_The Author._ Your words are wise, and I ought therefore to bow to them, and follow your imperative advice. Nevertheless I cannot make up my mind to do so, absolutely. I am going to propose a middle course to you. In confidence, and between ourselves, I will explain my ideas about God to you, I will tell you in what part of the immense universe I place this dazzling personality. If the idea seems to you absurd, untenable, or even too hazardous, you will frankly tell me so, and thus duly warned, I will keep my theory to myself; if not---- _Theophilus._ (Interrupting him.) An excellent plan. There can be no objection to that. Go on, I am listening. (At this point, Theophilus seats himself, his elbow resting on a book, and a cigar in his mouth, and composes himself to listen, with an expression of grave attention, dashed with suspicious severity, suitable to the arbitrator in a literary and philosophical matter.) _The Author._ You want to know, my dear Theophilus, where I place God? I place Him at the centre of the universe, or, I had better say, at the central focus, which must exist somewhere, of all the stars which compose the universe, and which, carried along by a common motion, circulate in concert around this central focus. _Theophilus._ Forgive me, but I do not seize your meaning exactly. _The Author._ You will understand it presently. Remember, to start from, that I place God at the common focus of the actual motion of the entire universe. But, where is the common focus? In order to know that, we must first of all know the universe, and all the order of its movements. _Theophilus._ All that is explained in the course of your work. _The Author._ No, my friend, you are mistaken. In my work I have spoken of the solar system only, and a very incomplete and insufficient idea would be gained of the universe by contemplating that system alone. We must not, as is too often done, confound the _world_ and the _universe_. The _world_ is our world, that is to say, the solar system, of which we form a part; the _universe_ is the agglomeration of all the worlds or systems similar to our world, or solar system. In the manuscript which you have just read, I have only been able to expound one little corner, one insignificant fraction of the universe. _Theophilus._ You call the solar world a little corner.