We may, however, replace these purely negative considerations by inquiring how much light we actually get from the invisible stars of our system. Here we can make a definite statement. Mark out a small circle in the sky 1 degree in diameter. The quantity of light which we receive on a cloudless and moonless night from the sky within this circle admits of actual determination. From the measures so far available it would seem that, in the general average, this quantity of light is not very different from that of a star of the fifth magnitude. This is something very different from a blaze of light. A star of the fifth magnitude is scarcely more than plainly visible to ordinary vision. The area of the whole sky is, in round numbers, about 50,000 times that of the circle we have described. It follows that the total quantity of light which we receive from all the stars is about equal to that of 50,000 stars of the fifth magnitude--somewhat more than 1000 of the first magnitude. This whole amount of light would have to be multiplied by 90,000,000 to make a light equal to that of the sun. It is, therefore, not at all necessary to consider how far the system must extend in order that the heavens should blaze like the sun. Adopting Lord Kelvin's hypothesis, we shall find that, in order that we may receive from the stars the amount of light we have designated, this system need not extend beyond some 5000 light-years. But this hypothesis probably overestimates the thickness of the stars in space. It does not seem probable that there are as many as 1,000,000,000 stars within the sphere of 3300 light-years. Nor is it at all certain that the light of the average star is equal to that of the sun. It is impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to assign any definite value to this average. To do so is a problem similar to that of assigning an average weight to each component of the animal creation, from the microscopic insects which destroy our plants up to the elephant. What we can say with a fair approximation to confidence is that, if we could fly out in any direction to a distance of 20,000, perhaps even of 10,000, light-years, we should find that we had left a large fraction of our system behind us. We should see its boundary in the direction in which we had travelled much more certainly than we see it from our stand-point.