He even seems to have regarded their edges--in his time their actual thinness was already well known--as useful ground for the support of living creatures, for he carefully calculated the aggregate area of these edges and found that it considerably exceeded the area of the entire surface of the earth. Indeed, Dr. Dick found room for more inhabitants on Saturn's rings than on Saturn itself, for, excluding the gauze ring, undiscovered in his day, the two surfaces of the rings are greater in area than the surface of the globe of the planet. He did not attack the problem of the weight of bodies on worlds in the form of broad, flat, thin, surfaces like Saturn's rings, or indulge in any reflections on the interrelations of the inhabitants of the opposite sides, although he described the wonderful appearance of Saturn and other celestial objects as viewed from the rings. But all these speculations fall to the ground in face of the simple fact that if we could reach Saturn's rings we should find nothing to stand upon, except a cloud of swiftly flying dust or a swarm of meteors, swayed by contending attractions. And, indeed, it is likely that upon arriving in the immediate neighborhood of the rings they would virtually disappear! Seen close at hand their component particles might be so widely separated that all appearance of connection between them would vanish, and it has been estimated that from Saturn's surface the rings, instead of presenting a gorgeous arch spanning the heavens, may be visible only as a faintly gleaming band, like the Milky Way or the zodiacal light. In this respect the mystic Swedenborg appears to have had a clearer conception of the true nature of Saturn's rings than did Dr. Dick, for in his book on The Earths in the Universe he says--using the word "belt" to describe the phenomenon of the rings: "Being questioned concerning that great belt which appears from our earth to rise above the horizon of that planet, and to vary its situations, they [the inhabitants of Saturn] said that it does not appear to them as a belt, but only as somewhat whitish, like snow in the heaven, in various directions."