PORTION OF THE COSMOS. -THE PLANETS. 315 



prevailing system, these distances were taken from the Earth 

 fixed in repose in the centre, or, according to the Pytha- 

 goreans, from the " Hearth of the Universe/' the Hestia. 

 Great fluctuations of opinion took place more particu- 

 larly in respect to the position of the Sun viz. its posi- 

 tion relatively to the inferior planets and to the Moon ( 51 ). 

 The Pythagoreans, in whose view number was the source of 

 knowledge and constituted the essence of things, applied 

 their theory of numbers, and their all-pervading doctrine 

 of numerical proportions, to the geometric consideration of 

 the five early recognised regular bodies, to the musical 

 intervals of tones determining harmony and forming diffe- 

 rent families of sound, arid even to the structure of the Uni- 

 verse itself deeming that the moving, and, as it seemed, 

 oscillating planets, causing waves of sound, must, by the 

 harmonic ratios of their intervals of space, call forth a 

 " music of the spheres/' "This music," they added, 

 " would be audible to the human ear, were it not that be- 

 " cause it is perpetual, and because, therefore, man is accus- 

 " tomed to it from earliest infancy, it remains unheeded" ( 511 ). 

 The harmonic portion of the Pythagorean doctrine of num- 

 bers accorded well with the figurative representation of the 

 Cosmos in the spirit of the Timseus of Plato ; for " to Plato 

 the Cosmogony appeared the work of the union effected 

 between opposite primeval causes by the power of Har- 

 mony" ( 512 ). Plato even personified the Harmony of the 

 Universe or music of the spheres by placing in each of the 

 planetary orbs Syrens, by whose songs, and by the support of 

 the stern daughters of Necessity, the three Fates, the perpe- 

 tual gyratory movement of the spindles of the Universe was 

 maintained ( 513 ). Representations of this kind of the 



