Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/239

 moving bodies by new hypotheses: and these demonstrations of reasons others either follow or observe in order that they may more surely discover the phænomenal harmony of the movements; being men of the highest attainments in every kind of learning. Thus the supposed and imaginary orbes of Ptolemy and others for finding the times and periods of the motions are not necessarily to be admitted to the physical inquiries of philosophers. It is then an ancient opinion and one that has come down from old times, but is now augmented by important considerations that the whole earth rotates with a daily revolution in the space of 24 hours. Well then, since we see the Sun and Moon and other planets and the glory of all the stars approach and retire within the space of one natural day, either the Earth herself must needs be set in motion with a diurnal movement from West to East, or the whole heaven and the rest of nature from East to West. But, in the first place, it is not likely that the highest heaven and all those visible splendours of the fixed stars are impelled along that most rapid and useless course. Besides, who is the Master who has ever made out that the stars which we call fixed are in one and the same sphere, or has established by reasoning that there are any real and, as it were, adamantine sphæres? No one has ever proved this as a fact; nor is there a doubt but that just as the planets are at unequal distances from the earth, so are those vast and multitudinous lights separated from the Earth by varying and very remote altitudes; they are not set in any sphærick frame or firmament (as is feigned), nor in any vaulted body: accordingly the intervals of some are from their unfathomable distance matter of opinion rather than of verification; others do much exceed them and are very far remote, and these being located in the heaven at varying distances, either in the thinnest æther or in that most subtile quintessence, or in the void; how are they to remain in their position during such a mighty swirl of the vast orbe of such uncertain substance. There have been observed by astronomers 1022 stars; besides these, numberless others are visible, some indeed faint to our senses, in the case of others our sense is dim and they are hardly perceived and only by exceptionally keen eyes, and there is no one gifted with excellent sight who does not when the Moon is dark and the air at its rarest, discern numbers and numbers dim and wavering with minute lights on account of the great distance: hence it is credible both that these are many and that they are never all included in any range of vision. How immeasurable then must be the space which stretches to those remotest of fixed stars! How vast and immense the depth of that imaginary sphere! How far removed from the Earth must the most widely separated stars be and at a distance transcending all sight, all skill and thought! How monstrous then such a motion