e Earth's motion, looking for it externally and internally,
understands magnetick vigour to be internal, active, and disponent; also
that the Sun is an external promotive cause, and that the Earth is not so
vile and abject a body as it is generally considered. Accordingly there is
a diurnal movement on the part of the Earth for its own sake and for its
advantage. Those who make out that that terrestrial motion (if such there
be) takes place not only in longitude, but also in latitude, talk nonsense.
For Nature has set in the Earth determinate poles, and definite unconfused
revolutions. Thus the Moon revolves with respect to the Sun in a monthly
course; yet having her own definite poles, facing determinate parts of the
heaven. To suppose that the air moves the Earth would be {228} ridiculous.
For air is only exhalation, and is an enveloping effluvium from the Earth
itself; the winds also are only a rush of the exhalations in some part near
the Earth's surface; the height of its motion is slight, and in all regions
there are various winds unlike and contrary. Some writers, not finding in
the matter of the Earth the cause (for they say that they find nothing
except solidity and consistency), deny it to be in its form; and they only
admit as qualities of the Earth cold and dryness, which are unable to move
the Earth. The Stoicks attribute a soul to the Earth, whence they pronounce
(amid the laughter of the learned) the Earth to be an animal. This
magnetick form, whether vigour or soul, is astral. Let the learned lament
and bewail the fact that none of those old Peripateticks, nor even those
common philosophizers heretofore, nor Joannes Costaeus, who mocks at such
things, were able to apprehend this grand and important natural fact. But
as to the notion that surface inequality of mountains and valleys would
prevent the Earth's diurnal revolution, there is nothing in it: for they do
not mar the Earth's roundness, being but slight excrescences compared with
the whole Earth; nor does the Earth revolve alone without its emanations.
Beyond the emanations, there is no renitency. There is no more labour
exerted in the Earth's motion than in the march of the rest of the Stars:
nor is it excelled in dignity by some stars. To say that it is frivolous to
suppose that the Earth rather seeks a view of the Sun, than the Sun of the
Earth, is a mark of great obstinacy and unwisdom. Of the theory of the
rotation we have often spoken. If anyone s