888 Transactions of the American Institute. 



with us. Astronomers say it does, and astronomers must be right. 



How high is our atmosphere ? Philosophers tell us that it is only 

 forty miles ! What is next to it ? Where is the dividing line ? 

 There must be great friction on that line if the same order of nature 

 is obeyed there as here. Philosophers have again told us that there- 

 is nothing next to our atmosphere, and that is the reason of a con- 

 tinuance of the projectile motion, because there is nothing to stop it. 

 Are we then moving through space on the same principle as through 

 an exhausted tube ? In that case we should not move in an orbit, but 

 in a straight line, until we should go crash against some other planet, 

 shattering ourselves or them. And these same philosophers have, in 

 their imaginations, gravely provided this mode of destruction for- us. 

 But this is not in harmony with nature, or our own motion, and besides 

 " nature abhors a vacuum." It cannot be, therefore, that we are pro- 

 jected thus through space. 



There is the moon above us shining brightly. She is moving in 

 the same direction that we are, and she moves faster through space 

 than we do. She accompanies the earth in her orbit round the sun, 

 and at the same time she goes completely round the earth, relatively 

 to the sun, every twenty-nine and a half days. She has kept the same 

 relative position to our earth in all her vast journeys of thousands of 

 years. By what principle are they thus held together ? Have we any 

 evidence of the existence, between the earth and the moon, of any 

 medium but the common atmosphere, in whatever rarefied state that 

 may be ? Must we not suppose, then, that such atmospheres fill the 

 whole space between them? Are not the earth and the moon, then, 

 a complete system by themselves, revolving together from the begin- 

 ning of time as one, yet forming a part of another and higher system, 

 and that again still higher, forever upward and onward, till it shall 

 reach the Throne of (rod % It appears to me, therefore, that the earth 

 and the moon form a separate and independent system in themselves, 

 though tributary to one higher. Can there be any dividing line 

 between the moon's atmosphere and ours ? Is it not more probable 

 that they are united and move together in mingling, flowing currents, 

 like the ocean currents of this globe, which by their motion and 

 mingling are made to assist in preserving the world's balance. 



In that case the earth would then be the center, and the moon's 

 path the circumference of one inseparable moving orb. By the laws 

 which regulate motion and magnitude, the earth would then move 

 through her orbit, not by attraction to the concrete earth alone, but 

 to the great luminous orb which should include the moon's path, and 



