ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



is only by detachment from it that bodies have 

 weight. As we approach the center, a pound would 

 be less and less; halfway down it would weigh eight 

 ounces only; at the center weight would disappear, 

 the pull of matter on all sides would be equal, there 

 would no longer be up or down. Gravitation is not a 

 demon at the center of the earth, pulling all things 

 toward him; it is a force in every atom, pulling and 

 being pulled in every direction. Seek the center of 

 the pulling, and all power vanishes. 



The globe is on such a scale of size with reference 

 to our lives and powers that by no effort of the imag- 

 ination can we adjust ourselves to the contradic- 

 tions presented. It is not by experience, nor by living 

 and acting, that we know it as a sphere, but by 

 thinking and speculating. Even if we travel round 

 it, we get no other impression than that it is an end- 

 less plain. We find no under side; it is all top side. 

 The practical inferences we draw from looking at 

 the moon are all contradicted by our experiences 

 here. The lower limb of the moon is not lower, as we 

 should find if we were to go there, and the under 

 side of the earth is also the upper side. 



Our astronomy is sound, but our actual life gives 

 us no clue to its truths. Only when we turn philoso- 

 phers do we know the tremendous voyage we are 

 making, and then we only know it abstractly. We 

 never can know it concretely. The swift turning of 

 the planet under our feet, and its enormous speed in 



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