Читать книгу The Tatler (Vol. 1-4) - Joseph Addison - Страница 165

The learned have so long laboured under the imputation of dryness and dulness in their accounts of their phenomena, that an ingenious gentleman of our society has resolved to write a system of philosophy in a more lively method, both as to the matter and language, than has been hitherto attempted. He read to us the plan upon which he intends to proceed. I thought his account, by way of fable of the worlds about us, had so much vivacity in it, that I could not forbear transcribing his hypothesis, to give the reader a taste of my friend's treatise, which is now in the press.⁴¹⁹

"The inferior deities having designed on a day to play a game at football, knead together a numberless collection of dancing atoms into the form of seven rolling globes: and that nature might be kept from a dull inactivity, each separate particle is endued with a principle of motion, or a power of attraction, whereby all the several parcels of matter draw each other proportionately to their magnitudes and distances, into such a remarkable variety of different forms, as to produce all the wonderful appearances we now observe in empire, philosophy, and religion. To proceed; at the beginning of the game, each of the globes being struck forward with a vast violence, ran out of sight, and wandered in a straight line through the infinite spaces. The nimble deities pursue, breathless almost, and spent in the eager chase; each of them caught hold of one, and stamped it with his name; as, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and so of the rest. To prevent this inconvenience for the future, the seven are condemned to a precipitation, which in our inferior style we call 'gravity.' Thus the tangential and centripetal forces, by their counter-struggle, make the celestial bodies describe an exact ellipsis."

There will be added to this an appendix, in defence of the first day of the term according to the Oxford Almanac,⁴²⁰ by a learned knight of this realm, with an apology for the said knight's manner of dress; proving, that his habit, according to this hypothesis, is the true modern and fashionable; and that buckles are not to be worn, by this system, till the 10th of March, in the year 1714, which, according to the computation of some of our greatest divines, is to be the first year of the Millennium⁴²¹; in which blessed age, all habits will be reduced to a primitive simplicity; and whoever shall be found to have persevered in a constancy of dress, in spite of all the allurements of profane and heathen habits, shall be rewarded with a never-fading doublet of a thousand years. All points in the system which are doubted, shall be attested by the knight's extemporary oath, for the satisfaction of his readers.