636 AN APOLOGUE OF CORPOREAL AND COSMICAL INFINITY. 
diorama which I have undertaken to unroll before you,—that we become en¬ 
dowed with yet another increase in our visual powers, and that as these go on 
enlarging, our object, at first a small stone, now a huge globe, continues to 
swell and expand, till from the proportions of a mountain, it dilates into the 
presentment of an entire world. But while it is thus enlarging itself, and be¬ 
fore too much of it has passed away from before our immediate view into the far 
distance, choose you, for special observation, some one of those separate granular 
bodies of which it is composed, and mark the changes that take place in it, as it 
gradually distends itself, and, in doing so, reveals to us secrets hidden hitherto 
from human gaze.” 
“ I have chosen,” said I, “ the one just fronting us, shaped something like a 
lentil, and ■will watch it narrowly, as you desire me.” 
“ Observe then,” he continued, “as our granule dilates, and comes to occupy 
by itself the whole field of vision, which before contained the entire mass, how 
it gradually parts with its apparent solidity and opacity, and becomes, as it 
opens out, first like a dense cloud, next nebulous, then translucent, till, upon 
looking intently, it resolves itself into a huge space, eddying about in which are 
innumerable small specks, of various sizes, and at considerable distances apart, 
all of which appear to be in a state of regulated movement, floating, like motes 
in a sunbeam, softly and silently, about and around, above and below, some 
slowly, some more rapidly, but none conflicting with, none jostling any other. 
Observing still more closely, note how, as the sight becomes accustomed to the 
view, this maze of corpuscles resolves itself into countless groups, the members 
of each group revolving variously about a common centre, or about each other. 
The clusters of groups appear also, by parts, to be symmetrically arranged,— 
here after one pattern, there after another,—in some places, thick as the stars in 
Orion ; in other places, less than the number of the Pleiades ; everywhere, 
variety, but everywhere, also, order, harmony, and symmetry.” 
“ Everything corresponds with your description,” I observed. 
When I had been for some time engaged in the contemplation of this varied 
scene, or, to speak more correctly, in listening to my speculative friend’s minute 
description of it, he resumed in this wise. 
“ That which, through an idealized vision, has now been revealed to you, is 
the intimate, internal structure of body. The groups which you see, and which 
exhibit some miniature semblance of our cosmic systems, are the so-styled mole¬ 
cules of the body ; and the moving points, which may be compared to the globes 
of those systems, are the atoms of which those molecules are severally composed. 
For, you must understand, that though the body, as a whole, is relatively at 
rest, the intimate parts of which it is composed are in a state of eternal move¬ 
ment. Contrary also, I dare say, to your preconceptions, body, so far from 
beiDg the dense solid thing that is superficially taken for granted, is composed, 
for the greater part, of interspaces between its atoms, these atoms themselves 
occupying but a very small proportion of the entire bulk; though their in¬ 
fluence, like that of gravitation, extends throughout the whole of the interspaces, 
and reciprocally regulates and determines their own respective distances and 
movements. In truth, though I wish to avoid any appearance of paradox, yet, 
rather than suppose body to be made up of dense cohering particles, such as, to 
our fleshly organs, this stone seems to be, I would prefer to hold that the pro¬ 
portion of its atoms to its interspaces is as the joint cubical contents of the sun 
and all the planets, comets, etc., to the cubical contents of a sphere, whose 
radius measures the distance from the sun to the remotest yet undiscovered 
planet.” 
“ But this,” I remonstrated, “is worse than Falstaff’s ha’p’orth of bread to 
unlimited sack ; it would be the proportion of one to millions.” 
“ Very true,” he agreed ; “but I am far from laying down any such dispro- 
