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Our knowledge of the structural facts of the universe can never be made exhaustive; in the middle of the eighteenth century, before Herschel had opened his sidereal campaign, it was barely elementary. Wright and Lambert were accordingly on a stint of material—they had to make bricks with very little straw. Yet they did their best with what was at hand. Both paid profound attention to the stellar heavens; they earnestly sought the true interpretation of the appearances presented by them, holding it possible, as we, despite accumulating difficulties, still do, to harmonize countless detached phenomena in one vast synthetic plan.

It was this purpose of fidelity to Nature which gave value to their work, and made it a new thing in cosmological history. This alone lent it impulsive force, and caused the meditations of two lonely thinkers to become effective in stimulating fresh attempts, favoured by improved conditions, to comprehend what actually exists, and to infer thence, with rational confidence, its sources in the vague but undeniable past.