Page:The sidereal messenger of Galileo Galilei.pdf/109

 upon these new observations, who does not see how far the contemplation of nature will extend her boundaries, when we ask, "What is the use of the tracts of mountains and valleys, and the very wide expanse of seas in the moon?" and "May not some creature less noble than man be imagined such as might inhabit those tracts?"

With no less certainty also do we decide by the use of this instrument even that famous question, which, coeval with philosophy itself, is disputed to this day by the noblest intellects—I mean, "Whether the earth can move (as the theory of the Planets greatly requires) without the overthrow of all bodies that have weight, or the confusion of the motion of the elements? For if the earth were banished from the centre of the universe, some fear lest the water should leave the orb of the earth and flow to the centre of the universe; and yet we see that in the moon, as well as in the earth, there is a quantity of moisture occupying the sunken hollows of that globe; and although this orb revolves actually in the ether, and outside the centres not merely of the universe, but even of our earth, yet the mass of water in the moon is not at all hindered from cleaving invariably to the orb of the moon, and tending to the centre of the body to which it belongs. So, by this instance of the