That is indisputable, I replied. Our sun is so near to us in comparison of the suns belonging to other vortices that his light must be incomparably stronger to us than to them. When he is risen we can discern no other heavenly body: so, in another vortex, another sun eclipses ours, and permits it to appear only at night, with all the other suns, then visible. With them, fixed to the blue firmament, our sun forms a part of some imaginary figure. As to the planets that go round him, as they are not seen at so great a distance, they are not so much as thought of. Thus all the suns are daily luminaries to their own vortex, and nightly ones to all the other vortices. Each reigns alone in his own system; elsewhere, is but one of a great number. Nevertheless, do not these worlds differ from each other in a thousand instances, notwithstanding this equality? for a general resemblance does not exclude a vast number of dissimilarities. Surely, answered I: but the difficulty is to find them out. For ought we know one vortex may have more planets revolving round its sun, another fewer. In one there are subaltern planets, turning round the principal planets; in another they may be all alike. Here they all collect round their sun in a circle, beyond which is an empty space which extends to the neighbouring vortices; in other parts of the universe they may have their orbits at the extremities of their vortex whilst the centre is left empty. And very likely there are some vortices without any planets; others, whose suns, not being in the centre, have a circular revolution, carrying their planets along with them; others, again, whose planets may rise and set with regard to their sun according to the change of that equilibrium which keeps them suspended--What would you have more? Surely here is enough for a person who has never been beyond one vortex. All that is nothing, she replied, for the number of worlds. What you have been imagining would suffice but for five or six, instead of millions. If you talk of millions now, said I, how will you count them when I tell you there are many more fixed stars than you discover; that with telescopes an endless number are seen which are invisible to the naked eye; and that in a single constellation, where we might before have counted a dozen or fifteen, there have been found as many as we were accustomed to observe throughout the heavens?[51] [Footnote 51: I conclude, from a pretty accurate calculation, that we may perceive a hundred millions with a telescope that has an opening of four feet; I have clearly distinguished fifty thousand, and my glass is but two inches and a half in diameter.]