ble, the orbits described by the
different bodies in the solar system: but this has still nothing to do,
strictly speaking, with their magnitudes or distances. It is required
that we should know them in their relations to each other; but it is no
preliminary of just, of practical, it might almost be said, of liberal
science, that we should know any thing of them absolutely.

The unlimited ambition of the nature of man has discovered itself in
nothing more than this, the amazing superstructure which the votaries
of contemplation within the last two hundred years have built upon the
simple astronomy of the ancients. Having begun to compute the distances
of miles by millions, it appears clearly that nothing can arrest the
more than eagle-flight of the human mind. The distance of the
nearest fixed star from the earth, we are informed, is at least
7,000,000,000,000 miles, and of another which the astronomers name, not
less than 38 millions of millions of miles. The particles of light are
said to travel 193,940 miles in every second, which is above a million
times swifter than the progress of a cannon-ball(67). And Herschel
has concluded, that the light issuing from the faintest nebulae he
has discovered, must have been at this rate two millions of years in
reaching the Barth(68).

(67) Ferguson, Section 216. "Light moves," says Brewster, Optics, p. 2,
"from one pole of the earth to the other in the 24th part of a second: a
velocity which surpasses all comprehension."

(68) Brinkley, Astronomy, p. 130.

SECTION III.

The next process of the modern astronomer is to affirm the innumerable
orbs around us, discovered with the naked eye, or with which we are made
acquainted by the aid of telescopes, to be all stocked with rational
inhabitants. The argument for this is, that an all-wise and omnipotent
creator could never have produced such immense bodies, dispersed through
infinite space, for any meaner purpose, than that of peopling them with
"intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and
felicity(69)."

(69) See above, Essay XXI.

Now it appears to me, that, in these assertions, the modern astronomers
are taking upon themselves somewhat too boldly, to expound the counsels
of that mysterious power, to which the universe is indebted for its
arrangement and order.

We know nothing of God but from his works. Certain speculative men have
adventured to reason upon the source of all