BOOK II.] History of Nature. 3 1 



numerable : as if we are to believe so many Natures as there 

 are Heavens : or if all were reduced to one, yet there should 

 be so many Suns and Moons, with the Rest also of those 

 immeasurable and innumerable Stars in that one : as though 

 in this plurality of Worlds we should not always meet with 

 the same Question still at every Turn of our Thought, for 

 Want of some End to rest upon : or, if this infiniteness could 

 possibly be assigned to Nature, the Work-mistress of all ; 

 the same might not be understood more easily in that one 

 Heaven which we see ; so great a Work as it is. Now surely 

 it is more than Madness to quit this, and to keep seeking 

 without, as if all Things within were well and clearly known 

 already : as if any Man could take the Measure of another 

 Thing, who knoweth not his own : or the Mind of Man 

 might see those Things which the World itself may not 

 receive. 



CHAPTER II. 

 Of the Figure of the World. 



THAT the Form of the World is round 1 , in the Figure of 

 a perfect Globe, its Name in the first Place, and the Consent 

 of all Men agreeing to call it in Latin Orbis (a Globe), as 

 also many natural Reasons, evidently shew. For not only 

 because such a Figure every Way falleth and bendeth upon 

 itself, is able to uphold itself, includeth and containeth itself, 

 having need of no joints for this purpose, as finding in any 

 Part thereof no End or Beginning : or because this Form 

 agreeth best to that Motion, whereby continually it must 

 turn about (as hereafter will appear) : but also because the 

 Eyesight doth approve the same ; because, look which Way 

 soever you will, it appeareth convex, and even on all sides; 

 a Thing not incident to any other Figure. 



1 That it was an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles, was little 

 likely to be known by observers, however acute, whose opinion of the 

 uninhabitable nature of the frigid and torrid zones would lead them to 

 limit their practical inquiries to the temperate. The good sense of Pliny 

 induced him to prefer the opinion of the rotundity of the globe, to that of 

 Epicurus, that it was an extended plane. Wern. Club. 



