A lesson in astronomy

The scholar is a remarkable man. He somehow manages to take the tangled mass of little dots that the heavens are, connect them to each other–the specks so far apart from one another, and so confused and incoherent–and make them into constellations. It is no feat for the faint of heart, this of the scholar.

But someone has to do it, because man sometimes finds delight in looking up at the open night skies with star charts in hand; in looking up and pointing at the stars, in tracing with eager fingers, back and forth through the mess of little dots, the lines so meticulously crafted by the scholar.

If (and only if) he is adept at his scholarly vocations, his constellations will be pretty enough for man to contentedly trace over.