ANCIENT AND MODERN VIEWS OF NATURE. 9 



that the sun is literally the seat of the orthodox 

 hell, forgetting the gross absurdity of making hell 

 the material source of all life on the earth, arid 

 probably throughout the solar system. It would 

 be far more reasonable to believe, with some 

 modern French philosophers, that the sun is in 

 some sense or other the heaven of its system ; 

 but such speculations are far beyond the sphere 

 of inquiry to which the science of the present 

 day limits itself, though (apart from our own 

 individual experiences) they are not unlikely to 

 fall within the range of the sciences of a not 

 very remote future. 



On the other hand, the field of scientific in- 

 vestigation which is universally admitted to be 

 legitimate has been expanded to infinity. The 

 earth has been weighed as in a balance ; its 

 form and size are approximately known ; its 

 various regions are daily being more fully ex- 

 plored ; and the mysteries of the dust and the 

 nebula are alike inexhaustible to the man of 

 science. So far from the earth being the prin- 

 cipal object in the universe, we now know that 

 it is one of the smallest, and probably (except 

 temporarily to ourselves) one of the least 

 important of all the worlds which fall under 



