99 



seem to have advanced nothing but reveries 2 and it 

 will be happy. if, among such a variety of opinions, 

 some be found t be true; for it is no inconsiderable 

 thing among men, when at great intervals, some one 

 or other arises among them, who, with sure steps so 

 advances, as to keep clear of those devious paths^where. 

 in others had wandered. This hath frequently hap. 

 pened among the moderns, and so it also did among 

 the ancients. Truth often beamed through the 

 obscurity in which their knowledge was envelop* 

 ed. Many erred in their conjectures, whilst enly 

 one or two discovered the right course, and point, 

 ed it out to others ; so we, of this age, direct our 

 views by the beams of those geniuses who have illiu 

 minated it. 



2. The Milky Way and Fixed Stars, have been an 

 object of enquiry to many philosophers. As to the 

 former of these, the Pythagoreans held that it had once 

 been the sun's path, and that he had left in it that 

 trace of white which we now observe there. The 

 Peripatetics have asserted, after Aristotle, that it was 

 formed of exhalations, suspended high in air. I easily 

 admit, that there were mistakes, but all were not mis. 

 taken in their conjectures. Daraocritus, without the 

 aid of a telescope, preceded Galileo in remarking, that 

 what we call the milky way, contained in it an innu. 

 merable quantity of fixed stars, the mixture of whose 

 distant rays occasioned the whiteness which we thus 

 denominate : or to express it in Plutarch's words, it 

 was the united brightness of an immense number of 

 stars. 



r, 



3. The ancients were no less clear in their concep* 

 tions of the nature of the fixed stars than we are; for 

 it is but a short while ago that the moderns adopted 

 the ideas of those great masters on this subject, after 

 having rejected them during many ages. It would be 

 reckoned an absurdity in philosophy at present, to 



