| | 1 | Author: | Lowell, Percival | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Mars / Lowell, Percival  | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | AMID the seemingly countless stars that on a clear night
spangle the vast dome overhead, there appeared last autumn to be a
new-comer, a very large and ruddy one, that rose at sunset through
the haze about the eastern horizon. That star was the planet Mars,
so conspicuous when in such position as often to be taken for a
portent. Large as he then looked, however, he is in truth but a
secondary planet traveling round a secondary sun; but his interest
for us is out of all proportion to his actual size or his relative
importance in the cosmos. For that sun is our own; and that planet
is, with the exception of the moon, our next to nearest neighbor in
space, Venus alone ever approaching us closer. From him,
therefore, of all the heavenly bodies, may we expect first to learn
something beyond celestial mechanics, beyond even celestial
chemistry; something in answer to the mute query that man
instinctively makes as he gazes at the stars, whether there be life
in worlds other than his own. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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