y engaging to the Fancy, as well as to our Reason,
in the Treatises of Metals, Minerals, Plants, and Meteors. But when we
survey the whole Earth at once, and the several Planets that lie within
its Neighbourhood, we are filled with a pleasing Astonishment, to see so
many Worlds hanging one above another, and sliding round their Axles in
such an amazing Pomp and Solemnity. If, after this, we contemplate those
wild Fields of _Ether_, that reach in Height as far as from _Saturn_ to
the fixt Stars, and run abroad almost to an Infinitude, our Imagination
finds its Capacity filled with so immense a Prospect, and puts it self
upon the Stretch to comprehend it. But if we yet rise higher, and
consider the fixt Stars as so many vast Oceans of Flame, that are each
of them attended with a different Sett of Planets, and still discover
new Firmaments and new Lights that are sunk farther in those
unfathomable Depths of _Ether_, so as not to be seen by the strongest of
our Telescopes, we are lost in such a Labyrinth of Suns and Worlds, and
confounded with the Immensity and Magnificence of Nature.

Nothing is more pleasant to the Fancy, than to enlarge it self by
Degrees, in its Contemplation of the various Proportions [which [1]] its
several Objects bear to each other, when it compares the Body of Man to
the Bulk of the whole Earth, the Earth to the Circle it describes round
the Sun, that Circle to the Sphere of the fixt Stars, the sphere of the
fixt Stars to the Circuit of the whole Creation, the whole Creation it
self to the infinite Space that is every where diffused about it; or
when the Imagination works downward, and considers the Bulk of a human
Body in respect of an Animal, a hundred times less than a Mite, the
particular Limbs of such an Animal, the different Springs [which [2]]
actuate the Limbs, the Spirits which set these Springs a going, and the
proportionable Minuteness of these several Parts, before they have
arrived at their full Growth and Perfection. But if, after all this, we
take the least Particle of these Animal Spirits, and consider its
Capacity of being Wrought into a World, that shall contain within those
narrow Dimensions a Heaven and Earth, Stars and Planets, and every
different Species of living Creatures, in the same Analogy and
Proportion they bear to each other in our own Universe; such a
Speculation, by reason of its Nicety, appears ridiculous to those who
have not turned their Thoughts that way, though a