For it is true that we are thus closely bound to the planets. The family tie among us is of far more force and significance than in any ordinary case of common origin. Human family ties wear, as we know, often into the merest threads, or even become no ties at all. But that between the earth and the planets remains apparently as close and strong as ever it was. The law of gravity, under which the earth draws toward its center every atom of matter surrounding it, and thus holds together all the atoms composing it, is not solely terrestrial in its application. It is probably universal. It certainly applies to every part of our little family of worlds. Every particle in the solar system attracts toward it every other particle in that system with a force determined by its mass and its distance. The sun, by reason of its immense size, compels the earth and all the other planets forever to circle around it. But the planets themselves have just as much power of attraction as the sun, atom for atom. Thus, while the sun controls the motions of all of them, each pulls at the other, and, according to its power, determines how much the path of each shall vary from the course around the sun it otherwise would make. In the case of the smaller planets, this gravitational influence is, of course, very slight, and so subtle that we here on earth are not even conscious of it. But it is, nevertheless, real and continuous. It is greatest between the two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn; but it was enough in the case of Uranus and Neptune to lead, by its mere manifestation on the earth, to the discovery of Neptune, the farthest planet. Being thus of the same origin with the planets, having the same life history, being bound to them in space by a tie that is perhaps eternal, how can we fail to have the most intimate interest in their nature and all that concerns them? But in addition to their close relationship to us there is, to make them of peculiar interest, the fact that, after the sun and the moon, they are for our eyes the most splendid objects in all the brilliant panorama of the sky. Such of them as we can see at all with the naked eye are most of the time much brighter than any first-magnitude star. As they wander from constellation to constellation the soft light of their placid faces gives a beauty and variety to the spectacle that endears them to us, and at the same time enhances by contrast their own charm and that of the glittering, unchanging stars.