ronomer. The presence of stars and planets too
faint to be discovered by the naked eye, and of one, the planet
Neptune,[191] as far distant from the planet disturbed by its attraction
as the earth is from the sun, was ascertained, and its place pointed out
by Adams and Le Verrier, _before it was seen_. If the dark
interplanetary spaces, then, were full of dark attracting bodies, the
perturbations of the other planets would discover their existence. So
the presence of some invisible stars at much greater distances from
their visible associates has been discovered by Bessel,[192] and it is
quite possible that a dark firmament may yet be discovered, containing
as great a number of dark stars as we now behold of luminaries; another
group of islets in the ocean of infinite space. But the very facts which
will prove their existence will disprove their infinity; for we can know
their presence only by their perturbation of the proper motions of the
visible stars; but if infinite space were full of dark bodies, the
visible stars would have no room to move at all. It is easily
demonstrable, that if infinite space were filled with dark stars, the
equilibrium and coherence of our galaxy, and of all other clusters of
stars, would be destroyed. The existence of nebulae, and clusters, and
the revolutions of the binary stars, are conclusive proof that the dark
parts of infinite space are not full of dark attracting bodies.

Nor can the Atheist here raise his usual argument from unknown facts,
and say that, "far beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes, a
boundless expanse of firmaments may exist." It concerns not our present
argument whether such exist or not. Whatsoever discoveries may be made
to eternity, of firmaments, ten thousand times ten thousand times larger
than we now behold, _they can never bear the smallest proportion to the
infinite space in which they exist_. Beyond these islets will extend
gulfs and oceans immeasurable. Our argument, however, has no concern
with the unknown possible, but with the actual fact--visible to the
naked eye and confirmed by the telescope--that there is a portion of
space in which millions of universes such as this might exist with
safety, yet they do not. Worlds, therefore, do not exist by the
necessity of their own nature, wherever there is room for them, but must
have had some pre-existent, external, and supernatural cause of their
existence in this place and not in other places. This