12. But indeed, if we consider this process, of the resolution of nebulæ into luminous points, on its own ground, without looking to such facts as I have just adduced, it will be difficult, or impossible, to assign any reason why it should lead to such inferences as have been drawn from it. Let us look at this matter more clearly. An astronomer, armed with a powerful telescope, _resolves_ a nebula, discerns that a luminous cloud is composed of shining dots:--but what are these dots? Into _what_ does he resolve the nebula? Into _Stars_, it is commonly said. Let us not wrangle about words. By all means let these dots be Stars, if we know about what we are speaking: if a _Star_ merely mean a luminous dot in the sky. But that these stars shall resemble, in their nature, stars of the first magnitude, and that such stars shall resemble our Sun, are surely very bold structures of assumption to build on such a basis. Some nebulæ are resolvable; are resolvable into distinct points; certainly a very curious, probably an important discovery. We may hereafter learn that _all_ nebulæ are resolvable into distinct points: that would be a still more curious discovery. But what would it amount to? What would be the simple way of expressing it, without hypothesis, and without assumption? Plainly this: that the substance of all nebulæ is not continuous, but discrete;--separable, and separate into distinct luminous elements;--nebulæ are, it would then seem, as it were, of a curdled or granulated texture; they have run into _lumps_ of light, or have been formed originally of such lumps. Highly curious. But what are these lumps? How large are they? At what distances? Of what structure? Of what use? It would seem that he must be a bold man who undertakes to answer these questions. Certainly he must appear to ordinary thinkers to be _very_ bold, who, in reply, says, gravely and confidently, as if he had unquestionable authority for his teaching:--"These lumps, O man, are Suns; they are distant from each other as far as the Dog-star is from us; each has its system of Planets, which revolve around it; and each of these Planets is the seat of an animal and vegetable creation. Among these Planets, some, we do not yet know how many, are occupied by rational and responsible creatures, like Man; and the only matter which perplexes us, holding this belief on astronomical grounds, is, that we do not quite see how to put our theology into its due place and form in our system."