THE DEBT TO PURE SCIENCE 25 



indifferent to this world's affairs, caring little for fame and 

 even less for wealth. Facts were gathered, principles were 

 discovered, each falling into its own place until at last the 

 brilliant crown shone out and the world thought it saw a 

 miracle. 



This done, I shall endeavor to draw a moral, which it is 

 hoped will be found worth}^ of consideration. 



The heavenly bodies were objects of adoration from the 

 earliest antiquity; they were guides to caravans on the desert 

 as well as to mariners far from land; the}^ marked the begin- 

 ning of seasons, or, as in Egj^^t, the limits of vast periods 

 embracing many hundreds of years. Maps were made thou- 

 sands of years ago showing their positions; the path of the 

 sun was determined rudel}^; the influence of the sun and moon 

 upon the earth was recognized in some degree, and their in- 

 fluence upon man was inferred. Beyond these matters, man, 

 with unaided vision and with knowledge of only elementary 

 methematics, could not go. 



^lathematical investigations by Arabian students pre- 

 pared the means by which, after Europe's revival of learning, 

 one, without wealth, gave a new life to astronomy. Coper- 

 nicus, early trained in mathematics, during the last thirty 

 years of his life spent the hours, stolen from his work as a clerk 

 and charity physician, in mathematical and astronomical 

 studies, which led him to reject the complex Ptolemaic system 

 and to accept in modified form that bearing the name of 

 Pythagoras. Tycho Brahe followed. A mere star gazer at 

 first, he became an earnest student, improved the instruments 

 employed, and finally secured recognition from his sovereign. 

 For twenty five years he sought facts, disregarding none, but 

 seldom recognizing economic importance in any. His asso- 

 ciate, Kepler, profiting by his training under Brahe, carried 

 the work far beyond that of his predecessors — and this in 

 spite of disease, domestic sorrows, and only too frequent ex- 

 perience of abject poverty. He divested the Copernican 

 h\^othesis of many crudities, and discovered the laws which 

 have been utilized b}^ astronomers in all phases of their work. 

 He ascertained the causes of the tides, with the aid of the 

 newly invented telescope made studies of eclipses and occulta- 



