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But you mathematicians, friend Apollonides, say that the sun is distant from our upper sphere infinite thousands of miles, and after him the day-star or Venus, Mercury, and other planets, which being situated under the fixed stars, and separated from one another by great intervals, make their revolutions; and in the mean time you think that the world affords not to heavy and terrestrial bodies any great and large place or distance one from another. You plainly see, it would be ridiculous, if we should deny the moon to be earth because it is not seated in the lowest region of the world, and yet affirm it to be a star, though so many thousands of miles remote from the upper firmanent, as if it were plunged into some deep gulf. For she is so low before all other stars, that the measure of the distances cannot be expressed, and you mathematicians want numbers to compute and reckon it; but she in a manner touches the earth, making her revolution so near the tops of the mountains, that she seems, as Empedocles has it, to leave even the very tracks of her chariot-wheels behind her. For oftentimes she surpasses not the shadow of the earth, which is very short through the excessive greatness of the sun that shines upon it, but seems to turn so near the superficies, and (as one may say) between the arms and in the bosom of the earth, that it withholds from her the light of the sun, because she mounts that shady, earthly, and nocturnal region which is the lot and inheritance of the earth. And therefore I am of opinion, we may boldly say that the moon is within the limits and confines of the earth, seeing she is even darkened by the summits of its mountains.
