2 6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



arguments seemed unanswerable, and had been received, with 

 Ptolemy's theory, till they had become almost an article of faith. 

 It required a courage which we can only weakly comprehend at 

 this day for a student to fly in the face of the world, of science 

 and religion, and take the solar system to pieces, to put it together 

 again, and to say, after all, that it is the earth which moves and not 

 the sun. Copernicus was slow in venturing before the public with 

 his theory. He began the formulation of his system in 1507 ; but 

 he wisely determined to make thorough work of the matter, and 

 publish nothing that he could not support with carefully consid- 

 ered argument and evidence. He would not be satisfied with 

 reconciling general appearances with his theory; he would go 

 into details and show how it fitted individual phenomena. He 

 would show how all the movements of the heavenly bodies could 

 be accounted for and predicted by it ; even how those phenomena 

 which had hitherto proved unaccountable, the stationary positions 

 and retrograde motions of the planets, and the precession of the 

 equinoxes, found explanation in it. In the mean time reports had 

 got into circulation respecting his new theory, and the public 

 wanted to know what it was. Astronomers were waiting for it, 

 and he was urged to publish it. But he delayed, revising his 

 sheets daily for the insertion of corrected data, and adding new 

 results; and he shrank from the inevitable conflict with the 

 prejudices of the day. These prejudices were already beginning 

 to make their mark. Men of science could accept his views or 

 give them utterance, so far as they had been made acquainted 

 with them, but the general public was against them. He was 

 ridiculed in a comedy ; but his gravity and self-restraint carried 

 him safely through all these trials. At last he permitted his 

 friends to publish the work, which he dedicated, in deprecation of 

 clerical censure, to Pope Paul III, in order, as he said in the dedi- 

 cation, that no one should accuse him of running away from the 

 judgment of enlightened men, and that the authority of his Holi- 

 ness, if he should approve the work, might secure him against the 

 stings of calumny. " I believe," he also said, " that as soon as 

 what I have written in this book concerning the motions of the 

 earth is known, a cry of shame will be raised against me. I am, 

 further, not so much in love with my ideas as to be careless of 

 what others might think about them. And, although the thoughts 

 of the philosopher differ from the aims of the crowd, because he 

 proposes to seek for the truth, so far as God has given it to human 

 wisdom to do, I am not yet ready to reject entirely opinions which 

 seem to be at variance with mine. . . . All these motives, together 

 with the fear of becoming on account of novelty and apparent 

 absurdity an object of ridicule, had nearly caused me to renounce 

 the enterprise. But some friends among them Cardinal Schom- 



