BOOK II. LxviiL X74-LXIX. 176 



over the dimensions of all those rivers and vast 

 swamps, add also the lakes and pools, and next the 

 ridges too that rise into the heaven and are pre- 

 cipitous even to the eye, next the forests and steep 

 glens, and the deserts and areas for a thousand 

 reasons left deserted ; subtract all these portions 

 from the earth or rather from this pin-prick, as the 

 majority of thinkers have taught, in the world — for 

 in the whole universe the earth is nothing else: 

 and this is the substance of oiu- glory, this is its habita- 

 tion, here it is that we fill positions of power and covet 

 wealth, and throw mankind into an uproar, and launch 

 even civil wars and slaughter one another to make 

 the land more spacious ! And to pass over the 

 collective insanities of the nations, this is the land 

 in which we expel the tenants next to us and add a 

 spade-full of turf to our own estate by steaHng 

 from our neighbour's — to the end that he who has 

 marked out his acres most widely and banished his 

 neighbours beyond all record may rejoice in 

 owning — how small a fraction of the earth's sur- 

 face ? or, when he has stretched his boundaries to 

 the full measure of his avarice, may still retain — 

 what portion, pray, of his estate when he is 

 dead ? 



LXIX. That the earth is at the centre of the Geocentnc 

 univcrse is proved by irrefragable arguments, but ^^'^^- 

 the clearest is the equal hours of day and night " 

 at the equinox. I or if the earth were not at the 

 centi-e, it can be reahzed that it could not have the 

 days and nights equal ; and binoculars confirm this 

 very powerfuUy, since at the season of the equinox 

 sunrise and sunset are seen on the same line, whereas 

 sunrise at midsummer and sunset at niidwinter fall 



309 



