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design any more than can the shapes of the hills and 

 mountains, or Saturn's rings, or Jupiter's moons. 

 The circular forms and orbits of the universe must 

 be the result of the laws of matter and force that 

 prevail in celestial mechanics; this is not a final 

 solution of the riddle, but is as near as we can come 

 to it. One question stands on another question, and 

 that on another, and so on, and the bottom question 

 we can never reach and formulate. The earth rests 

 on nothing and floats as lightly as a feather. All 

 matter is probably only a phase of the ether, but the 

 ether defies all proof and all negation. 



How quickly we get where no step can be taken ! 

 We cannot step off the planet, though we may step 

 off from every object on its surface. There is no heat 

 in sunlight till it reaches the earth ; heat is an experi- 

 ence of our bodies, and beings on the remotest plan- 

 ets, if there are any, may and must receive adequate 

 heat, and beings on Mercury and Venus no more. 

 Terrestrial physics and celestial physics must be the 

 same, and yet celestial mechanics find no place on 

 the surface of our planet. The laws of the cosmos 

 bring to naught our mundane conceptions. Where 

 are up and down, east and west, over and under, out 

 in sidereal space? We balk at perpetual motion, yet 

 in the heavens, and in the interior of matter, behold 

 perpetual motion! Behold motion without friction 

 and energy without waste or dissipation! On the 

 earth every visible body rests on some other body, 



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