xi STANDARDS OF HEIGHT 185 



nothing on earth is elevated so high that even the 

 greatest of objects should be any 1 appreciable 

 portion in comparison with the whole universe. 

 Were this not so, we should not be in the habit 

 of saying that the whole earth is a ball. The 

 distinctive mark of a ball is a certain uniform 

 rotundity, much the same as the uniformity seen in 

 a football or cricket ball. 2 The seams and chinks 

 constitute no great objection to the ball being 

 described as symmetrical on all sides. As in a 3 

 playing ball, those spaces do not in any way prevent 

 the appearance of roundness, no more, in the earth 

 at large regarded as a sphere, do lofty mountains, 

 whose height is lost in a comparison with the whole 

 world. A person who says that a higher mountain 

 ought to be warmer from receiving the sun s rays 

 at a shorter distance, may just as well say that a 

 taller man should be heated sooner than a dwarf, 

 and his head sooner than his feet ! But any one who 4 

 will take the trouble to judge the universe by its 

 proper standard, and who will reflect that this earth 

 occupies but a single point in space, will not fail 

 to perceive that nothing on earth can be of such 

 eminence as to be more sensible than others of 

 the influence of the heavenly bodies, as if it had 

 approached their neighbourhood. Those mountains 

 at which we gaze up, their summits weighed down 

 with eternal snows, are none the less but low and 

 humble. While it is true that a mountain is nearer 

 the sun than is plain or valley, yet it is in the same 

 sense as javelin is spoken of as thicker than javelin, 

 tree as larger than tree, mountain than mountain. 



1 The argument seems to require ulla = any, instead of nulla no. 



2 The specific references are not contained in the Latin words ; the modern 

 counterpart of the Roman games of ball serves, however, to bring out the 

 meaning of the illustration. 



