Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/178

 drawn all one way, and the same without any other alteration save the declining the direct rectitude, sometimes a very insensible matter towards one side or another, and the pens moving its neb one while softer, another while slower, but with very small inequality. And I think that it would in the same manner write a letter, and that those frollike penmen, who to shew their command of hand, without taking their pen from the paper in one sole stroke, with infinite turnings draw a pleasant knot, if they were in a boat that did tide it along swiftly they would convert the whole motion of the pen, which in reality is but one sole line, drawn all towards one and the same part, and very little curved, or declining from perfect rectitude, into a knot or flourish. And I am much pleased that Sagredus hath helped me to this conceit: therefore let us go on, for the hope of meeting with more of them, will make me the stricter in my attention.

If you have a curiosity to hear such like subtilties, which occurr not thus to every one, you will find no want of them, especially in this particular of Navigation; and do you not think that a witty conceit which I met with likewise in the same voyage, when I observed that the mast of the ship, without either breaking or bending, had made a greater voyage with its round-top, that is with its top-gallant, than with its foot; for the round top being more distant from the centre of the Earth than the foot is, it had described the arch of a circle bigger than the circle by which the foot had passed.

And thus when a man walketh he goeth farther with his head than with his feet.

You have found out the matter your self by help of your own mother-wit: But let us not interrupt Salviatus.

It pleaseth me to see Simplicius how he sootheth up himself in this conceit, if happly it be his own, and that he hath not borrowed it from a certain little pamphlet of conclusions, where there are a great many more such fancies no less pleasant & witty. It followeth that vve speak of the peice of Ordinance mounted perpendicular to the Horizon, that is, of a shot towards our vertical point, and to conclude, of the return of the ball by the same line unto the same peice, though that in the long time which it is separated from the peice, the earth hath transported it many miles towards the East; now it seemeth, that the ball ought to fall a like distance from the peice towards the West; the which doth not happen: therefore the peice without having been moved did stay expecting the same. The answer is the same with that of the stone falling from the Tower; and all the fallacy, and equivocation consisteth in supposing still for true, that which is in question; for the Opponent hath it still fixed in his conceit that the ball departs from its rest, being discharged by the fire