When I call him my friend, I do not
mean that we ever hobnobbed together. But if we are in sympathy,
what matters it that he was dead long before I was born, that he
lived in one century and I in another? Such differences of
generation count for little in the brotherhood of astronomy, the
work of whose members so extends through all time that one might
well forget that he belongs to one century or to another.
Father Hell was an astronomer. Ask not whether he was a very great
one, for in our science we have no infallible gauge by which we
try men and measure their stature. He was a lover of science and
an indefatigable worker, and he did what in him lay to advance our
knowledge of the stars. Let that suffice. I love to fancy that in
some other sphere, either within this universe of ours or outside
of it, all who have successfully done this may some time gather
and exchange greetings. Should this come about there will be a
few--Hipparchus and Ptolemy, Copernicus and Newton, Galileo and
Herschel--to be surrounded by admiring crowds. But these men will
have as warm a grasp and as kind a word for the humblest of their
followers, who has merely discovered a comet or catalogued a
nebula, as for the more brilliant of their brethren.
Pages:
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307