INTRODUCTORY.

Before we can properly begin the study of "The Relation of Man to the Universe," some knowledge of the structure of the universe itself, and also of man, is necessary.

I would not write of these sciences at all if I were not aware that while most people are more or less familiar with one or more of these subjects, they are decidedly unfamiliar with the rest. Therefore I have thought it best for the general reader to take up each of these sciences with which we have to deal and study their general principles, for in these lie the basis of what I have to write.

Of course, in a book like this, only a brief outline of these sciences need be given, only that which is necessary to explain our purpose; and those who wish to pursue these subjects further are kindly referred to other books.

It will be necessary, therefore, to divide the book into four parts. Part I. will be devoted to Astronomy; Part II. to the study of Phrenology; Part III. will be devoted to Astrology; and Part IV. is devoted to Science and Religion, or the Harmony of the Sciences and their Relation to Religion, etc., etc. About all that I have written that is new is contained in the fourth part of the book; the former parts being devoted to the popular sciences.

PART I.

ASTRONOMY.

CHAPTER I.

THE SIDERAL SYSTEM

What are the heavens? Where are the shores of that limitless ocean? Where the bottom of that unfathomable abyss?

What are those brilliant points-those innumerable stars, which, never dim, shine out unceasingly from the dark profound? Are they sown broadcast-orderless, with no other bond save that which perspective lends to them? Or, if not immovable, as we have so long imagined, if not golden nails fixed to a crystal vault, whither are they bound? And, finally, what are the parts assigned to the Sun, our Earth, and all the Earths attendant on the glorious orb of day, in this tremendous concert of celestial spheres—this sublime harmony of the Universe?

These are magnificent problems, of which the most fertile imagination would have in vain attempted the solution, if, for the greater glory of the human mind, Astronomy, first born of the sciences, had not at last come to our aid.

How wonderful is the power of man! Chained down to the surface of the Earth, an intelligent atom on a grain of sand lost in the immensity of space, he invents instruments which multiply a thousandfold his vision; he sounds the depth of the ether, gauges the visible universe, and counts the myriads of stars which people it; next, studying their most complicated movements, he measures exactly their dimensions and the distances of the nearest of them from the Earth, and next deducts their masses; then, discovering in the seeeming disorder in the stellar groupings, real bonds of union, he at last evolves order from apparent confusion.

Nor is this all. Rising by supreme flight of thought to the most abstract speculations, he discovers the laws which regulate all celestial movements, and defines the nature of the universal force which sustains the worlds.

Such are the fruits of the labors of twenty generations of astronomers. Such the result of the genius of the patient perseverance of men who have devoted themselves to the study of the phenomena of the heavens. The Caldean shepards were, they say, the first astronomers. We can well believe it. Dwelling in the midst of vast plains, where the mildness of the seasons permitted them to pass the nights in open air, where the clear sky unfolded perpetually the most glorious scenes, they ought to have been, and they were. contemplative astronomers.

Nothing is more fitted to elevate the mind toward the infinite than the thoughtful contemplation of the starry vault in the silent calm of night. Varied in color and brilliancy, some shine with a vivid light, perpetually changing and twinkling; others, again, with a more constant one-more tranquil and soft; while very many only send us their rays intermittently, as if they could scarce pierce the profundity of space.

In presence of such splendor, the senses, mind and imagination are alike enthralled. The impressions gather in an emotion at once profound and religious, an indefinable mixture of admiraation, and of calm and tender melancholy. It seems as if the distant worlds, in shining earthwards, put themselves in close communion with our thoughts.

On a first glance at the starry firmament the stars seem pretty regularly distributed; nevertheless, look at that whitish, vapory glimmer which girdles the heavens as with a belt. It is the Milky Way. As we approach the borders of this star-cloud in our inspection the stars appear more and more crowded together, and most of them so small that the eye can scarcely distinguish them. The accumulation of stars in the direction of the Milky Way is more especially visible when we examine the heavens with the aid of a powerful telescope.

The Milky Way itself is nothing more than an immensely extended zone of stars-that is, of suns; since, as we know, each star, from the most brilliant to the faintest, is a sun.

Here, then, is an immense group, a gigantic assemblage of worlds, which seems to embrace all the Universe, if it be true that the greater number of scattered stars situated out of the Milky Way nevertheless form part of it. Let us add a fact well proven: Our Sun himself is a star of the Milky Way.

One of the first things which strikes us when we look at the stars is that they vary very much in brightness. All of those visible to the naked eye are divided into six classes of brightness, called magnitudes, so that we speak of a very bright star as "a star of the first magnitude"; of the feeblest visible as a star of the sixth magnitude. The number of stars of all magnitudes visible to the naked eye is about 6,000. If we employ a small telescope this number is largely increased, as that instrument enables us to see stars too feeble to be perceived by the eye alone. For this reason such stars are called telescopic stars. The stars thus revealed to us still vary in brightness, and the classification into magnitudes is continued down to the sixteenth, or even higher magnitudes; in powerful telescopes at least 20,000,000 stars down to the fourteenth magnitude are visible.

The distances of stars from us are so great that it scearcely conveys any impression on the mind to state them in miles; some other method, therefore, must be used, and the velocity of light affords us a convenient one. Light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles in a second of time; and by using this as a measuring rod we can form a better idea of the distances of the stars. Thus, leaving the Sun out of the question, we find the next nearest star (Alpha Centauri) is situated at a distance which light requires three and a half years to traverse.

Alpha Centauri is distant from us more than 200,000 times the mean distance of the Sun from the Earth-about 19,000,000,000,000 miles. The most powerful imagination in vain tries to picture this fearful distance; in vain the mind would heap line upon line, number upon number, to bridge the immensity of this abyss. Let