And I reasoned, that if God had adapted motions to the orbits in some relation to the distances, it was probable that he had also arrayed the distances themselves in relation to something else. "Finding no success by this method, I tried another, of singular audacity. I inserted a new planet between Mars and Jupiter, and another between Venus and Mercury, both of which I supposed invisible, perhaps on account of their smallness, and I attributed to each a certain period of revolution.[179] I thought that I could thus contrive some equality of proportions, increasing between every two, from the sun to the fixed stars. For instance, the Earth is nearer Venus in parts of the terrestrial orbit, than Mars is to the Earth in parts of the orbit of Mars. But not even the interposition of a new planet sufficed for the enormous gap between Mars and Jupiter; for the proportion of Jupiter to the new planet was still greater than that of Saturn to Jupiter. And although, by this supposition, I got some sort of a proportion, yet there was no reasonable conclusion, no certain determination of the number of the planets either towards the fixed stars, till we should get as far as them, nor ever towards the Sun, because the division in this proportion of the residuary space within Mercury might be continued without end. Nor could I form any conjecture, from the mobility of particular numbers, why, among an infinite number, so few should be moveable. The opinion advanced by Rheticus in his Narrative is improbable, where he reasons from the sanctity of the number six to the number of the six moveable heavens; for he who is inquiring of the frame of the world itself, must not derive reasons from these numbers, which have gained importance from things of later date. "I sought again, in another way, whether the distance of every planet is not as the residuum of a sine; and its motion as the residuum of the sine of the complement in the same quadrant. [Illustration]