Dreams of an astronomer

John Stuart Mill · en
Thus, from that point of space and time where we were placed in that
celestial region of the constellation of Andromeda, we have seen arise
before us, like a mummy awakening from a long sleep, the history of
the dead Earth, while we saw life shaping itself in a world which, in
our twentieth century, was not yet in existence. Thence, reascending
through the ages, we watched the slow secular evolution of our
humanity, until sunlit days became night and we lived in a new present
which, in its turn, seemed unique and eternal.

The world to come is there, in the future eternity, just as the world
of long ago is there, in the eternity of the past, and all is present
in the Absolute.

God does not look either forward or backward. He does not remember,
he does not foresee: he sees. We can write our verbs in the different
times, past, present, and future. In transporting ourselves by means
of thought beyond even the distant era of which we have sketched an
episode, we could describe even this episode as an ancient event.

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The history which we have written took place--a hundred million years
after to-day!




                             IV. VENUS THE
                               BEAUTIFUL




                              CHAPTER IV

                          VENUS THE BEAUTIFUL

             Eσπερος ος кἀλλιστος έν ούρανω ιρταται ἁστηρ.
            (Hesperus, most beautiful of stars in the sky.)

                                                        HOMER, _Iliad_.


IT was Homer who, 3,000 years ago, saluted Venus as the most beautiful
of stars. Who has not been struck with her wonderful brilliance? Who
can refrain, when she shines so marvellously in the heavens, from
greeting her as the brightest of the stars and asking what mysteries
are hidden in that light?

This radiant star of eve has been the first to be noticed since the
earliest ages; it is the only planet mentioned by Homer; Isaiah
celebrated her splendour under the name of Lucifer; at the time of
the pyramids the Egyptians called her “the celestial bird of morn and
eventide;” thirty-five centuries ago the Babylonians observed one of
its transits across the sun; the Indians called her “the brilliant,”
and the Arabs “Zorah, the splendour of the sky.” From the earliest days
of the world she was the goddess of beauty and love. Let us raise our
eyes to the heavens to-night: there is the star chanted by Homer and
Virgil.

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