83 From Matter to Man. 



by this law. If science affirms that all the heavenly 

 bodies are magnets, may not the sun, as the larger 

 magnet, govern and control the earth and the planets 

 as smaller magnets ; attracting and repelling them by 

 their poles through the medium of their combined 

 reciprocal polarity ? May not the planets similarly 

 control their moons, and occasionally avert danger 

 from a colliding comet by reversing the comet's 

 polarity, and thus changing its course ? The specula- 

 tion is not new, but our explanation invests it with 

 additional interest. We shall recur to it again in our 

 chapter on gravitation. 



