what my reason holds out to me, bring myself to believe. So that when I am told of the uselessness of an immense space interposed between the orbits of the planets and the fixed stars, empty and valueless, I reply that there is temerity in attempting by feeble reason to judge the works of God, and in calling vain and superfluous every part of the universe which is of no use to us.—_Sagr._ Say rather, and I believe you would say better, that we have no means of knowing what is of use to us; and I hold it to be one of the greatest pieces of arrogance and folly that can be in this world to say, because I know not of what use Jupiter or Saturn are to me, that therefore these planets are superfluous; nay more, that there are no such things in nature. To understand what effect is worked upon us by this or that heavenly body (since you will have it that all their use must have a reference to us), it would be necessary to remove it for a while, and then the effect which I find no longer produced in me, I may say that it depended upon that star. Besides, who will dare say that the space which they call too vast and useless between Saturn and the fixed stars is void of other bodies belonging to the universe. Must it be so because we do not see them: then I suppose the four Medicean planets, and the companions of Saturn, came into the heavens when we first began to see them, and not before! and, by the same rule, the other innumerable fixed stars did not exist before men saw them. The nebulæ were till lately only white flakes, till with the telescope we have made of them constellations of bright and beautiful stars. Oh presumptuous! rather, Oh rash ignorance of man!"