EYE THAT DIRECTS A NEEDLE

Maria Mitchell was
one of America's first professional astronomers, and she came to international
fame with her discovery of new comet in 1847. She was one of the
original members of the faculty of Vassar College, which was founded in
1864. Her journals and letters are filled with writings about science and education,
and her writing is often poetical and vivid. The Eye that Directs a
Needle is a setting of the following excerpt from her journal:
"Dec. 26, 1854. They
were wonderful men, the early astronomers. That was a great conception,
which now seems to us so simple, that the earth turns upon its axis, and a
still greater one that it revolves about the sun (to show this last was worth a
man's lifetime, and it really almost cost the life of Galileo). Somehow we are
ready to think that they had a wider field than we for speculation, that truth
being all unknown it was easier to take the first step in its paths. But is the region of
truth limited? Is it not infinite?...
We know a few things which were once hidden, and being known they seem easy;
but there are the flashings of the
Northern Lights; there is the conical zodiacal beam seen so beautifully in the
early evenings of spring and the early mornings of autumn; there are the
startling comets, whose use is all unknown; there are the brightening and flickering variable
stars, whose cause is all unknown; and the meteoric showers--and for all of
these the reasons are as clear as for the succession of day and night; they lie
just beyond the daily mist of our minds, but our eyes have not yet pierced
through it."

- from the
journal of Maria Mitchell (1818-1889)

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