e
contained in one single sphere? To attain this it seems to me much
easier and more convenient to make them motionless instead of moving,
just as the paving-stones on the market-place, for instance, remain in
order more easily than the swarms of children running about on them.

"Finally, the seventh difficulty: If we attribute the daily rotation to
the higher region of the heavens, we should have to endow it with force
and power sufficient to carry with it the innumerable host of the fixed
stars--every one a body of very great compass and much larger than the
earth--and all the planets, although the latter, like the earth, move
naturally in an opposite direction. In the midst of all this the little
earth, single and alone, would obstinately and wilfully withstand such
force--a supposition which, it appears to me, has much against it. I
could also not explain why the earth, a freely poised body, balancing
itself about its centre, and surrounded on all sides by a fluid medium,
should not be affected by the universal rotation. Such difficulties,
however, do not confront us if we attribute motion to the earth--such
a small, insignificant body in comparison with the whole universe, and
which for that very reason cannot exercise any power over the latter.

"Simplicio. You support your arguments throughout, it seems to me,
on the greater ease and simplicity with which the said effects are
produced. You mean that as a cause the motion of the earth alone is just
as satisfactory as the motion of all the rest of the universe with the
exception of the earth; you hold the actual event to be much easier
in the former case than in the latter. For the ruler of the universe,
however, whose might is infinite, it is no less easy to move the
universe than the earth or a straw balm. But if his power is infinite,
why should not a greater, rather than a very small, part of it be
revealed to me?

"Salviati. If I had said that the universe does not move on account of
the impotence of its ruler, I should have been wrong and your rebuke
would have been in order. I admit that it is just as easy for an
infinite power to move a hundred thousand as to move one. What I said,
however, does not refer to him who causes the motion, but to that
which is moved. In answer to your remark that it is more fitting for an
infinite power to reveal a large part of itself rather than a little, I
answer that, in relation to the infinite, one part is not greater th