582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



But, on the other hand, there had been planted, long before, 

 the germs of the heliocentric theory. In the sixth century before 

 our era, Pythagoras, and after him Philolaus, had suggested the 

 movement of the earth and planets about a central fire ; and three 

 centuries later, Aristarchus had restated the main truth with 

 striking precision. Here comes in a proof that the antagonism 

 between theological and scientific methods is not confined to 

 Christianity; for this statement brought upon Aristarchus the 

 charge of blasphemy, and drew after it a cloud of prejudice which 

 hid the truth for six hundred years :— not until the fifth century 

 of our era does it timidly appear in the thoughts of Martianus 

 Capella : then it is again lost to sight for a thousand years, until 

 in the fifteenth century, distorted and imperfect, it appears in 

 the writings of Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa. 



But in the shade cast by the vast system which had grown 

 from the mind of the great theologians and from the heart of the 

 great poet there had come to this truth neither bloom nor fruitage. 



Quietly, however, the soil was receiving enrichment and the 

 air warmth. The processes of mathematics were constantly im- 

 proved, the heavenly bodies were steadily observed, and at length 

 appeared, far off from the centers of thought, on the borders of 

 Poland, a plain, simple-minded scholar, who first fairly uttered 

 to the modern world the truth — now so commonplace, then so 

 astounding, — that the sun and planets do not revolve about the 

 earth, but that the earth and planets revolve about the sun ; and 

 this man was Nicholas Copernicus. 



Copernicus had been a professor at Rome, and even as early 

 as 1500 had announced his doctrine there, but more in the way of 

 a scientific curiosity or paradox, as it had been previously held 

 by Cardinal de Cusa, than as the statement of a system repre- 

 senting a great fact in nature. About thirty years later one of 

 his disciples, Widmanstadt, had explained it to Clement VII; 

 but it still remained a mere hypothesis, and soon, like so many 

 others, disappeared from the public view. But to Coperni- 

 cus, steadily studying the subject, it became more and more a 

 reality, and as the truth grew within^himhe^see med to feel that 



cosmology in its relation to thought in general, see Rydberg, Magic of the iliddle Ages, 

 chapter i, whose admirable summary I have followed closely. For charts showmg the 

 continuance of this general view down to the beginning of the sixteenth century, see the 

 various editions of the Margarita Philosophica, especially that of Strasburg, 1508, astro- 

 nomical part. For interesting statements regarding the trinities of gods in ancient Egypt, 

 see Sharpe, History of Egypt. The present writer once heard a lecture in Cairo, from an 

 eminent Scotch Doctor of Medicine, to account for the ancient Hindoo and Egyptian sacred 

 threes and trinities. The lecturer's theory was that when Jehovah came down into the 

 garden of Eden and walked with Adam in "the cool of the day," he explained his trmne 

 character to Adam, and that from Adam it was spread abroad to the various ancient 

 nations. 



