antiquity of the Indian Tables, are beyond all criticism. But the
question has been sufficiently discussed in a passage of _The Exposition
of the System of the World_, on which it would be useless to insist
here. Whatever came from the pen of M. de Laplace was always marked by
the stamp of reason and of evidence. In the first lines of his
magnificent work, after having remarked that "the history of Astronomy
forms an essential part of the history of the human mind," Bailly
observes, "that it is perhaps the true measure of man's intelligence,
and a proof of what he can do with time and genius." I shall allow
myself to add, that no study offers to reflecting minds more striking or
more curious relations.

When by measurements, in which the evidence of the method advances
equally with the precision of the results, the volume of the earth is
reduced to the millionth part of the volume of the sun; when the sun
himself, transported to the region of the stars, takes up a very modest
place among the thousands of millions of those bodies that the telescope
has revealed to us; when the 38,000,000 of leagues which separate the
earth from the sun, have become, by reason of their comparative
smallness, a base totally insufficient for ascertaining the dimensions
of the visible universe; when even the swiftness of the luminous rays
(77,000 leagues per second) barely suffices for the common valuations of
science; when, in short, by a chain of irresistible proofs, certain
stars have retired to distances that light could not traverse in less
than a million of years; we feel as if annihilated by such immensities.
In assigning to man, and to the planet that he inhabits, so small a
position in the material world, Astronomy seems really to have made
progress only to humble us.

But if, on the other hand, we regard the subject from the opposite