We have mapped out our solar system with great precision.
But how with that great universe of millions of stars in which our
solar system is only a speck of star-dust, a speck which a
traveller through the wilds of space might pass a hundred times
without notice? We have learned much about this universe, though
our knowledge of it is still dim. We see it as a traveller on a
mountain-top sees a distant city in a cloud of mist, by a few
specks of glimmering light from steeples or roofs. We want to know
more about it, its origin and its destiny; its limits in time and
space, if it has any; what function it serves in the universal
economy. The journey is long, yet we want, in knowledge at least,
to make it. Hence we build observatories and train observers and
investigators. Slow, indeed, is progress in the solution of the
greatest of problems, when measured by what we want to know. Some
questions may require centuries, others thousands of years for
their answer. And yet never was progress more rapid than during
our time. In some directions our astronomers of to-day are out of
sight of those of fifty years ago; we are even gaining heights
which twenty years ago looked hopeless. Never before had the
astronomer so much work--good, hard, yet hopeful work--before him
as to-day.
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