revolution being both the cause and the measure of that space of time.
Its orbit is not a circle; it is an ellipse, but not very far removed
from the circular path. The terrestrial axis is not at right angles to
that ellipse, else there were no seasons; it is somewhat inclined. The
earth, once regarded as the fixed and solid centre of creation, is now
to be conceived of as a globular sphere of some fire-blown stream,
bounded by a film of rock like a soap-bubble, carrying an unresting sea
in the hollows of its rind, swathed in a soft gauze of air, going round
upon itself every day, running round the sun every year; and all that
with so much silence, security, and stillness of speed that nobody ever
suspects the dread predicament of physical circumstance in which he
wakes and sleeps, lives and dies, does good or evil, and passes away to
judgment. It is difficult to realize the truth, now that it is told; for
the knowledge of the intellect is one thing, and the consent of the
whole man is quite another.

Precisely as the earth goes round the sun from year to year, the moon
goes round the earth from month to month, and that at a distance of some
240,000 miles; the same lunar side or hemisphere being always turned
toward us, although that satellite turns upon her own axis as well as
the earth and the sun. The earth is in repose so far as the moon is
concerned; it is her sun. The two combined, being as true a unity as any
chemical molecule which is composed of two atoms, go round the sun as if
they were one; the earth carries her moon with her. So that it is
possible, if not probable in the first instance, that the sun, though in
repose as to the earth and her moon (and, indeed, to all the planets yet
to be mentioned) may be in motion on some vast orbit of his own; an
orbit along which he carries all his planetary adherents with him, just
as the earth takes her moon round the sun. It is curious to perceive
how, not only in the case of our own moon, but in the cases of the moons
of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, and actually in those of all the planets
considered as the moons of the sun, the Platonic epicycle really holds
good. The earth turns on her heel, with the moon held out at arm's
length, while she goes round the amphitheatre before the solar eye; so
do the other moon-bearers. So does the sun himself upon a vaster arena
and before a greater spectator, like another Briareus; holding out his
seventeen planets, and nobody k