science, real or
pretended, deserts us. We have no method for measuring angles, which can
be applied to the fixed stars; and we know nothing of any revolutions
they perform. All here therefore seems gratuitous: we reason from
certain alleged analogies; and we can do no more.

Huygens endeavoured to ascertain something on the subject, by making the
aperture of a telescope so small, that the sun should appear through it
no larger than Sirius, which he found to be only in the proportion of 1
to 27,664 times his diameter, as seen by the naked eye. Hence, supposing
Sirius to be a globe of the same magnitude as the sun, it must be 27,664
times as distant from us as the sun, in other words, at a distance so
considerable as to equal 345 million diameters of the earth(60). Every
one must feel on how slender a thread this conclusion is suspended.

(60) Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Vol. 11, p. 407.

And yet, from this small postulate, the astronomers proceed to deduce
the most astounding conclusions. They tell us, that the distance of the
nearest fixed star from the earth is at least 7,600,000,000,000 miles,
and of another they name, not less than 38 millions of millions of
miles. A cannon-ball therefore, proceeding at the rate of about twenty
miles in a minute would be 760,000 years in passing from us to the
nearest fixed star, and 3,800,000 in passing to the second star of which
we speak. Huygens accordingly concluded, that it was not impossible,
that there might be stars at such inconceivable distances from us, that
their light has not yet reached the earth since its creation(61).

(61) Ibid, p. 408.

The received system of the universe, founded upon these so called
discoveries, is that each of the stars is a sun, having planets and
comets revolving round it, as our sun has the earth and other
planets revolving round him. It has been found also by the successive
observations of astronomers, that a star now and then is totally lost,
and that a new star makes its appearance which had never been remarked
before: and this they explain into the creation of a new system from
time to time by the Almighty author of the universe, and the destruction
of an old system worn out with age(62). We must also remember the power
of attraction every where diffused through infinite space, by means
of which, as Herschel assures us, in great length of time a nebula,
or cluster of stars, may be formed, while the projectile force they
r