d these vagabond comets and shooting stars and stellar nebulae, do they
not make up a prodigious panorama? What are our romances in comparison
with the History of Nature? Soaring toward the Infinite, we purify our
souls from all the baseness of this world, we strive to become better
and more intelligent.

* * * * *

But in the first place, you ask, what are the Heavens? This vault
oppresses us. We can not venture to investigate it.

Heaven, we reply, is no vault, it is a limitless immensity,
inconceivable, unfathomable, that surrounds us on all sides, and in the
midst of which our globe is floating. THE HEAVENS ARE ALL THAT EXISTS,
all that we see, and all that we do not see: the Earth on which we are,
that bears us onward in her rapid flight; the Moon that accompanies us,
and sheds her soft beams upon our silent nights; the good Sun to which
we owe our existence; the Stars, suns of Infinitude; in a word--the
whole of Creation.

Yes, our Earth is an orb of the Heavens: the sky is her domain, and our
Sun, shining above our heads, and fertilizing our seasons, is as much a
star as the pretty sparkling points that scintillate up there, in the
far distance, and embellish the calm of our nights with their
brilliancy. All are in the Heavens, you as well as I, for the Earth, in
her course through Space, bears us with herself into the depths of
Infinitude.

In the Heavens there is neither "above" nor "below." These words do not
exist in celestial speech, because their significance is relative to the
surface of this planet only. In reality, for the inhabitants of the
Earth, "low" is the inside, the center of the globe, and "high" is what
is above our heads, all round the Earth. The Heavens are what surround
us on all sides, to Infinity.

The Earth is, like her fellows, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune, one of the planets of the great solar family.

The Sun, her father, protects her, and directs all her actions. She, as
the grateful daughter, obeys him blindly. All float in perfect harmony
over the celestial ocean.

But, you may say, on what does the Earth rest in her ethereal
navigation?

On nothing. The Earth turns round the colossal Sun, a little globe of
relatively light weight, isolated on all sides in Space, like a
soap-bubble blown by some careless child.

Above, below, on all sides, millions of similar globes are grouped into
families, and form other systems