=2. The Attraction of Gravitation.= Among the phenomena of life upon the earth, which are so familiar that only thoughtful persons see anything to wonder at in them, is what we call the “weight” of bodies. Every person feels that he is held down to the ground by his weight, and he knows that if he drops a heavy body it will fall straight toward the ground. But what is this weight which causes everything either to rest upon the earth or to fall back to it if lifted up and dropped? The answer to this question involves a principle, or “law,” which affects the whole universe, and makes it what we see it. This principle is one of the great foundation stones of astronomy. It is called the law of gravitation, the word gravitation being derived from the Latin _gravis_, “heavy.” Briefly stated, the law is that every body, or every particle of matter, attracts, or strives to draw to itself, every other body, or particle of matter. This force is called the attraction of gravitation. A large body possesses more attractive force than a small one, in proportion to the mass, or quantity of matter, that it contains. The earth, being extremely large, holds all bodies on its surface with a force proportionate to its great mass. This explains why we possess what we call weight, which is simply the effect of the attraction of the earth upon our bodies. A large body is heavier, or drawn with more force by the earth, than a small one (composed of the same kind of matter), because it has a greater mass. The body really attracts the earth as much as the earth attracts the body, but the amount of motion caused by the attraction is proportional to the respective masses of the attracting bodies, and since the mass of the earth is almost infinitely great in comparison with that of any body that we can handle, the motion which the latter imparts to the earth is imperceptible, and it is the small body only that is seen to move under the force of the attraction.