nd dates back
long before Geology begins. We must figure to ourselves a time when the
solid matter which now composes our Earth was part of a continuous and
intensely heated gaseous body, which extended from the centre of the Sun
to beyond the orbit of Neptune, and had, therefore, a diameter of more
than 6,000,000,000 miles.

As this slowly contracted, Neptune was detached, first perhaps as a
ring, and then as a spherical body. Ages after this Uranus broke away.

Then after another incalculable period Saturn followed suit, and here
the tendencies to coherence and disruption were so evenly balanced that
to this day a portion circulates as rings round the main body instead of
being broken up into satellites. Again after successive intervals
Jupiter, Mars, the Asteroids, the Earth, Venus, and Mercury all passed
through the same marvellous phases. The time which these changes would
have required must have been incalculable, and they all of course
preceded, and preceded again by another incalculable period, the very
commencement of that geological history which itself indicates a lapse
of time greater than human imagination can realise.

Thus, then, however far we penetrate in time or in space, we find
ourselves surrounded by mystery. Just as in time we can form no idea of
a commencement, no anticipation of an end, so space also extends around
us, boundless in all directions. Our little Earth revolves round the
mighty Sun; the Sun itself and the whole solar system are moving with
inconceivable velocity towards a point in the constellation of Hercules;
together with all the nearer stars it forms a cluster in the heavens,
which appears to our eyes as the Milky Way; while outside our star
cluster again are innumerable others, which far transcend, alike in
magnitude, in grandeur, and in distance, the feeble powers of our finite
imagination.

FOOTNOTES:

[66] Ball, _Story of the Heavens_.

[67] Ball, _Story of the Heavens_.

[68] Some authorities estimate it even higher.

[69] Ball.

[70] Hamerton, _Landscape_.

[71] Humboldt, _Travels_.

[72] Clarke, _System of the Stars_.

[73] Kosmos.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Beauties of Nature, by Sir John Lubbock

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