458 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
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 pence. 
The Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was one of 
the earliest converts to the new astronomy. Taking 
Lucretius as his exemplar, he revived the notion of the 
infinity of worlds; and, combining with it the doctrine of 
Copernicus, reached the sublime generalization that the 
fixed stars are suns, scattered numberless through space, 
and accompanied by satellites, which bear the same relation 
to them that our earth does to our sun, or our moon to our 
earth. This was an expansion of transcendent import; 
but Bruno came closer than this to our present line of 
thought. Struck with the problem of the generation and 
maintenance of organisms, and duly pondering it, he came 
to the conclusion that Nature, in her productions, does not 
imitate the technic of man. Her process is one of un- 
raveling and unfolding. The infinity of forms under 
which matter appears was not imposed upon it by an ex- 
ternal artificer; by its own intrinsic force and virtue it 
brings these forms forth. Matter is not the mere naked, 
empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, 
but the universal mother, who brings forth all things as 
the fruit of her own womb. 
This outspoken man was originally a Dominican monk. 
He was accused of heresy and had to fly, seeking refuge in 
Geneva, Paris, England, and Germany. In 1592 he fell 
into the hands of the Inquisition at Venice. He was im- 
prisoned for many years, tried, degraded, excommunicated, 
and handed over to the civil power, with the request that 
he should be treated gently, and " without the shedding of 
blood." This meant that he was to be burnt; and burnt 
accordingly he was, on February 16, 1600. To escape a 
similar fate jG.alil.eo, thirty-three years afterward, abjured 
upon his knees, with his hands upon the holy Gospels, the 
heliocentric doctrine, which he knew to be true. After 
Galileo came Kepler, who from his German home defied 
the ultramontane power. He traced out from pre-existing 
observations the laws of planetary motion. Materials were 
thus prepared for Newton, who bound those empirical laws 
together by the principle of gravitation. 
