seems to us to quiver, while really it is our eyesight which is quivering. Sun, moon, and stars alike are living beings, unwearied, and in the enjoyment of perfect happiness.
It has often been said that if an ancient Greek temple be compared with a Gothic cathedral, the one suggests the idea of the finite, the other of the infinite. The same thing might be said of Aristotle's Cosmology when compared with the views of modern science. Aristotle figured to himself a perfectly limited universe, with the earth in the centre, and the fixed stars all round the circumference. In a circle, or globe, it may be questioned which is the place of honour—the centre or the circumference. The Pythagoreans, accordingly, after the abstract method of those times, declared that the centre must be the most honourable position, and that, as the element fire is more honourable than the element earth, the centre of the Universe must be occupied by some Central Fire, and that the earth must revolve round this like the other stars. Aristotle, unconscious how much nearer to the truth this guess was than his own, laughs at it as the production of men "who try to square facts to their own fancies, and who wish to have a share in the arrangement of the Universe." He also repudiates ('Heavens,' II. xiv. 1) the theory of Plato that the earth is packed round the axis of the entire Universe and revolves with it, thus causing day and night.[1] He maintains that the earth is the motionless
- ↑ There is some doubt as to what Plato's theory actually was. See 'Minor Works of George Grote,' vol. i. pp. 239-275, and Professor Jowett's Introduction to the 'Timaeus' of Plato.
