i6 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



Luther, could not remain in a monastery. At a time when 

 no general recognition of it existed, he praised publicly, in 

 word and writing, the discovery of Copernicus as a deed 

 which would relieve humanity and form the starting point of 

 a new era of thought and investigation. For him, general- 

 isation is the way to wide views. What he thus foresaw, was 

 incapable of demonstration in his time, and thus does not 

 represent a progress in knowledge; but he strives to attain 

 the last limit of knowledge, which even to-day can only be 

 a matter of surmise, and which, though going far beyond 

 Copernicus, must still be based upon his investigations, and 

 hence finds its place here. He abandons the sphere of the 

 fixed stars enclosing the solar system, which had already 

 been greatly enlarged in size by Copernicus, dissolves it 

 completely, and sees in the fixed stars for the first time, suns 

 like our own, distributed in infinite numbers freely in space. 

 All these suns he sees as surrounded by planets, by earths 

 like our own, and like it, peopled by living beings. The 

 space of this universe, in which not only our earth, but also 

 our sun, no longer have any pride of place and central posi- 

 tion, he considers, for the first time with good reason, as 

 unlimited, infinite. Hence dwelling places for living minds 

 are distributed everywhere in this universe, though they are 

 separated by vast distances which cannot be physically 

 surmounted. 'There is only one heaven,' he says, 'an 

 immeasurable domain of light-giving and illuminated 

 bodies'; the Godhead is not to be sought far away from us, 

 since we have it near to us, yes in us, more than we ourselves 

 are in us ; so must the inhabitants of other worlds not seek 

 it in ours, since they have it in their own and in themselves.' 

 For this the Inquisition and the Pope sent him to death 

 at the stake. He was burnt in the year 1600 on the Piazza dei 

 Fiori at Rome, remaining to the end full of disgust for a 

 Christianity which cannot be made to agree with know- 

 ledge such as that which he owed to Copernicus. 



