Pagina:Scientia - Vol. VIII.djvu/48

40 scientia

but it is none the less important to have discovered this relation between the two phenomena.

In a description of a branch of investigation which is yet barely five years old, there may well be much that future researches will revise, or at least present in a different light. In certain details discrepancies occur between the results of different investigations, which may be due to defective data, but which may on the other hand point to complications in the phenomena, which have not yet been grasped But at least we may believe that a first approximation has been reached; and the recognition that the stars distributed throughout vast regions show common tendencies and associations is a remarkable advance in knowledge. We recognise organisation beyond the limits of the single star and beyond the clusters of associated stars. A tie which points to some community of origin or experience prevails to the farthest limits discoverable. The new theory may indeed divide the universe in two, but it unites the individual stars in a way hardly dreamed of hitherto.

Greenwich, Royal Observatory.

A. Stanley Eddington