1G2 ASTRONOMICAL HISTORY. 



respecting the heavenly bodies, has no solidity ; and since 

 this has been always laid down by us as a sacred and in 

 variable rule, that all must abide the new award of a legiti 

 mate induction ; and since, if perchance some questions are 

 left behind us untouched, so much the less industry and 

 pains will be exerted in collecting the facts upon them, in 

 consequence of its appearing superfluous to inquire into 

 points on which no question has ever been moved : we hold 

 it necessary to take in hand all questions which the uni 

 verse may any where offer to our consideration. Besides, 

 in proportion as we are less assured of our ability to deter 

 mine questions by the method we pursue, so much the 

 more confidently do we entertain them. For we see how 

 all must end. 



The first question, then, is, whether there be a system, 

 that is, whether the world, or universal frame of things, be 

 a spherical whole, possessing a centre ? or rather, whether 

 the single globes of the earth and stars are placed in dis 

 persion, and each attached, as it were, by its own root, 

 without a common middle point or centre ? The school of 

 Democritus and Epicurus, it is true, made a boast that their 

 authors had &quot; broken down the walls of the world.&quot; Yet 

 that, certainly, is not a consequence of the tenets maintained 

 by them. For Democritus having laid down his notion of 

 matter, or seminal atoms, infinite in number, limited in 

 their properties and powers, atoms in agitation, and from 

 eternity unfixed in any possible structure or position, was 

 not led, in virtue of that opinion, to maintain the exist 

 ence of a number of worlds, distinguished by variety of 

 form, subject to birth and dissolution, some better con 

 structed, some more loosely coherent, also of embryo worlds, 

 and agglomerations formed between world and world. 

 But, were all this assumed, it hinders not that the por 

 tion of matter which has been assigned to the structure of 

 this our world, lying, as it does, under our own observa 

 tion, should possess a spherical figure. For, necessarily, 

 each of those worlds must have taken some configuration. 

 For allowing that in infinity there can be no central point, 

 yet in the parts of that infinity there may exist a spherical 

 figure, no less in a world, than in a mortar. Democritus, how 

 ever, excelled only as an analyser of the world : in dealing 

 with its aggregates and totality, he was inferior even to or 

 dinary philosophers. The opinion of which we are now to 

 speak, which really destroyed and exploded the notion of a 

 system, was that of Heraclides of Pontus, Ecphantus and 



