[141] As instances of this kind, which the progress of science since the time of Bacon affords, we may cite the air-pump and the barometer, for manifesting the weight and elasticity of air: the measurement of the velocity of light, by means of the occultation of Jupiter’s satellites and the aberration of the fixed stars: the experiments in electricity and galvanism, and in the greater part of pneumatic chemistry. In all these cases scientific facts are elicited, which sense could never have revealed to us.--_Ed._ [142] The itinerant instances, as well as frontier instances, are cases in which we are enabled to trace the general law of continuity which seems to pervade all nature, and which has been aptly embodied in the sentence, “natura non agit per saltum.” The pursuit of this law into phenomena where its application is not at first sight obvious, has opened a mine of physical discovery, and led us to perceive an intimate connection between facts which at first seemed hostile to each other. For example, the transparency of gold-leaf, which permits a bluish-green light to pass through it, is a frontier instance between transparent and opaque bodies, by exhibiting a body of the glass generally regarded the most opaque in nature, as still possessed of some slight degree of transparency. It thus proves that the quality of opacity is not a contrary or antagonistic quality to that of transparency, but only its extreme lowest degree. [143] Alluding to his theory of atoms. [144] Observe the approximation to Newton’s theory. The same notion repeated still more clearly in the ninth motion. Newton believed that the planets might so conspire as to derange the earth’s annual revolution, and to elongate the line of the apsides and ellipsis that the earth describes in its annual revolution round the sun. In the supposition that all the planets meet on the same straight line, Venus and Mercury on one side of the sun, and the earth, moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on the side diametrically opposite; then Saturn would attract Jupiter, Jupiter Mars, Mars the moon, which must in its turn attract the earth in proportion to the force with which it was drawn out of its orbit. The result of this combined action on our planet would elongate its ecliptic orbit, and so far draw it from the source of heat, as to produce an intensity of cold destructive to animal life. But this movement would immediately cease with the planetary concurrence which produced it, and the earth, like a compressed spring, bound almost as near to the sun as she had been drawn from it, the reaction of the heat on its surface being about as intense as the cold caused by the first removal was severe. The earth, until it gained its regular track, would thus alternately vibrate between each side of its orbit, with successive changes in its atmosphere, proportional to the square of the variation of its distance from the sun. In no place