The Massive Bulk Of The Earth Does

For I Am Not So Enamoured Of My Own Opinions That I Disregard What Others May Think Of Them.

In The Center Of All Rests The Sun. For Who Would Place This Lamp Of A Very Beautiful Temple In Another Or Better Place That This Wherefrom It Can Illuminate Everything At The Same Time? As A Matter Of Fact, Not Unhappily Do Some Call It The Lantern; Others, The Mind And Still Others, The Pilot Of The World. Trismegistus Calls It A "visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, "that Which Gazes Upon All Things." And So The Sun, As If Resting On A Kingly Throne, Governs The Family Of Stars Which Wheel Around.

So Far As Hypotheses Are Concerned, Let No One Expect Anything Certain From Astronomy, Which Cannot Furnish It, Lest He Accept As The Truth Ideas Conceived For Another Purpose, And Depart From This Study A Greater Fool Than When He Entered It.

Perhaps There Will Be Prattlers Who, Although Completely Ignorant Of Mathematics, Nevertheless Take It Upon Themselves To Pass Judgment On Mathematical Questions, And On Account Of Some Passage In Scripture, Badly Distorted To Their Purpose, Will Dare To Censure And Assail What I Have Presented Here.

We Are Taught All This [the Motion Of The Earth On Its Axis And Around The Sun] By The Order Of Succession, In Which Those Phenomena (various Planetary Happenings) Follow Each Other, And By The Harmony Of The World, If We Will Only, As The Saying Goes, Look At The Matter With Both Eyes.