Not only are these four propositions each supported by converging lines of evidence, including some which I believe have not before been adduced in their support, but a number of astronomers, admittedly of the first rank, have arrived at the same conclusions as to the bearing of the evidence, and have expressed their convictions in the clearest manner, as quoted by me. It is _their_ conclusions which I appeal to and adopt; yet my two chief astronomical critics positively deny that there is any valid evidence of the finiteness of the stellar universe, which one of them terms 'a myth,' and he even accuses _me_ of having started it. Both of them, however, agree in stating very strongly one objection to my main thesis--that our central position (not necessarily at the precise centre) in the stellar universe has a meaning and a purpose, in connection with the development of life and of man upon this earth, and, _so far as we know_, here only. With this one objection, the only one that in my opinion has the slightest weight, I will now proceed to deal. THE SUN'S MOTION THROUGH SPACE The two astronomers who did me the honour to criticise my original article laid the greatest stress on the fact, that even if I had proved that the sun now occupied a nearly central position in the great star-system, it was really of no importance whatever, because, at the rate the sun was travelling, 'five million years ago we were deep in the actual stream of the Milky Way; five million years hence we shall have completely crossed the gulf which it encircles, and again be a member of one of its constituent groups, but on the opposite side. And ten million years are regarded by geologists and biologists as but a trifle on account to meet their demands upon the bank of Time.' Thus speaks one of my critics. The other is equally crushing. He says:--'If there is a centre to the visible universe, and if we occupy it to-day, we certainly did not do so yesterday, and shall not do so to-morrow. The Solar System is known to be moving among the stars with a velocity which would carry us to Sirius within 100,000 years, if we happened to be travelling in his direction, as we are not. In the 50 or 100 million years during which, according to geologists, this earth has been a habitable globe, we must have passed by thousands of stars on the right hand and on the left.... In his eagerness to limit the universe in space, Dr. Wallace has surely forgotten that it is equally important, for his purpose, to limit it in time; but incomparably more difficult in the face of ascertained facts.... Indeed, so far from our having tranquilly enjoyed a central position in unbroken continuity for scores or perhaps hundreds of millions of years, we should in that time have traversed the universe from boundary to boundary.'[8]