134 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



appear to revolve round a common centre of gravity, 

 a system of two suns. Have each of them, or have 

 both of them in common, a set of planets moving 

 round them ? Who can tell ? And where there are 

 stars with planets accompanying them, does any one 

 know in what state those planets are ? The whole 

 subject, however interesting as a speculation, is 

 shrouded in impenetrable mystery. 



From all this it follows that although there 

 certainly may be rational and intellectual inhabitants 

 on some or other of these distant worlds, yet, on the 

 other hand, there may not be. And it is perfectly 

 possible that our Earth, minute little object as it is, 

 comparatively speaking, may still be the great and 

 favoured life-house of the universe, the moral, though 

 not material, centre. That the Earth is not the 

 physical centre of the universe we now are well 

 aware ; nor is the Sun the centre ; nor, indeed, do we 

 know whether there is any such centre at all. There 

 is good reason for thinking that the Sun, with his 

 attendant planets, is in motion in a certain direction 

 in space ; and I may observe that this direction is 

 not in the plane of the Earth's orbit, or anything near 

 it; so that though the Earth describes an elliptical 

 orbit with regard to the Sun, its path in space is some 

 kind of spiral curve, that is as it would appear to a 

 being poised for a time in some point of space far 

 away outside our orbit, having the necessary powers 

 of vision, and having a plane of reference from which 

 he could take his observations. 



