SKETCH OF NICOLAUS COPERNICUS, 257 



very recently, with the holes which he made in the walls of his 

 room in order to observe the passage of the stars across the 

 meridian. 



His position here was not, however, one of uninterrupted 

 peace. It fell to him more than once to administer the affairs of 

 the bishopric during a vacancy, and he was charged with the duty 

 of defending the rights and privileges of the see against the Teu- 

 tonic Knights, who were then very strong. These positions, says 

 M. Biot in the Biographie Universelle, demanded probity and 

 courage. "Copernicus let himself neither be dazzled by the 

 authority of the Knights nor intimidated by their threats. If we 

 repeat these details, which appear foreign to his glory, it is to 

 show that in his character the taste for study and contemplation 

 were united with firmness and constancy qualities not less neces- 

 sary than genius for attacking and overthrowing prejudices that 

 had been consecrated by the faith of centuries." 



Copernicus lived at the time of the awakening of knowledge, 



and was a part of it. The idea that the earth moved around the 



sun was not new ; it had been uttered before, but, like many other 



thoughts that had been expressed among the ancients and then 



slumbered through the middle ages, it, being contrary to the 



received notions, was frowned on by authority and was refused a 



hearing. Copernicus saw, what an intelligent observer could not 



fail to see, that none of the systems then known could account for 



the motions of the stars. He had met the most distinguished 



astronomers of his own time. He was acquainted with all the 



systems of the ancients ; and the more he examined them the more 



he was astonished at the want of harmony and inconsistency that 



marked them. " I then took pains," he says, " to read again all 



the books of philosophy that I could get, to assure myself whether 



I could find any different opinions from those which were taught 



in the schools concerning the motions of the spheres of the world. 



And I saw first in Cicero that Nicetas had expressed the opinion 



that the earth moves. Then I found in Plutarch that others had 



had the same idea. . . . Further, the leading Pythagoreans, 



Archytas of Tarentum, Heraclides of Pontus, Echrecrates, etc., 



taught the same doctrine, according to which the earth is not 



motionless in the center of the world, but turns in a circle, and is 



far from holding the first rank among the heavenly bodies/' 



Pythagoras had learned the same doctrine ; Timseus of Locris 



was very precise in announcing it, when he called the five planets 



the " organs of time on account of their revolutions," and added 



that we should have to suppose that the earth was not immovable 



in the same place, but that it turned around itself and was also 



carried along in space. Plutarch says that Plato, who had always 



taught that the sun turned around the earth, changed his opinion 



VOL. XXXIX. 19 



