From An Observatory - Page 2

bulk of our mathematical astronomy would not exist. Our calendar
would still be in all essential respects as it is now; our year with the
solstices and equinoxes as its cardinal points. The texture of our
poetry might conceivably be the poorer without its star spangles; our
philosophy, for the want of a nebular hypothesis. These would be the
main differences. Yet, to those who indulge in speculative dreaming, how
much smaller life would be with a sun and a moon and a blue beyond for
the only visible, the only thinkable universe. And it is, we repeat,
from the scientific standpoint a mere accident that the present--the
daylight--world periodically opens, as it were, and gives us this
inspiring glimpse of the remoteness of space.

One may imagine countless meteors and comets streaming through the solar
system, unobserved by those who dwelt under such conditions as have just
been suggested, or some huge dark body from the outer depths sweeping
straight at that little visible universe, and all unsuspected by the
inhabitants. One may imagine the scientific people of such a world, calm
in their assurance of the permanence of things, incapable almost of
conceiving any disturbing cause. One may imagine how an imaginative
writer who doubted that permanence would be pooh-poohed. "Cannot we see
to the uttermost limits of space?" they might argue, "and is it not
altogether blue and void?" Then, as the unseen visitor draws near, begin
the most extraordinary perturbations. The two known heavenly bodies
suddenly fail from their accustomed routine. The moon, hitherto
invariably full, changes towards its last quarter--and then, behold! for
the first time the rays of the greater stars visibly pierce the blue
canopy of the sky. How suddenly--painfully almost--the minds of thinking
men would be enlarged when this rash of the stars appeared.

And what then if _our_ heavens were to open? Very thin indeed is the
curtain between us and the unknown. There is a fear of the night that is
begotten of ignorance and superstition, a nightmare fear, the fear of
the impossible; and there is another fear of the night--of the starlit
night--that comes with knowledge, when we see in its true proportion
this little life of ours with all its phantasmal environment of cities
and stores and arsenals, and the habits, prejudices, and promises of
men. Down there in the gaslit street such things are real and solid
enough, the only real things, perhaps; but not up here, not under the
midnight sky. Here for a space, standing silently upon the dim, grey
tower of the old observatory, we may clear our minds of instincts and
illusions, and look out upon the real.

And now to the eastward the stars are no longer innumerable, and the sky