the
magnitudes and distances of the heavenly bodies, is, that the causes of
our sensations and perceptions, whatever they are, are not less uniform
than the sensations and perceptions themselves.

It is further alleged, that we calculate eclipses, and register the
various phenomena of the heavenly bodies. Thales predicted an eclipse of
the sun, which took place nearly six hundred years before the Christian
era. The Babylonians, the Persians, the Hindoos, and the Chinese early
turned their attention to astronomy. Many of their observations were
accurately recorded; and their tables extend to a period of three
thousand years before the birth of Christ. Does not all this strongly
argue the solidity of the science to which they belong? Who, after
this, will have the presumption to question, that the men who profess
astronomy proceed on real grounds, and have a profound knowledge of
these things, which at first sight might appear to be set at a distance
so far removed from our ken?

The answer to this is easy. I believe in all the astronomy that was
believed by Thales. I do not question the statements relative to the
heavenly bodies that were delivered by the wise men of the East. But the
supposed discoveries that were made in the eighteenth, and even in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, purporting to ascertain the
precise distance of the sun, the planets, and even of the fixed stars,
are matters entirely distinct from this.

Among the earliest astronomers of Greece were Thales, Anaximander,
Anaximenes and Anaxagoras. Thales, we are told, held that the earth is
a sphere or globe, Anaximenes that it is like a round, flat table;
Anaximander that the sun is like a chariot-wheel, and is twenty-eight
times larger than the earth. Anaxagoras was put in prison for affirming
that the sun was by many degrees larger than the whole Peloponnesus(66).
Kepler is of opinion that all the stars are at an equal distance from
us, and are fixed in the same surface or sphere.

(66) Plutarch, De Placitis Philosophorum. Diogenes Laertius.

In reality the observations and the facts of astronomy do not depend
either upon the magnitudes or the distances of the heavenly bodies. They
proceed in the first place upon what may lie seen with the naked eye.
They require an accurate and persevering attention. They may be assisted
by telescopes. But they relate only to the sun and the planets. We are
bound to ascertain, as nearly as possi