312 FIGURE OF THE EARTH. 



was it maintained rather in the spirit of the school, by which same spirit they 

 might have been induced to support the direct contrary?* It is certain that 

 llipparchus, Ptolemy, Euclid, and Archimedes, eminent minds and founders 

 of true astronomy, of geometry, and of mechanics, more versed certainly in 

 observation and calculation than in the subtleties of metaphysics, denied the 

 movement of the earth, and for many ages strengthened the opposite belief 

 with their imposing authority. Hence this belief was the prevailing one when 

 Copernicus appeared in the world to overthrow it, at the epoch of great geo- 

 graphical discoveries, as if the Creator had designed that after the form and 

 distinct features of our jilanet were unveiled, its relations of analogy with the 

 rest of the universe should also be disclosed. 



Copernicus was not only a consummate methcmatician, a skilful observer, 

 capable of deducing great results wiih rude and inciEcient instruments, but he 

 was likewise, as we are assured by his biographer, Czynski, a man of profound 

 piety, full of faith in the wisdom of the Creator, and penetrated with the sim- 

 plicity of his works. With these elements of character the astronomer of 

 Thorn studied the movements of the celestial bodies, perceived their inextrica 

 ble complication upon the principles then received, the infinity of occult agen- 

 cies and of forces distinct in direction and intensity, which must concur in the 

 operation to carry all the heavenly bodies around the earth without varying 

 their relative distances, or altering in the minutest particular the harmony of 

 the creation, and instead of confining himself to saying, with the sage King of 

 Castile, "it is strange that this should be so," resolutely pronounces, "this 

 cannot be so." 



* To show that we exaggerate nothing in thus expressing ourselves, we shall here retrace, 

 with all possible brevity, the diifercnt opiuions of the Greek philosophers on the form of the 

 earth ainl its situation in space, making use for that purpose of the work by G. Lewis, enti- 

 tled. An Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. 



Thales of Miletus, who flourished between 639 and 546 years before om' era, likened the earth 

 to a bark flouting in a limitless ocean. 



According to Anaxiniander, likewise of Miletus, and disciple of Thales, the earth was cylin- 

 drical, and occupied the centre of the created universe. 



Anaximenes, a disciple of the former, assigned to the sun the form of a thin disk, and to 

 the earth that of a trapezium sustained in the air, and the same opinion was entertained by 

 Anaxagoras of Clazomeuo, likewise a philosopher of the Ionic school. 



Xenoplianes of Colophon, founder of the Eleatic school, supposed the earth to be illimita- 

 ble and supported in the abyss on immovable foundations. Parmenides and Empedocles, 

 dissenting from tliis opinion of Xenophanes, pronounced, perhaps before any one, the doctrine 

 of the sphericity of the earth and of its isolation in space. 



The cosmical opinions of the Pythagoreans, as stated by Philolaus, a diaciple of the great 

 master, were these: in the centre of the universe there exists a mass of fire, the soul of the 

 world, aroimd which revolve in a circle ten bodies in the following order : first and most dis- 

 tant, the heavens with the fixed stars ; next tlie five planets ; then the sun, the moon, the 

 earth, and finally the Aniichthon, a mysterious conception, which, indulgently interpreted, 

 would seciii to signify the terrestrial hemisphere opposite to that inhabited by ourselves. The 

 basis of this system, one of the most judicious bequeathed us by antiquity, was puicly men- 

 tal, or the offspring of an invention governed by mystical abstractions and vague axioms re- 

 Bpecting the virtues of numbers. To support it, instead of having recourse to tiio observatiou 

 of natural phenomena, it was assumed, for instance, as a principle, that fire, being of a more 

 exalted or worthy nature than earth, nuist by right occupy the place of greatest dig'nity, and 

 that in any series of different bodies that place must correspond either with Iho centre or the 

 extremes. From this reasoning the reader may form an estimate of the system of Philolaus, 

 a system, liowever, which not all the Pythagoieans received without restriction and modifica- 

 tion, for while some, as llicetas, lleraclides and Epiphantus, attributed to the earth a move- 

 meutof rotation from west to east, others, and among them perhaps Pythagoras himself. 

 Whose original ideas have not been transmitted to us, thought the earth immovable in the 

 midst of the universe. 



Leucipi)us and Democritus, both of the Atomic sect, maintained, towards the middle of 

 the htth century, like tlie Ionic philosophers, that the earth was a plane disk immovable in 

 apace and supported by the air. 



It was in the early half of the fourth century before Christ that astronomy, based on the 

 observation of the celestial pheuomeua, began to flourish among the Greeks. At that time 



