Page:On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other.djvu/49

Rh this attraction was exerted between their respective centres of gravity; and furthermore, you learned from me, that if, instead of a small ball, I took a larger one, like that [changing one of the balls for a much larger one], there was much more of this attraction exerted; or, if I made this ball larger and larger, until, if it were possible, it became as large as the Earth itself—or, I might take the Earth itself as the large ball—that then the attraction would become so powerful as to cause them to rush together in this manner [dropping the ivory ball]. You sit there upright, and I stand upright here, because we keep our centres of gravity properly balanced with respect to the earth; and I need not tell you that on the other side of this world the people are standing and moving about with their feet towards our feet, in a reversed position as compared with us, and all by means of this power of gravitation to the centre of the earth.

I must not, however, leave the subject of gravitation, without telling you something about its laws and regularity; and first, as regards its power with respect to the distance that bodies