Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/280

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
238
THE EVOLUTION OF WORLDS

themselves with retinues unseen, so vast the distances 'twixt us and them.

No less a revelation awaits the opening of the shutters of the mind. If night discloses glimpses of the great beyond, knowledge invests it with a meaning unfolding and extending as acquaintance grows. Sight is human; insight seems divine. To know those points of light for other worlds themselves, worlds the telescope approaches as the years advance, while study reconstructs their past and visions forth their future, is to be made free of the heritage of heaven. Time opens to us as space expands. We stand upon the Earth, but in the sky, a vital portion not only of our globe, but of all of which it, too, forms part. To feel it is to enter upon another life; and if to realization of its beauty, its grandeur, and its sublimity of thought these chapters of its history have proved in any wise the portal, they have not been penned in vain.