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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
[907] While progress in all branches of knowledge has been rapid beyond precedent during the past sixty years, in at least two directions this knowledge has been so unexpected and novel in character that two new sciences may be said to have arisen: the new medicine, with which the names of Lister and of Pasteur will remain associated; and the new astronomy, of the birth and early growth of which I have now to speak.
The new astronomy, unlike the old astronomy to which we are indebted for skill in the navigation of the seas, the calculation of the tides, and the daily regulation of time, can lay no claim to afford us material help in the routine of daily life. Her sphere lies outside the earth. Is she less fair? Shall we pay her less court because it is to mental culture in its highest form, to our purely intellectual joys that she contributes? For surely in no part of Nature are the noblest and most profound conceptions of the human spirit more directly called forth than in the study of the heavens and the host thereof.
That with the glorie of so goodly sight
The hearts of men …
… may lift themselves up hyer.
May we not rather greet her in the words of Horace: ‘O matre pulchra filia pulchrior’?
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