She said that she saw a bright star, though it only seemed a point of light now as before.
‘That’s because it is so distant that no magnifying will bring its size up to zero. Though called a fixed star, it is, like all fixed stars, moving with inconceivable velocity; but no magnifying will show that velocity as anything but rest.’
And thus they talked on about Sirius, and then about other stars
. . . in the scrowl
Of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl,
With which, like Indian plantations,
The learned stock the constellations,
till he asked her how many stars she thought were visible to them at that moment.
She looked around over the magnificent stretch of sky that their high position unfolded. ‘Oh, thousands, hundreds of thousands,’ she said absently.
‘No. There are only about three thousand. Now, how many do you think are brought within sight by the help of a powerful telescope?’
‘I won’t guess.’
‘Twenty millions. So that, whatever the stars were made for, they were not made to please our eyes. It is just the same in everything; nothing is made for man.’
‘Is it that notion which makes you so sad for your age?’ she asked, with almost maternal solicitude. ‘I think astronomy is a bad study for you. It makes you feel human insignificance too plainly.’