We did not know why, but it seemed as if the
vessels of our tiny fleet _would_ drift towards each other, in spite of all
our efforts to keep them apart. Have you not found it so with your boats?
It certainly was with ours, but we should have been surprised if anyone
had told us that as they ran against each other, our paper boats were but
obeying the "law of gravitation," each little vessel drawing the other to
itself by a power which it had of attracting it. Knowing this rule makes
many things plain. If you throw your ball high into the air, it is sure
to come down again. Why? Because the earth, which is a much larger ball,
attracts it to itself by the law of gravitation; by the same law, the drops
of rain in a shower fall to the ground; by the same law, we and all the
people upon the globe are able to stand firm on it; by the same law, the
great earth itself, the moon, and all the planets are kept in their places.
But what is the mighty magnet which has power to draw the earth to itself?
It is that wonderful globe the sun, which is more than a million times
as large as the earth; and though it is so far, far away--at a distance
greater than we can have any idea of--yet by its mighty power of drawing
them to itself, makes our earth, as well as the other planets, move round
it in the most beautiful order, and keeps them all in their places.
Although Newton felt sure that this unseen but resistless power, of which
he afterwards spoke reverently as "the finger of God," kept the moon going
round the earth and the earth round the sun, yet he was at first silent
about his great discovery; he worked and waited for long years, until he
had proved that it was not merely a happy guess, but that he had really
discovered the rule which governs the motion of sun, moon and stars.
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