THE THEORY OF THE FIRMAMENT. BUT as so many foiling inconveniences are found to spring up on all sides, it should be deemed satisfactory if any thing can be avouched less revolting. Let us, therefore, construct a scheme of the universe, according to that measure of history hitherto known to us, reserving for our future judgment all new lights, after history, and through history, our philosophy, by induction, have reached a maturer age. may But we will, in the outset, premise some points that have reference to the matter composing the heavenly bodies, whence their motion and formation may be better understood; afterwards setting forth our thoughts and ideas of that motion itself, the chief subject under discussion. Nature then, in the separating of matter, seems to have drawn an impassable bar between the rare and dense, and to have assigned the globe of the earth to the order of the dense; but every thing, from the very surface of the earth, and its waters, to the utmost extremity of the firmament, to that of the rare or volatile, as it were, to twin classes of first principles, not indeed of equal but of suitable portions. Nor indeed does either the water clinging to the clouds, or the wind pent up in the earth, disarrange this natural and appropriate position of things: but this difference, between rare or volatile, and dense or tangible, is entirely primordial or essential, and is what the system of the universe chiefly has recourse to. It proceeds from a state. of things the most simple possible-this is from the abundance and scarceness of matter, in proportion to its extension. What belong to the order of subtile or volatile, as VOL. XV. B found here among us, (we are speaking of those bodies that are simple and perfect, not of such as are compounded and imperfectly mixed,) are clearly those two bodies, air and flame. But these are to be propounded as bodies utterly heterogeneous, not, as is commonly supposed, that flame is nothing else than air set on fire. To these correspond, in the higher regions, the ætherial and sidereal nature, as, in the inferior, water and oil, and in the still deeper parts, mercury and sulphur, and generally crude and fat bodies, or, in other words, bodies that have a repugnance to, and such as are susceptible of, flame; (for salts are of a compounded nature, consisting of crude and at the same time also of inflammable parts). It is now to be seen by what compact these two great families of things, air and flame, shall have occupied by far the greater part of the universe, and what are those parts they hold in the system. In air nearest to the earth, flame lives but a momentary life, and utterly perishes. But after the air has begun to be more depurate from the effluviæ of the earth and well rarified, the nature of flame through various adventures explores its way, and tries to take its station in the air, and after a time acquires some duration, not from succession, as with us, but in identity; which takes place for a time in some of the feebler comets, which are in a manner of an intermediate nature between a successive and a fixed flame; the flamy nature however is not fixed or established, before its arrival at the body of the moon. There the flame lays down its extinguishable part, and protects itself on all sides, but yet it is a flame, weak without vigour, and having little of radiation of that kind; that is, neither vivid from its own nature, nor much excited by a contrary one; neither is it sincere, but, from its composition with an etherial substance, such as is there met with, it is stained and mixed up. And in the region of Mercury flame has not very plentifully established itself, since, by the accumulation of its whole amount, it is able to form only a small planet, and that withal labouring and struggling, like an ignis fatuus, with a great and highly disturbed diversity Per varios_casus, per tot discrimina rerum, Virg. En. iii. 208 ، Per varios casus tentat et experitur,' may be translated after various adventurous efforts tries,' or, adventurous through many casualties tries.' t Identitus: quavis actio repetita. of fluctuating motions, and not bearing to be separated but for a small distance from the guardian protection of the sun. Moreover, after we arrive at the region of Venus, the flamy nature begins to gain strength and to wax brighter, and to be collected into a globe of a tolerable size; nevertheless she also is the handmaid of the sun, and shudders with an abhorrence of any greater recession from him. But in the region of the sun, flame is set, as it were, on a throne, the mean being among the flames of the planets, for there it is stronger and more glittering than the flames of the fixed stars, on account of the greater restraining * influence shed all around, and the closest possible union. But flame in the region of Mars is observed to be likewise powerful, denoting by its splendor the sun's vicinity, yet existing of its own proper virtue, and admitting of a separation from the sun to the extent of the whole diameter of the firmament. In the region of Jupiter, however, flame, laying aside, in a gradual manner, this emulation, appears more serene and clear, not so much from its proper nature, (as the planet Venus, she being more sparkling,) but from being less moved and excited by the nature spread around him; † in which region it is probable that takes place, which Galileo devised, to wit, that the firmament there begins to be studded with stars, although from their minuteness invisible. But again, in the region of Saturn the nature of flame seems to become somewhat languid and faint, as being both farther removed from an alliance with the sun, and exhausted by the neighbouring constellated firmament. Lastly, a flamy and sidereal nature having overpowered the ætherial nature, gives a constellated firmament composed of an ætherial and sidereal nature, as the globe of the earth is of continent and waters scattered up and down on this side and that side, the ætherial substance being however overruled, subdued, and assimilated, so as to thoroughly endure and become subservient to the sidereal. Wherefore, from the earth to the summit of the firmament are found three * Antiperistasin Tapisao signifies, generally, circumstance' but in Athen. 1. 5. it also denotes circuitus': ai de Tys Tεpisaσεws Júpaι Tov ápμòv čikoσi ovoai, portæ, quæ in circuitu erant, viginti, &c.; therefore the illustrious author may mean by antiperistasis' the attractive influence of the sun opposed to, and which detains [cohibet] the planets in their orbits. † Or, "from the nature spread around him being less," &c. according as irritata and exasperata are taken in the nominative or ablative case. |