ If the celestial bodies, or, to speak only of one class, if all the planets were at rest, that is, without motion, they would, on account of the great attractive power of the sun, rapidly approach it, and finally unite with it and form one body. ”

“ Any real view of the universe must now presuppose the melting down of crass external reality into the phenomena of sense and experience and the transformation of inorganic and organic nature into so many planes or grades of being expressive of the different forms (gravitation, cohesion, vital force, psychic force) in which cosmic energy manifests itself. ”

“ The True Light appeared; it shed light on all creation, which, to them, looked barren indeed when they saw the source whence the worlds, earthly, spiritual, and divine, derive motion.
Each world had a centre to which tended every atom of the sphere; these worlds were themselves each an atom tending to the centre of their species. Each species had its centre in the vast celestial region that is in communion with the inexhaustible and flaming motor power of all that exists. ”

“ The balance maintains its perfect equilibrium, although we have one power constantly drawing the earth towards the sun, and the other as constantly exerting itself to move it off into space at a tangent to the orbit in which the planet moves. In our examination it will be found that one common system of harmony runs through all the cosmical phenomena, by which everything is produced that is so beautiful and joyous in this world. ”

“ Thus the exquisitely beautiful and symmetrical phenomena and laws of polarisation, and of crystalline and other effects, may be looked upon as indications of the delicacy and subtlety of the mechanism by which man, through his visual organs, is put in [110] communication with the external world; is made acquainted with the forms and qualities of objects in the most remote regions of space; and is enabled, in some measure, to determine his position and relation in a universe in which he is but an atom. ”

“ When we contemplate these various evidences in their totality—when we observe that, by the Nebular Hypothesis, the leading phenomena of the Solar System, and the heavens in general, are explicable; and when, on the other hand, we consider that the current cosmogony is not only without a single fact to stand on, but is at variance with all our positive knowledge of Nature; we see that the proof becomes overwhelming. ”

“ It is the central fact of the physical universe, the cement of the material world, the mighty, mystic shepherdess of space, that keeps the planets from wandering off alone. It is this awful, silent power reaching out from the enormous mass of the sun, that lashes the planets in their furious race, and yet holds them tightly reined in their orbits. ”

“ As mechanics and physics discovered their guiding star in the persistence of energy, and chemistry in the theory of equivalents, so is the sphere of life composed by the theory of descent into a picture which brings within a single frame the immense abundance of forms of the present with the invisible traces of the most remote past. ”

“ And assuredly, as in the firmament that simple law of gravitation reigns supreme—making it indeed a kosmos—majestic, orderly, comely in its going—ruling, and binding not the less the fiery and nomadic comets, than the gentle, punctual moons—so certainly, and to us moral creatures to a degree transcendently more important, does the whole intelligent universe move around and move towards and in the Father of Lights. ”

“ But I would ask, where do we get this experience of heavy and light bodies? and how is our knowledge on these subjects extended so far that we can reason with certainty concerning the centre of the whole universe? Is not the only residence and home of all the things which are heavy and light to us, the earth and the air which surrounds it? and what is the earth and the ambient air, with respect to the immensity of the universe? ”

“ If we stop to think what words mean, we shall know that external non-realities are nothing, and that adjustments to external non-realities are adjustments to nothing.
The cosmic process regards two things, external realities and internal realities. There is the external reality of the natural world, to which material creation must conform. The eye is adjusted to the ether, the ear to the sound, the lungs to the atmosphere, the fin to the water, the wing to the air. We have no difficulty in acknowledging the reality of the natural world, because it is cognized by the senses set in the body. ”

“ When man analytically inspects the universe through the material endowments of his physical senses and associated mind perception, the cosmos appears to be mechanical and energy-material. Such a technique of studying reality consists in turning the universe inside out. ”

“ Here we behold the operations of a Being whose power is illimitable and uncontrollable, and which far transcends the comprehension of the highest created intelligences—a power, displayed not only in the vast extension of material existence, and the countless number of mighty globes which the universe contains—but in the astonishingly rapid motions with which myriads of them are carried along through the immeasurable spaces of creation,—some of those magnificent orbs moving with a velocity of one hundred and seventy thousand miles an hour. ”

“ Order is God. No spirit world can exist without form, neither can it exist without motion. Motion produces the spheroid, and the rotation of the spheroid produces atmosphere and diversity of surface; all these variations characterize the spirit globe.
When these facts are carefully reflected upon and understood, the majesty of the Creator assumes a magnitude most stupendous.
The astronomer searching through space for undiscovered planets and suns, has failed to fix his telescope upon these spiritual worlds, but the day will come when science will discover their existence. ”