Aristotle be ignorant of any truth?) but that he never disclosed it for fear of displeasing Alexander, who would have been miserable to hear of a world that he could not subjugate. There would have been a still greater reason for keeping the vortices of the fixed stars a secret; if any body in those days had known them, they would not have thought of ingratiating themselves with the monarch by talking of them. It is unfortunate that I who am acquainted with the system should not be able to reap any benefit from it. According to your reasoning it will only be an antidote to the disquietudes of ambition; that is not my malady. The weakness I am most addicted to is an excessive admiration of beauty, and I fear the vortices will have no power to assist me in overcoming it. The immense number of worlds destroys the grandeur of this, but it does not lessen the charms of a fine pair of eyes or a beautiful mouth, _they_ retain their power in spite of all the worlds that can be created. Love is a strange thing, said she, laughing; it escapes every corrective; there is no system that can abate its influence. But answer me seriously; have you sufficient reason for believing this system? To me it appears to rest on an uncertain foundation. A fixed star is of a luminous nature like the sun, therefore you say it must, like the sun, be a centre to a vortex containing planets which travel round the sun. Now, is that a necessary consequence? Listen, madam, I replied; we are so naturally disposed to mingle the follies of gallantry with our gravest discussions, that mathematical reasoning partakes of the nature of love. Grant ever so little to a lover, and presently you are forced to grant him a great deal more, and so on till you don't know how to stop. In like manner admit any principle a mathematician proposes, he then draws a consequence which you are obliged to admit, and from that consequence another, and thus before you are aware he carries you so far that on a sudden you wonder where you have got to: these two characters always take more than you mean to give them. You must own that when two things are similar in all that I know of them, I may reasonably think them similar in what I am unacquainted with in respect to them. From that principle I draw the conclusion of the moon being inhabited because she resembled the earth; and the other planets, because they resemble the moon. And because the fixed stars bear a resemblance to our sun, I attribute to them all that he possesses. You have already made too many concessions to draw back, you must go on; do it therefore with a good grace. But, said she, in admitting this resemblance between the fixed stars and our sun, we must suppose that the inhabitants of another great vortex see it as a little fixed star, visible only during their nights.