It is a striking example of how easily we may fail to realize our
knowledge when I say that I have thought many a time how
deliciously one might pass those hundred millions of years in a
journey to the star a Lyrae, without its occurring to me that we
are actually making that very journey at a speed compared with
which the motion of a steamship is slow indeed. Through every
year, every hour, every minute, of human history from the first
appearance of man on the earth, from the era of the builders of
the Pyramids, through the times of Caesar and Hannibal, through
the period of every event that history records, not merely our
earth, but the sun and the whole solar system with it, have been
speeding their way towards the star of which I speak on a journey
of which we know neither the beginning nor the end. We are at this
moment thousands of miles nearer to a Lyrae than we were a few
minutes ago when I began this discourse, and through every future
moment, for untold thousands of years to come, the earth and all
there is on it will be nearer to a Lyrae, or nearer to the place
where that star now is, by hundreds of miles for every minute of
time come and gone. When shall we get there? Probably in less than
a million years, perhaps in half a million.
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