from their unfathomable distance matter of opinion rather than of verification; others do much exceed them and are very far remote, and these being located in the heaven at varying distances, either in the thinnest æther or in that most subtile quintessence, or in the void: how are they to remain in their position during such a mighty swirl of the vast orbe of such uncertain substance. There have been observed by astronomers 1022 stars; besides these, numberless others are visible, some indeed faint to our senses, in the case of others our sense is dim and they are hardly perceived and only by exceptionally keen eyes, and there is no one gifted with excellent sight who does not when the Moon is dark and the air at its rarest, discern numbers and numbers dim and wavering with minute lights on account of the great distance: hence it is credible both that these are many and that they are never all included in any range of vision. How immeasurable then must be the space which stretches to those remotest of fixed stars! How vast and immense the depth of that imaginary sphere! How far removed from the Earth must the most widely separated stars be and at a distance transcending all sight, all skill and thought! How monstrous then such a motion {216} would be! It is evident then that all the heavenly bodies set as if in destined places are there formed into sphæres, that they tend to their own centres, and that round them there is a confluence of all their parts. And if they have motion, that motion will rather be that of each round its own centre, as that of the Earth is; or a forward movement of the centre in an orbit, as that of the Moon: there would not be circular motion in the case of a too numerous and scattered flock. Of these stars some situate near the Æquator would seem to be borne around at a very rapid rate, others nearer the pole to have a somewhat gentler motion, others, apparently motionless, to have a slight rotation. Yet no differences in point of light, mass or colours are apparent to us: for they are as brilliant, clear, glittering and duskish toward the poles, as they are near the Æquator and the Zodiack: those which remain set in those positions do not hang, and are neither fixed, nor bound to anything of the nature of a vault. All the more insane were the circumvolution of that fictitious _Primum Mobile_, which is higher, deeper, and still more immeasurable. Moreover, this inconceivable _Primum Mobile_ ought to be material and of enormous depth, far surpassing all inferior nature in size: for nohow else could it conduct from East to West so many and such vast bodies of stars, and the universe even down to the Earth: and it requires us to accept in the government of the stars a universal power and a despotism perpetual and intensely irksome. That _Primum Mobile_ bears no visible body, is nohow recognizable, is a fiction believed in by those people, accepted by the weak-minded folk, who wonder more at our