Having, then, discovered that the universe is a thing _contained_ in something indefinitely greater than itself; having looked out of its windows and found only the gloom of starless night outside—what conclusions are we to draw concerning the beyond? It _seems_ as empty as a vacuum, but is it really so? If it be, then our universe is a single atom astray in the infinite; it is the only island in an ocean without shores; it is the one oasis in an illimitable desert. Then the Milky Way, with its wide-flung garland of stars, is afloat like a tiny smoke-wreath amid a horror of immeasurable vacancy, or it is an evanescent and solitary ring of sparkling froth cast up for a moment on the viewless billows of immensity. From such conclusions the mind instinctively shrinks. It prefers to think that there is _something_ beyond, though we cannot see it. Even the universe could not bear to be alone—a Crusoe lost in the Cosmos! As the inhabitants of the most elegant château, with its gardens, parks, and crowds of attendants, would die of loneliness if they did not know that they have neighbors, though not seen, and that a living world of indefinite extent surrounds them, so we, when we perceive that the universe has limits, wish to feel that it is not solitary; that beyond the hedges and the hills there are other centers of life and activity. Could anything be more terrible than the thought of an _isolated universe?_ The greater the being, the greater the aversion to seclusion. Only the infinite satisfies; in that alone the mind finds rest.