The fact of the cosmical arrangements being an effect of natural law, is a powerful argument for the organic arrangements being so likewise, for how … - Robert Chambers

The whole history of lamentation, and mourning, and woe, from the beginning of the world—the funeral ceremonies in which the living symbolize the intensity of their grief—the monuments they rear to tell the world for centuries to come of the calamity they have suffered from the stroke of death—are enduring attestations that it is not so much in the removal of one sentient and living being off the earth, as in the change—the calamitous change to the survivors—that death is truly the King of Terrors.

My sincere desire in the composition of the book was to give the true view of the history of nature, with as little disturbance as possible to existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious.

It was first surmised by the ancient philosopher, Democritus, that the faintly white zone which spans the sky under the name of the Milky Way, might be only a dense collection of stars too remote to be distinguished. This conjecture has been verified by the instruments of modern astronomers.