96 THE WORLD MACHINE 



It revealed, as we know, that the distance and therefore 

 the diameter of the sun was not nineteen but four hundred times 

 that of the moon. But what did it matter ? Even at nineteen 

 times, the sun must be distant from the earth not less than 

 five million miles ; it must be a body not less than 50,000 miles 

 thick, or seven times the diameter of our vast globe. Who 

 could believe it then ? How many dwellers upon this earth 

 truly realise it now ? 



And let your fancy linger for a moment over this singular 

 fact of history : a space of three centuries separates us from 

 the invention of the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, 

 the air-pump, the first electrical machine ; from the days when 

 the Pilgrims landed in America, when the plays of Shakespeare 

 were first acted in London, and when Bruno was burned in the 

 flower-market of Rome. 



At a space of three centuries before the first Christian had 

 knocked at the Roman gates, before the first Caesar had 

 been crowned, and when Carthage was still mistress of the 

 seas, the astronomers of Alexandria had in their possession at 

 least a correct relative knowledge of the bodies of the solar 

 system. 



Was there any thinker among them to go further, and 

 seek to unravel the tangle of their apparent motions, to 

 fix the common centre of these motions, and set this solid 

 seeming earth for ever spinning 



" Down the ringing grooves of change " ? 



