perceive that anything, anywhere, has a perpetual,
gravitating tendency in any _other_ direction than to the centre of the
Earth; yet (with an exception hereafter to be specified) it is a fact
that every earthly thing (not to speak now of every heavenly thing) has
a tendency not _only_ to the Earth's centre but in every conceivable
direction besides.

Now, although the philosophic cannot be said to _err with_ the vulgar in
this matter, they nevertheless permit themselves to be influenced,
without knowing it, by the _sentiment_ of the vulgar idea. "Although the
Pagan fables are not believed," says Bryant, in his very erudite
"Mythology," "yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences
from them as from existing realities." I mean to assert that the merely
_sensitive perception_ of gravity as we experience it on Earth, beguiles
mankind into the fancy of _concentralization_ or _especiality_
respecting it--has been continually biasing towards this fancy even the
mightiest intellects--perpetually, although imperceptibly, leading them
away from the real characteristics of the principle; thus preventing
them, up to this date, from ever getting a glimpse of that vital truth
which lies in a diametrically opposite direction--behind the principle's
_essential_ characteristics--those, _not_ of concentralization or
especiality--but of _universality_ and _diffusion_. This "vital truth" is
_Unity_ as the _source_ of the phaenomenon.

Let me now repeat the definition of gravity:--_Every atom, of every body,
attracts every other atom, both of its own and of every other body_,
with a force which varies inversely as the squares of the distances of
the attracting and attracted atom.

Here let the reader pause with me, for a moment, in contemplation of the
miraculous--of the ineffable--of the altogether unimaginable complexity of
relation involved in the fact that _each atom attracts every other
atom_--involved merely in this fact of the attraction, without reference
to the law or mode in which the attraction is manifested--involved
_merely_ in the fact that each atom attracts every other atom _at all_,
in a wilderness of atoms so numerous that those which go to the
composition of a cannon-ball, exceed, probably, in mere point of number,
all the stars which go to the constitution of the Universe.

Had we discovered, simply, that each atom tended to some one favorite
point--to some especially attractive atom--we should still have