two hundred miles a second. Such a speed would carry us across the
Atlantic while we were reading two or three of these sentences.
These motions take place some in one direction and some in
another. Some of the stars are coming almost straight towards us.
Should they reach us, and pass through our solar system, the
result would be destructive to our earth, and perhaps to our sun.

Are we in any danger? No, because, however madly they may come,
whether ten, twenty, or one hundred miles per second, so many
millions of years must elapse before they reach us that we need
give ourselves no concern in the matter. Probably none of them are
coming straight to us; their course deviates just a hair's-breadth
from our system, but that hair's-breadth is so large a quantity
that when the millions of years elapse their course will lie on
one side or the other of our system and they will do no harm to
our planet; just as a bullet fired at an insect a mile away would
be nearly sure to miss it in one direction or the other.

Our instrument makers have constructed telescopes more and more
powerful, and with these the whole number of stars visible is
carried up into the millions, say perhaps to fifty or one hundred
millions. For aught we know every one of those stars may have
planets like our own circling round it, and these planets may be
inhabited by beings equal to ourselves. To suppose that our globe
is the only one thus inhabited is something so unlikely that no
one could expect it. It would be very nice to know something about
the people who may inhabit these bodies, but we must await our
translation to another sphere before we can know anything on the
subject. Meanwhile, we have gained what is of more value than gold
or silver; we have learned that creation transcends all our