ms. I ask why
my telescopic star-dust may not come together and grow and organize
into habitable worlds,--the ripened fruit on the branches of the tree
Yggdrasil, if I may borrow from our friend the Poet's province. It
frightens people, though, to hear the suggestion that worlds shape
themselves from star-mist. It does not trouble them at all to see
the watery spheres that round themselves into being out of the vapors
floating over us; they are nothing but raindrops. But if a planet can
grow as a rain-drop grows, why then--It was a great comfort to these
timid folk when Lord Rosse's telescope resolved certain nebula into
star-clusters. Sir John Herschel would have told them that this
made little difference in accounting for the formation of worlds by
aggregation, but at any rate it was a comfort to them.

--These people have always been afraid of the astronomers,--said the
Master.--They were shy, you know, of the Copernican system, for a long
while; well they might be with an oubliette waiting for them if they
ventured to think that the earth moved round the sun. Science settled
that point finally for them, at length, and then it was all right,--when
there was no use in disputing the fact any longer. By and by geology
began turning up fossils that told extraordinary stories about the
duration of life upon our planet. What subterfuges were not used to get
rid of their evidence! Think of a man seeing the fossilized skeleton of
an animal split out of a quarry, his teeth worn down by mastication, and
the remains of food still visible in his interior, and, in order to
get rid of a piece of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to,
seriously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged to a living
creature, but was created with just these appearances; a make-believe,
a sham, a Barnum's-mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose
upon his intelligent children! And now people talk about geological
epochs and hundreds of millions of years in the planet's history
as calmly as if they were discussing the age of their deceased
great-grandmothers. Ten or a dozen years ago people said Sh! Sh! if you
ventured to meddle with any question supposed to involve a doubt of
the generally accepted Hebrew traditions. To-day such questions are
recognized as perfectly fair subjects for general conversation; not in
the basement story, perhaps, or among the rank and file of the curbstone
congregations, but among intelligent and edu