"Simplicio. You support your arguments throughout, it seems to
me, on the greater ease and simplicity with which the said
effects are produced. You mean that as a cause the motion of the
earth alone is just as satisfactory as the motion of all the rest
of the universe with the exception of the earth; you hold the
actual event to be much easier in the former case than in the
latter. For the ruler of the universe, however, whose might is
infinite, it is no less easy to move the universe than the earth
or a straw balm. But if his power is infinite, why should not a
greater, rather than a very small, part of it be revealed to me?

"Salviati. If I had said that the universe does not move on
account of the impotence of its ruler, I should have been wrong
and your rebuke would have been in order. I admit that it is just
as easy for an infinite power to move a hundred thousand as to
move one. What I said, however, does not refer to him who causes
the motion, but to that which is moved. In answer to your remark
that it is more fitting for an infinite power to reveal a large
part of itself rather than a little, I answer that, in relation
to the infinite, one part is not greater than another, if both
are finite. Hence it is unallowable to say that a hundred
thousand is a larger part of an infinite number than two,
although the former is fifty thousand times greater than the
latter. If, therefore, we consider the moving bodies, we must
unquestionably regard the motion of the earth as a much simpler
process than that of the universe; if, furthermore, we direct our
attention to so many other simplifications which may be reached
only by this theory, the daily movement of the earth must appear
much more probable than the motion of the universe without the
earth, for, according to Aristotle's just axiom, 'Frustra fit per