Cosmism and "Cosmic Loneliness".

Bertrand Russell describes philosophy as a means of alleviating "cosmic loneliness" in his _History of Western Philosophy_.  Indeed this cosmic loneliness was long revealed to man from his earliest existence in the wild of brute savagery.  It was long recognized that it was impossible to leave the earth, and until the voyages of Columbus and the explorers it was even believed that nothing existed beyong the oceans.  Pascal was horrified by the thought of wide open spaces filled with the void and thus sought solace in religion and mysticism.  Modern thought sees little hope for alleviating man's cosmic loneliness as revealed by his place in the universe.