[Footnote B: Light Science for Leisure Hours, Proctor, pp. 42-52.]
[Footnote C: The Problems of Astronomy, S. Newcomb, Science, May 21, 1897.]
[Sidenote: The solar system is only one of many.]
Sir Robert Ball expresses his views as follows: "The group to which our sun belongs is a limited one. This must be so, even though the group included all the stars in the milky way. This unnumbered host is still only a cluster, occupying, comparatively speaking, an expressibly small extent in the ocean of infinite space. The imagination will carry us further still—it will show us that our star cluster may be but a unit in a cluster of an order still higher, so that a yet higher possibility of movement is suggested for our astonishment."[A]
[Footnote A: The Story of the Sun, R. S. Ball, pp. 360, 361.]
Another eminent astronomer expresses the same idea briefly but eloquently: "It is true that from the highest point of view the sun is only one of a multitude—a single star among millions—thousands of which, most likely, exceed him in brightness, magnitude and power. He is only a private in the host of heaven."[A]
[Footnote A: The Sun, C. A. Young, p. 11.]
And still another student of the stars propounds the following questions: "Does there exist a central sun of the universe? Do the worlds of Infinitude gravitate as a hierarchy round a divine focus? Some day the astronomers of the planets which gravitate in the light of Hercules (towards which constellation the solar system is moving) will see a little star appear in their sky. This will be our sun, carrying us along in its rays; perhaps at this very moment we are visible dust of a sidereal hurricane, in a milky way, the transformer of our destinies. We are mere playthings in the immensity of Infinitude."[A]
[Footnote A: Popular Astronomy, C. Flammarion, p. 309.]
[Sidenote: Scientists believe that heavenly bodies are inhabited by living, thinking beings.]