Globe

“ The insignificant little globe called the Earth furnishes the only assurance of the higher forms of life, and, with the one exception of a globe even less than ours, of life in any stage of evolution. The Earth is not the millionth part of the known matter of our system, and, compared with the space occupied by that system, is far more insignificant than the smallest fleck of foam in the ocean. ”

“ The globe is played upon around its whole circuit by the billows of the mighty ocean; it is encompassed by the strata of the atmosphere ever moving in sound-waves; and is swept from pole to pole by a flood of the most diversified tones which have their origin in nature. Over the eternal snow-peaks of the mountains, where all life has long since been made stark by the cold, howl icy storms like the voice of a gigantic organ. ”

“ No matter how vast may be the depth which our instruments have sounded, there is yet a beyond of infinite extent. Imagine a mighty globe described in space, a globe of such stupendous dimensions that it shall include the sun and his system, all the stars and nebulæ, and even all the objects which our finite capacities can imagine. ”

“ With the second, on the contrary, we may detach ourselves from the earth, may mount afar into space, may plant ourselves on some aërial height, whence we may embrace, at a single glance, all the illuminated hemisphere of our globe: we shall have but a single shadow on the prospect,—that which our brightened planet casts behind it, and which, in four-and-twenty hours, traverses the entire surface of the globe, producing light wherever it passes. ”

“ On the wings of these books, we can fly to the corners of the earth,— penetrate the crust of the globe, and move through the ground faster than a mole or the Ghost in "Hamlet,"—dive into the ocean and explore its depths—or, like the fairy, "put a girdle round the earth in forty nunutes;" and when we have measured and weighed this orb, we can mount to the stars, and range the universe. Here, geography, geology, botany, zoölogy, astronomy, may bring forth to us their treasures, and enable us, in this small room, to traverse the world. ”

“ We read in the inspired book, or collection of books, called The Bible, nothing at all about the Earth being a globe or a planet, from beginning to end, but hundreds of allusions there are in its pages which could not be made if the Earth were a globe, and which are, therefore, said by the astronomer to be absurd and contrary to what he knows to be true! ”

“ Away into the distance as far as the eye could reach stretched this mighty city of globes, and I saw that on the top of each globe was a small squat mechanism, like that which our trawl had brought up but larger, and while these mechanisms were not themselves luminous or shining, there sprang from them in some way rays of white light which made it plain that it was these which produced the strange white light that bathed all this gigantic city. ”

“ In these heavens our world is as a globe suspended, and every star that we see is another globe suspended in space. Of these globes we can, with the unaided eye, see countless thousands; millions more are reached only by powerful telescopes; very likely myriads still exist which no glass is strong enough to bring into human sight. ”

“ But now all our eyes were on Earth ahead, since now through the drifting cloud-masses that floated in its atmosphere we could make out the great bluish globe's surface features, could see that western Europe and North Africa lay in the sunlight in that crescent of light at Earth's side, but that the North and South Americas lay in the shade of Earth's outer side, in the darkness of night. ”

“ From our own place on the earth, we pass, in thought, as a first step, to the whole globe of the Earth; from this, as a second step, to the Planets, the other globes which compose the Solar System. A third step carries us to the Fixed Stars, as visible to the naked eye ”

“ This illustration is so nicely drawn that it affords, at once, a striking proof that Earth is a plane. It is true to nature, and bears the stamp of no astronomer-artist. It is a pictorial proof that Earth is not a globe. ”

“ The earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only globe in the universe. There are, circling about our own sun, six others, so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature: besides our moon and other bodies analogous to it. No one can resist the temptation to conjecture, that these globes, some of them much larger than our own, are not dead and barren:--that they are, like ours, occupied with organization, life, intelligence. ”

“ For in these the hollow convexity everywhere bends on itself, and leans upon the earth as its centre. Whereas the earth rises up solid and dense, like something that swells up and is protruded outwards. The heavens bend towards the centre, while the earth goes from the centre, the continual rolling of the heavens about it forcing its immense globe into the form of a sphere. ”

“ A dewdrop on the petal of a flower is nearly globular; but it is not quite a globe, because the gravitation presses it against the flower and somewhat distorts the shape. A falling drop of rain is a globe; a drop of oil suspended in a liquid with which it does not mix forms a globe. Passing from small things to great things, let us endeavour to conceive a stupendous globe of molten matter. Let that globe be as large as the earth, and let its materials be so soft as to obey the forces of attraction exerted by each part of the globe on all the other parts. ”

“ Whether our planet was the first, third, or last formed, no mention is made. The vision is designed henceforth to unfold what we need to know of Earth, not found in nature. Our globe in chaos of gases, sweeping around the sun in the form of a ring, is evening, being “without form.” Our globe in steam, having a firmament of its own, is in shape, and this is “morning.” ”

“ And since all this speculation and absurdity is caused by the primary assumption that Earth is a wandering, heavenly body, and is all swept away by a knowledge of the fact that Earth is a plane, it is a clear proof that Earth is not a globe. ”

“ We can very conveniently study the conditions of observation at the poles of the earth, the equator, and some place in middle latitude, by using an ordinary terrestrial globe. 44 The wooden horizon of the globe is parallel to the horizon of a place at the top of the globe, which horizon we can represent by a wafer. ”

“ but when we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. ”

“ If the Earth were a globe, an observer who should ascend above its surface would have to look downwards at the horizon (if it be possible to conceive of a horizon at all under such circumstances) even as astronomical diagrams indicate—at angles varying from ten to nearly fifty degrees below the “horizontal” line of sight! (It is just as absurd as it would be to be taught that when we look at a man full in the face we are looking down at his feet!) ”

“ I suppose, therefore, that the globe, in the first state in which the imagination can venture to consider it, was a fluid mass with an immense atmosphere, revolving in space round the sun, and that by its cooling, a portion of its atmosphere was condensed in water which occupied a part of the surface. In this state, no forms of life, such as now belong to our system, could have inhabited it ”

“ Once rid of the fallacious notion that we were creatures of the surface of the earth, once clearly conscious that we were creatures of the interior, of the bottom of this gaseous ocean, then we could understand not only how the earth could be created in this etheric globe, but how we could be creatures of the solar globe living on it. ”

“ The globe, if it may be so called, is quite elongated, and, as you have said its ends are deeply depressed. In the centre of the depressions are pivots which rest in sockets in the ends of two upright supports. The surface of the globe is divided into spaces by metal bands suggesting latitude and longitude. Midway between the extremities of the globe is a broad band with three narrower ones on either side of it. ”

“ In his second attempt at globe making, his boyish ingenuity particularly exhibited itself. Finding two large globular stones on the top of a neighbor’s gate-posts, he painted on one of these, with oil colors, a map of the terrestrial globe, and on the other a map of the celestial, from a planisphere of the stars which he had copied on paper from a celestial globe belonging to a neighboring gentleman. “The poles of the painted globes stood toward the poles of the heavens. ”

“ I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited, I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes. ”

“ Every school child that has reached the third standard knows that the globe is represented as criss-crossed by a large number of lines running from pole to pole, that is from north to south, and others right round the globe in the opposite direction, or from east to west. ”

“ Superficial knowledge and science declares the earth orange shaped, divided into two hemispheres, with a handful of islands to cap the dejeuner. This vast globe never was and never will be fully explored. ”

“ Astronomical dialogue between a gentleman and a lady wherein the doctrine of the sphere, the uses of the globe and the elements of astronomy and geography are explained in a pleasant and familiar way. ”

“ If the Earth were a globe, there certainly would be—if we could imagine the thing to be peopled all round—“antipodes:” “people who,” says the dictionary, “living exactly on the opposite side of the globe to ourselves, have their feet opposite to ours:”—people who are hanging heads downwards whilst we are standing heads up! ”

“ But the thews and dominant stuff of the globe is that terrene body which far exceeds in quantity all the volume of flowing streams and open waters (whatever vulgar philosophers may dream of the magnitudes and proportions of their elements) , and which takes up most of the whole globe and almost fills it internally, and by itself almost suffices to endow it with sphærick shape. ”

“ Well, here I have four globes of different sizes: one is supposed to represent the earth at its surface, that is at the tops of its highest mountains, which are only, when compared with the globe itself, but slight roughnesses like those on an orange. You will notice that this globe is wound round with red silk threads from north to south diagonally. ”

“ We have seen powerful evidence that the construction of this globe and its associates, and, inferentially, that of all the other globes in space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part of Deity, but of natural laws which are expressions of his will. ”

“ This Earth is a solid body, and all such possess, within themselves, the power of attraction. Therefore, the laws of Nature reveal the fact to us, that the great central and controlling power of attraction attributed to the Sun, is the vast Inner Globe we have been contemplating; a globe, or world, more than a million times the size of this Earth. Leading Astronomers have agreed on the existence of such a body within; and far separated—by a non-luminous atmosphere or void—from the outer photosphere of ethereal fire. ”

“ Description of the world globe, of the world and the entire terrestrial sphere here constructed and made to resemble a round ball and is so arranged that the merchant and every man may clearly see how that men live underneath us, and here may be seen how the sun moves about (the earth) with many wonderful things. Printed at Strassburg. ”

“ Not only can they map out to a nicety the paths of the planets careering through it like islands floating through a sea of ether, but they can look backward and tell the exact spot where each globe was at any moment of the remote past, or forward, and point to the place where each will be found at any given moment of the remote future. ”

“ And this very medium character brings the Earth into harmony with the system of which it forms a part; the symmetry of the one corresponding with the symmetry of the other, and specially fits it to become the temporary home of a race like ours, which makes the whole surface of the globe tributary during the short terrestrial life of man to his preparation for a celestial state of being. Our globe is certainly the only one of our system which could possibly be inhabited by man; and as his residence, and as the arena for his culture, it is worthy of being studied in all its features ”

“ Terrestrial globe on which the position of the principal places on the surface of the earth are shown according to the principal observations of the most celebrated astronomers and geographers of our times by the labor of John Gabriel Doppelmayr, mathematician, professor and publisher of Nürnberg. ”

“ We must imagine the colony of planets to which we belong as a compact little family swimming in an immense void. At distances which would take our shell, not hundreds, but millions [Pg 11] of years to traverse, we reach the stars—or rather, a star, for the distances between stars are as great as the distance between the nearest of them and our Sun. The Earth, the planet on which we live, is a mighty globe bounded by a crust of rock many miles in thickness; the great volumes of water which we call our oceans lie in the deeper hollows of the crust. ”

“ As such a globe turns, any particular spot on it is presented in succession toward the various sides of the room. In precisely the same way any spot on the earth is turned by its rotation successively toward various parts of the surrounding sky. ”