Again, let the required nature be that other motion of revolution, so celebrated among astronomers, which is contrary to the diurnal, namely, from west to east--and which the ancient astronomers assign to the planets, and even to the starry sphere, but Copernicus and his followers to the earth also--and let it be examined whether any such motion be found in nature, or it be rather a fiction and hypothesis for abridging and facilitating calculation, and for promoting that fine notion of effecting the heavenly motions by perfect circles; for there is nothing which proves such a motion in heavenly objects to be true and real, either in a planet’s not returning in its diurnal motion to the same point of the starry sphere, or in the pole of the zodiac being different from that of the world, which two circumstances have occasioned this notion. For the first phenomenon is well accounted for by the spheres overtaking or falling behind each other, and the second by spiral lines; so that the inaccuracy of the return and declination to the tropics may be rather modifications of the one diurnal motion than contrary motions, or about different poles. And it is most certain, if we consider ourselves for a moment as part of the vulgar (setting aside the fictions of astronomers and the school, who are wont undeservedly to attack the senses in many respects, and to affect obscurity), that the apparent motion is such as we have said, a model of which we have sometimes caused to be represented by wires in a sort of a machine. We may take the following instances of the cross upon this subject. If it be found in any history worthy of credit, that there has existed any comet, high or low, which has not revolved in manifest harmony (however irregularly) with the diurnal motion, then we may decide so far as to allow such a motion to be possible in nature. But if nothing of the sort be found, it must be suspected, and recourse must be had to other instances of the cross. Again, let the required nature be weight or gravity. Heavy and ponderous bodies must, either of their own nature, tend toward the centre of the earth by their peculiar formation, or must be attracted and hurried by the corporeal mass of the earth itself, as being an assemblage of similar bodies, and be drawn to it by sympathy. But if the latter be the cause, it follows that the nearer bodies approach to the earth, the more powerfully and rapidly they must be borne toward it, and the further they are distant, the more faintly and slowly (as is the case in magnetic attractions), and that this must happen within a given distance; so that if they be separated at such a distance from the earth that the power of the earth cannot act upon them, they will remain suspended like the earth, and not fall at all.[130]