1. Besides the stars, of which I have spoken in the last chapter, whatsoever other bodies there be in the world, they may be all comprehended under the name of intersidereal bodies. And these I have already supposed to be either the most fluid æther, or such bodies whose parts have some degree of cohesion. Now, these differ from one another in their several _consistencies_, _magnitudes_, _motions_, and _figures_. In consistency, I suppose some bodies to be harder, others softer through all the several degrees of _tenacity_. In magnitude, some to be greater, others less, and many unspeakably little. For we must remember that, by the understanding, quantity is divisible into divisibles perpetually. And, therefore, if a man could do as much with his hands as he can with his understanding, he would be able to take from any given magnitude a part which should be less than any other magnitude given. But the Omnipotent Creator of the world can actually from a part of any thing take another part, as far as we by our understanding can conceive the same to be divisible. Wherefore there is no impossible smallness of bodies. And what hinders but that we may think this likely? For we know there are some living creatures so small that we can scarce see their whole bodies. Yet even these have their young ones; their little veins and other vessels, and their eyes so small as that no microscope can make them visible. So that we cannot suppose any magnitude so little, but that our very supposition is actually exceeded by nature. Besides, there are now such microscopes commonly made, that the things we see with them appear a hundred thousand times bigger than they would do if we looked upon them with our bare eyes. Nor is there any doubt but that by augmenting the power of these microscopes (for it may be augmented as long as neither matter nor the hands of workmen are wanting) every one of those hundred thousandth parts might yet appear a hundred thousand times greater than they did before. Neither is the smallness of some bodies to be more admired than the vast greatness of others. For it belongs to the same Infinite Power, as well to augment infinitely as infinitely to diminish. To make the great orb, namely, that whose radius reacheth from the earth to the sun, but as a point in respect of the distance between the sun and the fixed stars; and, on the contrary, to make a body so little, as to be in the same proportion less than any other visible body, proceeds equally from one and the same Author of Nature. But this of the immense distance of the fixed stars, which for a long time was accounted an incredible thing, is now believed by almost all the learned. Why then should not that other, of the smallness of some bodies, become credible at some time or other? For the Majesty of God appears no less in small things than in great; and as it exceedeth human sense in the immense greatness of the universe, so also it doth in the smallness of the parts thereof.