104 THE WORLD MACHINE 



plausible. But turn upon an axis that seemed to lurch 

 who was there to venture on so outrageous a notion ? What, 

 then, im Teufelsnamen, did this axis rest on ? It cannot sustain 

 the earth if it is supported on nothing. Moreover, on a second 

 thought, the axis did not appear to lurch. Always, in season 

 and out, it pointed steadily toward that mystic pivotal star of 

 the north. The explanation must lie elsewhere. 



Perchance not alone the earth but the sun moved too ! So 

 it actually seemed, for watching its risings and its settings from 

 month to month, the ancients very early noted that it came 

 up amid one group of stars at one time, and in a different one 

 a little later. From one end of the year to the other it seemed to 

 traverse a sort of belt, which they duly decorated with names 

 and fantastic shapes. 



Taking the year at roughly twelve lunations, they divided 

 the belt into twelve signs, put a lobster in one, a goat in another, 

 a virgin in a third, fishes in a fourth, a bull next, and so on. 

 The various animals were ranged in a circle, much as the cages 

 in a circus tent, and the whole menagerie they called the Zodiac, 

 or " circle of the animals." In a given season the sun was said 

 to rise, or set, in Aries or Pisces or Virgo, and due and dire things 

 depended thereon. 



There were but two ways in which all these puzzling appear- 

 ances could be explained ; two, and only two. Either the sun 

 goes round the earth as a centre each year, in a circle that is 

 inclined at a considerable angle to the plane of the earth's 

 equator, or else the earth goes round the sun in the same sort 

 of a plane in brief, has a dual motion. Small wonder that 

 common folk shook their heads when the learned astronomers 

 began to indulge such speculations as this. 



But the world and the wonder of it was very new ; and 

 the new science of geometrical constructions seemed to do such 

 wonderful things. Starting from the simplest proposition, which 

 even a child could understand, the geometer carried the mind 

 along from theorem to theorem, until the solid earth seemed to 

 have been left far behind ; yet no link of proof seemed lacking ; 

 all was rigidly enchained. It was thus-wise that men were 

 able to get away from the bondage of appearances, and by a 

 process of abstraction, reach beneath the surface to the inner 

 core of things. So, the history of these ancient speculations 

 being lost, we may imagine some among them drawing a circle, 



