The greatest and grandest truth in astronomy, is the motion of the solar system, advancing with all the planets and satellites in the heavens, at the rate of fifty-seven miles a second, round some distant invisible body, in an orbit of such inconceivable dimensions, that millions of years may be required for a single orbit. When we consider that this centre must be a sun with attendant planets like our own, revolving in like manner round our sun, [?] or round their common centre of gravity, the mind rejects, almost with indignation, the ignoble sentiment that Man is the only being performing this immeasurable journey—and that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, with their bright array of regal train-bearers, are but as colossal blocks of lifeless clay, encumbering the Earth as a drag, and mocking the creative majesty of Heaven. From the birth of man _to the extinction of his race_ [!] the system to which he belongs will have described but an infinitesimal arc in that grand cosmical orbit in which it is destined to move. This affords a new argument for the plurality of worlds. Since every fixed star must have planets, the fact of our system revolving round a similar system of planets, furnishes a new argument from analogy; for as there is at least one inhabited planet in the one system, there must for the same reason be one in the other, and consequently as many as there are systems in the Universe.[107] Thus our system is not absolutely fixed in space, but is connected with the other systems in the Universe. The Fixed Stars are suns of other systems, whose planets are invisible from their distance, as are ours from the nearest fixed star. Every _single_ star shining by its own native light is the centre of a planetary system like our own—the lamp that lights, the stove that heats, and the power that guides in their orbits, inhabited worlds like our own. Many are _double_, with a system of planets round each, or the centre of gravity of both. No one can believe that two suns would be placed in the heavens, for no other purpose than to revolve round their common centre of gravity. It is “highly probable,” that our Sun is one of a binary system, and has at present an unseen partner; and we are “entitled to conclude” that all the other binary systems have at least an inhabited planet: wherever there is a self-luminous fixed or movable Sun there must be a planetary system; and wherever there is a planetary system, there must be life and intelligence.[108]