8. Let us first then contemplate the earth in its birth, or in its egg, and afterwards in its infancy and flower; let us afterwards follow it through its several states and periods.
(From what follows it will appear that the sun is the parent of his universe.)
These, if they coincide with those things that are presented to our view in the mirrors of universal nature, will be so many satisfactory proofs, which, transposed from the place of consequents into the place of antecedents, will conversely confirm the origin itself from its own series.
