The aspect of the starry heavens presents us with the spectacle of that
which is only apparently simultaneous, and however much we may endeavor, by
the aid of optical instruments, to bring the mildly-radiant vapor of
nebulous masses or the faintly-glimmering starry clusters nearer, and
diminish the thousands of years interposed between us and them, that serve
as a criterion of their distance, it still remains more than probable, from
the knowledge we possess of the velocity of the transmission of luminous
rays, that the light of remote heavenly bodies presents us with the most
ancient perceptible evidence of the existence of matter. It is thus that
the reflective mind of man is led from simple premises to rise to those
exalted heights of nature, where in the light-illumined realms of space,
"myriads of worlds are bursting into life like the grass of the night."*
[fotnote] *From my brother's beautiful sonnet "Freiheit und Gesetz."
(Wilhelm von Humboldt, 'Gesammelte Werke', bd. iv., s. 358, No. 25.)
From the regions of celestial forms, the domain of Uranus, we will now
descend to the more contracted sphere of terrestrial forces -- to the
interior of the Earth itself. A mysterious chain links together both
classes of phenomena.
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