Chap. 3.] ACCOUXT OF THE TVOELD. 17 credible swiftness ^ I am not able to say, whether the sound caused by the whirling about of so great a mass be excessive, and, therefore, far beyond what our ears can perceive, nor, indeed, whether the resounding of so many stars, all carried along at the same time and revolving in their orbits, may not produce a kind of delightfid harmony of incredible sweet- ness^. To us, who are in the interior, the world appears to glide silently along, both by day and by night. Various circumstances in natiu*e prove to us, that there are impressed on the heavens innumerable figures of animals and of all kinds of objects, and that its surface is not per- fectly polished like the eggs of birds, as some celebrated authors assert^. For w^e find that the seeds of all bodies fall do^Ti from it, principally into the ocean, and, being mixed together, that a variety of monstrous forms are in this way frequently produced. And, indeed, this is evident to the eye ; for, in one part, Ave have the figure of a wain, in another of a bear, of a bull, and of a letter"* ; while, in the middle of them, over our heads, there is a white circle^. (4.) AVith respect to the name, I am influenced by the unanimous opinions of all nations. For what the Greeks, from its being ornamented, have termed ivocr/jos, we, from its perfect and complete elegance, have termed oniindus. The name caelum, no doubt, refers to its being engraven, as it
- See Ptolemy, uhi supra.
2 This opinion, which was maintained by Pythagoras, is noticed and derided by Ai'istotle, De Coelo, hb. ii. cap. 9. p. 462-3. A brief account of Pythagoras's doctrine on this subject is contained in Enfield's Pliilo- sophy, i. 386. •* Phny probably here refers to the opinion which Cicero puts into the mouth of one of the interlocutors in his treatise De Nat. Deor. ii. 47, " Quid enun pulchrius ea figiu'a, quse sola omnes ahas figuras complesa continet, quseque nilul asperitatis habere, niliil offensionis potest, nihO. incisum angvihs, nihil anfractibus, nihil eminens, niliU lacunosum ? " ■* The letter A, in the constellation of the triangle ; it is named Af Xrwrov by Ai'atus, 1. 235 ; also by Manihus, i. 360. We may remark, that, except in this one case, the constellations have no visible resemblance to the objects of which they bear the name. ^ " Locum hmic Phnii de Gralaxia, sive Lactea via, interpretantur omnes docti." Alexandre, in Lemaire, i. 227. It may be remarked, that the word vertex is here used in the sense of the astronomical term zenith, not to signify the pole. VOL. I.
