52 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. Vlii. 



certainty of these motions and the stability and unchangeable- 

 ness of the orbits of the heavenly bodies. These were held in 

 their unerring rounds in a way mysterious to them, each in its 

 own zone, beyond which it could not vary. The nature of the 

 supporting power was guessed at in the books passing under the 

 name of Hermes Trismegistus, where the stars are represented as 

 moving in a stable extension of space, in spheres of motion fixed 

 by the opposition of two forces. These books of Hermes are the 

 product of Alexandrian philosophy, and contain many such in- 

 timations that our discoveries of modern times were more than 

 guessed at by the philosophy of old days. These fixed zones of 

 motion are clearly indicated in the dream of Scipio, at the end 

 of Cicero's treatise on the commonwealth, and more clearly in the 

 commentary of Macrobius upon this dream, four centuries later. 

 No notion of solidity or hardness was entertained. Scipio passes 

 through the clouds and the air, from sphere to sphere, and looks 

 down upon the earth from the most distant. The idea of law 

 is always present, and the Greek word stereoma simply expresses 

 this idea of fixity and stability in the heavens, and is the Greek 

 scientific gloss upon the Hebrew word expansion. 



The word stereoma occurs but once in the New Testament, at 

 Col. ii, 5, where it means steadfastness or firmness of mind. It 

 is used elsewhere to express that which makes strong or firm. 

 So Aristotle calls the skeleton the stereoma of the body, and 

 Theophrastus uses the same word for the keel of a ship, which 

 supports the timbers. It also means that which has been made 

 firm or solid, and hence also its secondary meaning of a solid 

 cubic body. This last cannot be the meaning here, for in 

 this " stereoma" the birds are represented as flying, and the 

 planets as moving. To suppose that a solid body, dense, accord- 

 ing to the usual idea of a cube, stretching from the sea beyond 

 the stars, as being indicated by the word, is a manifest absurdity. 

 Moreover, the word stereoma is a verbal noun, and the verb is 

 derived from a root signifying to place or stand — hence the verb 

 itself always signifies to confirm, establish, or settle, not to make 

 physically solid. It is so used in Isaiah xlii, 5, where God is 

 said to establish the earth and all things which are therein. 



The Latin word Jirmamentum, the equivalent of stereoma, 

 is always used in the sense of a stay or support, to make strong. 

 So Caesar uses it for a cross stay of wood to tie together two 

 props supporting a leaning wall. Livy uses it of a detachment 



