ASTRONOMICAL HISTORY. 



and recoils, should take place in these bodies, and that 

 from these should arise the condensations and rarefac 

 tions of substance which prognosticate and breed produc 

 tions and alterations. But since from physical considera 

 tions, and, moreover, from the phenomena themselves, it 

 will hold that this latter position is the truth, and that the 

 former fictions of astronomers, if any one looks at them 

 soberly, in reality mock nature, and are found empty of 

 facts : it is consistent that the notion, their concomitant, 

 of the eternity of the heavenly bodies, should incur the 

 same censure. And if any one should make religion an 

 objection, we would have him thus answered; that it was 

 the boast of the heathens to attach eternity only to the 

 heaven and the sun, but that sacred scripture ascribes it 

 equally to heaven and earth. For there we read not only 

 that &quot; the sun and the moon bear faithful witness in 

 heaven ; &quot; but that all &quot; generations come and pass away, 

 but the earth remaineth for ever.&quot; And we find the fleet 

 ing and perishable nature of both coupled in one and the 

 same oracle ; &quot; heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 

 word shall not pass away.&quot; Then if any should insist, 

 that nevertheless it cannot be denied, but that on the sur 

 face of the earth, and the contiguous parts, innumerable 

 changes take place, not in heaven ; we meet the objection 

 thus : that we do not make them equal in all respects ; and 

 yet, if we take the upper and lower regions of the air, as 

 they are called, to be the surface or exterior coat of heaven ; 

 even as we regard that space among ourselves, within 

 which animals, plants, and minerals are contained, as the 

 surface or outer garment of earth, there too we find nume 

 rous and manifold productions. Wherefore it seems as if 

 all collision and disturbance took place only on the frontiers 

 of heaven and earth, as is frequently the case in matters 

 civil, when the inland provinces of two neighbouring coun 

 tries enjoy continued peace, and are only thrown into com 

 motion by the more rare and formidable kinds of war. 



And with respect to that other part of the supposed 

 heterogeny of the heavenly bodies, as maintained by Aris 

 totle, that they are not subject to heat, lest perchance the 

 conflagration dreaded by Heraclitus might be the result, 

 but that they are warmed, per accident, by the friction and 

 diverberation of the air; we do not understand what this 

 straggler from experience means, contradicting too, as he 

 does, the sense of antiquity on the subject. But it is no 

 thing wonderful to find that man* divorcing any given sub- 



* Aristotle. 



