If You Could See The Earth Illuminated

The Vain Presumption Of Understanding Everything Can Have No Other Basis Than Never Having Understood Anything. For Anyone Who Had Ever Experienced Just Once The Perfect Understanding Of One Single Thing, And Had Truly Tasted How Knowledge Is Accomplished, Would Recognize That Of The Infinity Of Other Truths He Understands Nothing.

It Is Necessary For The Bible, In Order To Be Accommodated To The Understanding Of Every Man, To Speak Many Things Which Appear To Differ From The Absolute Truth So Far As The Bare Meaning Of The Words Is Concerned.

But What Exceeds All Wonders, I Have Discovered Four New Planets And Observed Their Proper And Particular Motions, Different Among Themselves And From The Motions Of All The Other Stars; And These New Planets Move About Another Very Large Star [jupiter] Like Venus And Mercury, And Perchance The Other Known Planets, Move About The Sun. As Soon As This Tract, Which I Shall Send To All The Philosophers And Mathematicians As An Announcement, Is Finished, I Shall Send A Copy To The Most Serene Grand Duke, Together With An Excellent Spyglass, So That He Can Verify All These Truths.

Nature Is Relentless And Unchangeable, And It Is Indifferent As To Whether Its Hidden Reasons And Actions Are Understandable To Man Or Not.

If Experiments Are Performed Thousands Of Times At All Seasons And In Every Place Without Once Producing The Effects Mentioned By Your Philosophers, Poets, And Historians, This Will Mean Nothing And We Must Believe Their Words Rather Than Our Own Eyes?