is a devilish device originated for the benefit of sur- LITTLE 

 geons and crockery dealers. But this is not wholly true. JOURNEYS 

 Q Without this Law of Gravitation the Earth could not 

 retain her spherical shape only through this constant 

 drawing in toward the center could she exist. 

 The other planets, too, must be round or they could 

 not exist, and so they also had this same quality of 

 gravity in common with the Earth a drawing in of 

 everything toward the center. Here was a positive dis- 

 covery this similarity of the heavenly bodies ! 

 Every one of the heavenly bodies was exerting a con- 

 stant attraction toward all other heavenly bodies, and 

 this attractive power must be in proportion to the dis- 

 tance they were from the object acted upon. Thus 

 were their movements and orbits accounted for. 

 At this time Newton was perfectly familiar with Kep- 

 ler's Law, that the squares of the periodic times of a 

 planet were as the cubes of its distance from the sun. 

 And from this, he inferred that the attraction varied as 

 the square of the planet's distance from the sun. 

 Here he was working on territory that had never been 

 surveyed. At first, in his exuberance, he thought to 

 quickly figure out the size and weight of each planet 

 by measuring its attractive power. He did not realize 

 that he had cut out for himself work that would re- 

 quire many men and several centuries to cover, but 

 surely he was on the right scent a finite man keen 

 upon the secrets of the Infinite! 



He was still at his mother's old home in the country, 

 without scientific apparatus or the stimulus of col- 



83 



