"...Whether the sky be clear or cloudy, it always seems to us to have the
shape of an elliptic arch; far from having the form of a circular arch,
it always seems flattened and depressed above our heads, and gradually
to become farther removed toward the horizon.
Our ancestors imagined
that this blue vault was really what the eye would lead them to believe
it to be; but, as Voltaire
remarks, this is about as reasonable as if a silk-worm took his web for
the limits of the universe. The Greek astronomers represented it as
formed of a solid crystal substance; and so recently as Copernicus, a large number of astronomers thought it was as solid as plate-glass. The Latin poets placed the divinities of Olympus
and the stately mythological court upon this vault, above the planets
and the fixed stars.
Previous to the knowledge that the earth was moving
in space, and that space is everywhere, theologians had installed the
Trinity in the empyrean, the glorified body of Jesus, that of the Virgin Mary, the angelic hierarchy,
the saints, and all the heavenly host....
A naïve missionary of the
Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of the terrestrial paradise,
he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met, and that he
discovered a certain point where they were not joined together, and
where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the
heavens..."
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