ues of
his orbes, and of light. And if the Earth were not made to spin with a
diurnal revolution, the Sun would ever hang over some determinate part with
constant beams, and by long tarriance would scorch it, and pulverize it,
and dissipate it, and the Earth would sustain the deepest wounds; and
nothing good would issue forth; it would not vegetate, it would not allow
life to animals, and mankind would perish. In other parts, all things would
verily be frightful and stark with extreme cold; whence all high places
would be very rough, unfruitful, inaccessible, covered with a pall of
perpetual shades and eternal night. Since the Earth herself would not
choose to endure this so miserable and horrid appearance on both her faces,
she, by her magnetick astral genius, revolves in an orbit, that by a
perpetual change of light there may be a perpetual alternation of things,
heat and cold, risings and settings, day and night, morn and eve, noon and
midnight. Thus the Earth seeks and re-seeks the Sun, turns away from him
and pursues him, by her own wondrous magnetick virtue. Besides, it is not
only from the Sun that evil would impend, if the Earth were to stay still
and be deprived of solar benefit; but from the Moon also serious dangers
would threaten. For we see how the ocean rises and swells beneath certain
known positions of the Moon: And if there were not through the daily
rotation of Earth a speedy transit of the Moon, the flowing sea would be
driven above its level into certain regions, and many shores would be
overwhelmed with huge waves. In order then that Earth may not perish in
various ways, and be brought to confusion, she turns herself about by
magnetick and primary virtue: and the like motions exist also in the rest
of the Wanderers, urged specially by the movement and light of other
bodies. For the Moon also turns herself about in a monthly course, to
receive in succession the Sun's beams in which she, like the Earth, {225}
rejoices, and is refreshed: nor could she endure them for ever on one
particular side without great harm and sure destruction. Thus each one of
the moving globes is for its own safety borne in an orbit either in some
wider circle, or only by a rotation of its body, or by both together. But
it is ridiculous for a man a philosopher to suppose that all the fixed
stars and the planets and the still higher heavens revolve to no other
purpose, save the advantage of the Earth. It is the Earth, then, that