The Law of Falling
CHAPTER IV
The Law of Falling
THE captain continued:
“This happened in the year 185, by objective time-calculation.
“Saint Venoma had been taken for his merits from the planet ‘Soort’ to the holy planet ‘Purgatory,’ where, after he had familiarized himself with his new surroundings and new duties, he gave all his free time to his favorite work.
“And his favorite work was to seek what new phenomena could be found in various combinations of already existing, law-conformable phenomena.
“And sometime later, in the course of these occupations, this Saint Venoma first constated in cosmic laws what later became a famous discovery, and this discovery he first called the ‘Law of Falling.’
“This cosmic law which he then discovered, St. Venoma himself formulated thus:
“ ‘Everything existing in the World falls to the bottom. And the bottom for any part of the Universe is its nearest “stability,” and this said “stability” is the place or the point upon which all the lines of force arriving from all directions converge.
“ ‘The centers of all the suns and of all the planets of our Universe are just such points of “stability.” They are the lowest points of those regions of space upon which forces from all directions of the given part of the Universe definitely tend and where they are concentrated. In these points there is also concentrated the equilibrium which enables suns and planets to maintain their position.’
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