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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



the motions of the stars had hitherto been be- 

 lieved to be impossible ; therefore, they had re- 

 mained unobserved. His daring prescience mul- 

 tiplied even the traditional seven planets of the 

 solar system, which in the increasing family of 

 the planetoids alone have, by the latest discovery 

 of Borelli, grown to the imposing number of 172. 

 But with all this poetic fervor of genius, which 

 sometimes missed its mark, and sometimes antici- 

 pated the result of much later discoveries, Gior- 

 dano Bruno lias left us one of the grandest and 

 most weighty tributes to the character and genius 

 of Copernicus himself. We shall quote the pas- 

 sage as a remarkable example of the great Italian 

 style of that age : 



" He was a man of grave and cultivated mind, 

 of rapid and mature intelligence ; inferior to no 

 preceding astronomer, unless in order of succession 

 and time ; a man who in natural ability was far 

 superior to Ptolemy, Hipparcbus, Eudoxus, and 

 all those others who followed in their footsteps. 

 What he was, he became through having liberated 

 himself from certain false axioms of the common 

 and vulgar philosophy — I will not say blindness. 

 Nevertheless, he did not depart far from them ; 

 because, studying mathematics rather than Nature, 

 he failed to penetrate and dig deep enough alto- 

 gether to cut away the roots of incongruous and 

 vain principles, and thus, removing perfectly all 

 opposing difficulties, free himself and others from 

 so many empty investigations into things obvious 

 and unchangeable. In spit* of all this, who can 

 sufficiently praise the magnanimity of this Ger- 

 man, who, having little regard to the foolish mul- 

 titude, stood firm against the torrent of contrary 

 opinion, and, although wellnigh unarmed with 

 living arguments, resuming those rusty and neg- 

 lected fragments which antiquity had transmitted 

 to him, polished, repaired, and put them together 

 with reasonings more mathematical than philo- 

 sophical ; and so rendered that cause formerly con- 

 temned and contemptible, honorable, estimable, 

 more probable than its rival, and certainly con- 

 venient and expeditious for purposes of theory and 

 calculation ? Thus this Teuton, although with 

 means insufficient to vanquish, overthrow, and 

 suppress falsehood, as well as resist it, neverthe- 

 less resolutely determined in his own mind, and 

 openly confessed this final and necessary conclu- 

 sion : that it is more possible that this globe 

 should move with Regard to the universe, than that 

 the innumerable multitude of bodies, many of 



which are known to be greater and more magnifi- 

 cent than our earth, should be compelled, in spite 

 of Nature and reason, which, by means of motions 

 evident to the senses, proclaim the contrary, to 

 acknowledge this globe as the centre and base of 

 their revolutions and influences. Who, then, will 

 be so churlish and discourteous toward the efforts 

 of this man as to cover with oblivion all he has 

 done, by being ordained of the gods as an Aurora 

 which was to precede the rising of this sun of the 

 true, ancient philosophy, buried during so many 

 centuries in the tenebrous caverns of blind, malig- 

 nant, froward, envious ignorance ; and, taking 

 note only of what he failed to accomplish, rank 

 him among the number of the herded multitude, 

 which discourses, guides itself, precipitates to de- 

 struction, according to the oral sense of a brutal 

 and ignoble belief, rather than among those who, 

 by the use of right reason, have been able to rise 

 up, and resume the true course under the faith- 

 ful guidance of the eye of divine intelligence." 



And for this cause Giordano died. He was 

 burned at the stake at Rome in 1600, more, we 

 believe, for his defense of the Copernican system 

 than for his loose life and visionary philosophy. 

 Had Galileo not retracted, he might have shared 

 Bruno's fate. 



For himself Copernicus had nothing to fear. 

 While his book was still in the hands of the 

 printers of Nuremberg, he had already 



" Outsoared the shadow of our night," 



and attained to the region of perfect truth — truth 

 complete on every side. The story so often re- 

 peated, of his having died with the first printed 

 copy of his' book in his hand, must be consigned, 

 however reluctantly, to the limbo which holds so 

 many appropriate fables. Truth does not round 

 off its outlines so neatly as fiction, and real life 

 leaves many a finishing touch to be desired. Few 

 men, indeed, have done their day's work so well 

 as Nicholas Copernicus. He brought man a step 

 nearer to the truth, and therefore to the Author 

 of all truth ; and the name of the obscure Canon 

 of Frauenburg will be forever memorable as chat 

 of him who placed (to use his own stately lan- 

 guage) " the light of the world — the orb which 

 governs the planets in their circulation — upon a 

 royal throne, in the midst of the Temple of 

 Nature." — Edinburgh Review. 



