They carry farther on the bounds of humanity. The
stars are the eternal monitions of spirituality. Who can estimate how
much man's thoughts have been colored by these golden kindred? It seems
as though it were but required to show man space,--space, space,
space,--there is that in him will fill and pass it. There is that in
the celestial prodigies--in gulfs of Time and Space--that seems to mate
the greed of the soul. There is that greed in the soul to pass through
worlds and ages,--through growths, griefs, desires, processes,
spheres,--to travel the endless highways,--to pass and resume again. O
Heavens, you are but a splendid fable of the elder mind! Centripetal
and centrifugal are in man, too, and primarily; and an aspiring soul
will ascend into the sweeps and circles, and pass swift and devouring
through baffling intervals and steep-down strata of galaxies and stars.
The thought that overarches the centuries with firmamental sweep is the
thought of the Ensemble. To this all has led along,--but the
disclosures of Astronomy especially. The discovery of the earth's
revolution, at once transporting the stars to distances outside of all
telluric connection, broke the old spell, and replaced the petty
provincialism of the earth as the All-Centre by the vast, sublime
conception of the Universe.
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