As one after another cloud replaces cloud in the skies, so this starry system, the universe, is the successor of countless others that have preceded it--the predecessor of countless others that will follow.

There is an unceasing metamorphosis, a sequence of events, without beginning or end.
If, on physical principles, we account for minor meteorological incidents, mists and clouds, is it not permissible for us to appeal to the same principle in the origin of world-systems and universes, which are only clouds on a space-scale somewhat larger, mists on a time-scale somewhat less transient?
Can any man place the line which bounds the physical on one side, the supernatural on the other?
Do not our estimates of the extent and the duration of things depend altogether on our point of view?
Were we set in the midst of the great nebula of Orion, how transcendently magnificent the scene! The vast transformations, the condensations of a fiery mist into worlds, might seem worthy of the immediate presence, the supervision of God; here, at our distant station, where millions of miles are inappreciable to our eyes, and suns seem no bigger than motes in the air, that nebula is more insignificant than the faintest cloud.

Galileo, in his description of the constellation of Orion, did not think it worth while so much as to mention it.

The most rigorous theologian of those days would have seen nothing to blame in imputing its origin to secondary causes, nothing irreligious in failing to invoke the arbitrary interference of God in its metamorphoses.

If such be the conclusion to which we come respecting it, what would be the conclusion to which an Intelligence seated in it might come respecting us?
It occupies an extent of space millions of times greater than that of our solar system; we are invisible from it, and therefore absolutely insignificant.