108 USE OF GRAVITATION. 



too; and the human body is affected, the air 

 which is with the blood or other liquids, in the very 

 small vessels, under delicate skin, swells the vessels, 

 and sometimes bursts them and they bleed. 



Gravitation is the grand principle by which 

 Nature, on the great scale, is held together ; and, 

 under the same circumstances, it is uniform in its 

 apparent effects. In itself it is always the same, 

 following matter through all its changes, dead or 

 alive, at rest or in motion. The paper of this 

 book has, in the same identical particles which 

 now form it, been changed , from one visible 

 substance to another, probably millions of times 

 since it was created ; and it has very likely been 

 scattered through millions of substances at the 

 same instant ; but not one atom of it has been 

 lost ; and in all its changes the amount of its ab- 

 solute gravitation has remained the same the 

 test and evidence of its being ; and always acting 

 according to circumstances, instantly, and in the 

 most unerring manner. 



But though the force of gravitation, or more 

 correctly the phenomenon, or appearance of gra- 

 vitation, (for all that we know about forces or powers 

 is only appearance) be thus universal, and in its 

 tendency tp act, invariable, it is so finely divisible, 

 that we can follow it down, from suns which re- 

 tain their surrounding planets in their paths by 

 its influence, even at the distance of full eighteen 

 hundred millions of miles, (that is the mean dis- 

 tance of the planet Herschel from the sun,) to mites 

 and motes, and to the particles which circulate in 

 the vessels of animalculi whose whole bodies have 

 to be magnifiedmany thousands of times, before the 

 finest eye can see them ; and though it can lead a 



