Immensity is not in itself a good thing. A living man is worth more than a lifeless galaxy. But immensity has indirect…
Immensity is not in itself a good thing. A living man is worth more than a lifeless galaxy. But immensity has indirect importance through its facilitation of mental richness and diversity. Things are of course only large and small in relation to one another. To say that a cosmos is large is only to say that, in relation to it, some of its constituents are small. To say that its career is long is merely to say that many happenings are contained within it. But though the spatial and temporal immensity of a cosmos have no intrinsic merit, they are the ground for psychical luxuriance, which we value. Physical immensity opens up the possibility of vast physical complexity, and this offers scope for complex minded organisms. This is at any rate true of a cosmos like ours in which mind is conditioned by the physical.
Olaf Stapledon, A Note on Magnitude, Star Maker