But, rejoined she, you are making the universe so unbounded that I feel lost in it; I don't know where I am, not what I'm about. What! are they all vortices heaped in confusion on one another? Is every fixed star the centre of a vortex, as large perhaps as ours?[50] The amazing space comprehending our sun and planets is but a little portion of the universe? An equal space, occupied by each of these vortices? The thought is fearful; overwhelming! For my part, said I, I think it very pleasing. Were the sky only a blue arch to which the stars were fixed, the universe would seem narrow and confined; there would not be room to breathe: now that we attribute an infinitely greater extent and depth to this blue firmament, by dividing it into thousands of vortices, I seem to be more at liberty; to live in a freer air; and nature appears with astonishingly encreased magnificence. Creation is boundless in treasures; lavish in endowments. How grand the idea of this immense number of vortices, the middle of each occupied by a sun, encompassed with planets which turn around him! The inhabitants of one of these numberless vortices, on every side behold the suns of surrounding vortices, although the planets belonging to them are invisible, as the light they receive from their suns cannot penetrate beyond their own vortex. [Footnote 50: That may be the case, but we have no proof that there are planets turning round these stars.] You are directing my eye, answered she, to an interminable perspective. I see, plainly enough, the inhabitants of the earth; then you enable me to discover, with somewhat less clearness, those of the moon and other planets contained in our vortex. After all that you require me to view the people that dwell in planets belonging to other vortices. I must confess they are so much in the back ground that with all my efforts they are scarcely perceptible to me. In short do they not seem almost annihilated by the very expression you are obliged to make use of in describing them? You must call them the inhabitants of one of the planets, contained in one, out of the infinity of vortices. Surely the very idea of ourselves is as nothing when such a description is applied to us, when we are thus lost amongst millions of worlds. For my part, the earth begins to diminish into such a speck, that in future I shall hardly consider any object worthy of eager pursuit. Surely people, who form unnumbered schemes of aggrandizement, who are wearing themselves out in following up projects of ambition, are ignorant of the vortices. I think my augmentation of knowledge will encrease my idleness, and when I am reproached for being indolent I shall reply, _Ah! if you knew the history of the fixed stars!_ Alexander could not have been acquainted with it, answered I; for a certain author, who believes that the moon is inhabited, tells us very seriously that it was impossible for Aristotle to avoid receiving so rational an opinion, (could