This succession of ideas indicates the course pursued in the
earliest stages of perceptive contemplation, and reminds us of the ancient
conception of the "sea-girt disk of earth," supporting the vault of heaven.
It begins to exercise in action
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at the spot where it originated, and passes from the consideration of the
known to the unknown, of the near to the distant. It corresponds with the
method pursued in our elementary works on astronomy (and which is so
admirable in a mathematical point of view), of proceeding from the apparent
to the real movements of the heavenly bodies.
Another course of ideas must, however, be pursued in a work which proposes
merely to give an exposition of what is known -- of what may in the present
state of our knowledge be regarded as certain, or as merely probable in a
greater or lesser degree -- and does not enter into a consideration of the
proofs on which such results have been based. Here, therefore, we do not
proceed from the subjective point of view of human interests. The
terrestrial must be treated only as grand and free, uninfluenced by motives
of proximity, social sympathy, or relative utility. A physical cosmography
-- a picture of the universe -- does not begin, therefore, with the picture
of the universe -- does not begin, therefore, with the terrestrial, but with
that which fills the regions of space.
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