164 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



assertions, made by the same individual, could possibly 

 escape being a lie. It was not "sophistry," but the dread 

 of theologic vengeance, that generated this double dealing 

 with conviction; and it is astonishing to notice what 

 lengths were allowed to men who were adroit in the use 

 of artifices of this kind. 



Toward the close of the stationary period a word- weari- 

 ness, if I may so express it, took more and more posses- 

 sion of men's minds. Christendom had become sick of 

 the School Philosophy and its verbal wastes, which led 

 to no issue, but left the intellect in everlasting haze. Here 

 and there was heard the voice of one impatiently crying 

 in the wilderness, "Not unto Aristotle, not unto subtle 

 hypothesis, not unto Church, Bible, or blind tradition, 

 must we turn for a knowledge of the universe, but to the 

 direct investigation of Nature by observation and experi- 

 ment." In 1543 the epoch-marking work of Copernicus 

 on the paths of the heavenly bodies appeared. The total 

 crash of Aristotle's closed universe, with the earth at its 

 centre, followed as a consequence, and "The earth moves!' 1 

 became a kind of watchword among intellectual freemen. 

 Copernicus was Canon of the church of Frauenburg in the 

 diocese of Ermeland. For three -and- thirty years he had 

 withdrawn himself from the world, and devoted himself 

 to the consolidation of his great scheme of the solar sys- 

 tem. He made its blocks eternal; and even to those who 

 feared it, and desired its overthrow, it was so obviously 

 strong that they refrained for a time from meddling with 

 it. In the last year of the life of Copernicus his book 

 appeared: it is said that the old man received a copy 

 of it a few days before his death, and then departed in 

 peace. 



