THE TURNING OF THE EARTH 107 



compared with this, even the distance of the sun was as nothing. 

 But so doing seemed to loose the earth from its moorings, and 

 toss it like a fragile bark upon the wastes of a boundless sea. 

 It was to view the sun and earth and its vast orbit as but a 

 point in the unending marches of the sky. Lost in such reverie 

 of the infinite, the imagination reels in drunken sublimity ; 

 the ways of space became a welter of whirling specks ; the 

 aimless motions of a cloud of insects, the image of the handi- 

 work of God. Staled by custom, by constant iteration, we 

 have become a little steadied to the view. But to what som- 

 nambulist of space did it come first ? Is there any mind in 

 Hellas to rise to such an outlook on the world ? 

 What said Aristarchus ? 



