XV + 

The most brilliant stars have never been those at which I look with most pleasure. My favourite stars have always been those which look like the minutest and faintest dots in the depths of the sky. And this is easily accounted for: by compelling my imagination to travel as far beyond their sphere as my vision does from this to reach them, I can, with very little effort, transport myself to distant regions, to which few travellers before me have ever attained, and then I marvel that I am still only on the threshold of this immense universe. For it would be absurd to think that there is anywhere a barrier beyond which void commences; as if it were easier to imagine nonexistence than existence! + 

After the last star I can still imagine another one, which itself cannot be the last. In assigning bounds to creation, be they ever so extended, the universe appears to me but as a point of light compared with the immensity of empty space which surrounds it⁠—the dreadful and sombre void, in the middle of which it would seem to be suspended like a solitary lamp. Here I covered my eyes with both my hands to remove every kind of distraction and to give my ideas the depth which such a subject demands, and, making a supreme mental effort, I constructed the most complete system of the universe that has yet been propounded. Behold it in all its details; it is the result of my lifelong meditations! I believe that space being⁠ ⁠… But this deserves a chapter to itself, and, considering the importance of the matter, it shall be the only one in my journey which shall have a heading. + 