"... A general persuasion that through all the deep of space, no life existed beyond the petty surface of our minute sphere. Now we see further. Dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of life spreading slowly from this little seedbed of the solar system throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. Strange when i recall the time when I first saw it bright, clean cut, hard, and silent, under the dawn of that last... great day. "