284 PREFACE TO THE DESC. GLOBI INT. 



the solar system did not attract one another, and if all 

 were attracted by the sun as if he and they were phys- 

 ical points. It would be possible to crowd together a 

 number of epicycles whereby the orbit of the earth 

 would be better represented than on the elliptic hy- 

 pothesis ; but such a system would have no physical sig- 

 nificance. No doubt too, all the laws might be true 

 and yet the earth at rest ; but we could not adopt such 

 an opinion without doing violence to all our ideas of 

 symmetry and harmony, ideas which influence our 

 judgments of natural things more than we are aware 

 of. Such a doctrine would be felt " primam violare 

 fidem." We may well believe that had Bacon been 

 acquainted with the discoveries of Kepler, he would not' 

 only have been impressed by their astronomical impor- 

 tance, but have felt the full force of the lesson which 

 they convey. He would have felt that they constituted 

 a sufficient reason for transferring the allegiance which 

 had been paid to Mother Earth to a nobler object more 

 justly entitled to the homage which she had so long 

 received. We now know that neither Earth nor Sun 

 is the true Hestia of the old Philosopheme. We know 

 too, that in all the orbs of heaven that we can see or 

 dream of, there can be nothing fully entitled to the 

 appellation, nothing wholly fixed, or wholly unper- 

 turbed. Happy for us if we feel also that there is a 

 Sun of suns whose absolute existence transcends our 

 conceptions of space and time. 1 



1 Deus, sine qualitate bonus, sine quantitate magnus, sine indigentia 

 creator, sine situ praesens, sine habitu omnia continens, sine loco ubique 

 totus, sine tempore sempiternus, sine ulla mutatione mutabilia faciens, ni- 

 hilque patiens. St. Augustine, De Trin. 



