692 COSMOS. 



quainted with the views of Aristarchus of Samos, regarding 

 the central sun, and the condition of the earth as a planet, 

 because the Arenarius, and all the other works of Archimedes, 

 appeared only one year after his death, and a whole century 

 after the invention of the art of printing ; but it is forgotten 

 that Copernicus, in his dedication to Pope Paul III., quotes a 

 long passage on Philolaus, Ecphantus, and Heraclides of 

 Pontus, from Plutarch's work on TJie Opinions of Philoso- 

 phers, (III. 13) and therefore that he might have read in the 

 same work (II. 24), that Aristarchus of Samos regards the 

 sun as one of the fixed stars. Amongst all the opinions of the 



sometimes spoken of as an immediate disciple of Pythagoras himself; 

 sometimes, and with more probability, as a teacher of Epaminondas 

 (Bockh, Philolaos, s. 815). The letter of Lysis to Hipparchus, an 

 old Pythagorean, who had disclosed the secrets of the sect, is, like 

 many similar writings, a forgery of later times. It had probably be- 

 come known to Copernicus from the collection of Aldus Manutius, 

 Epistola diversorum philosophorum (Romae, 1494), or from a Latin 

 translation by Cardinal Bessarion (Yenet., 1516). In the prohibition of 

 Copernicus' work, De Revolutionibus, in the famous decree of the Con- 

 yregazione dell' Indice of the 5th of March, 1616, the new system of 

 the universe is expressly designated as " falsa ilia doctrina Pythagorica, 

 Divinse Scripturse oninino adversans." The important passage on 

 Aristarchus of Samos, of which I have spoken in the text, occurs in the 

 Arenarius, p. 449 of the Paris edition of Archimedes of 1615, by 

 David Rivaltus. The editio princeps is the Basle edition of 1544, apud 

 Jo. Hervagium. The passage in the Arenarius says, very distinctly, 

 that " Aristarchus had confuted the astronomers who supposed the earth 

 to be immoveable in the centre of the universe. The sun, which con- 

 stituted this centre, was immoveable like the other stars, while the earth 

 revolved round the sun." In the work of Copernicus, Aristarchus is 

 twice named, pp. 69 b and 79, without any reference being made to 

 his system. Ideler, in Wolf and Buttmann's Museum der AUerthurn's- 

 Wissenschaft (Bd. ii. 1808, s. 452), asks whether Copernicus was ac- 

 quainted with Nicolaus de Cusa's work, De docta ignorantia. The first 

 Paris edition was indeed published in 1514, and the expression "jam 

 nobis manifestum est terrain in veritate moveri," from a platonising 

 cardinal, might certainly have made some impression on the Canon 

 of Frauenburg (Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii. 

 p. 343) ; but a fragment of Cusa's writing discovered very recently (1843) 

 by Clemens in the library of the Hospital at Cues, proves sufficiently, as 

 does the work De venatione sapientice, cap. 28, that Cuga imagined that 

 the earth did not move round the sun, but that they moved together, 

 though more slowly, " round the constantly changing pole of the uni- 

 verse." (Clemens, in Girrdano Bruno, and Nicol. von Cusa, 1847, 

 6. 97-100.) 



