THE END OF GILBERT'S COSMICAL THEORY. 355 



completely and banging the dust out of Kepler's immortal 

 pages. "Qusenam ista philosophandi ratio est? m 



But Kircher knew well enough that Kepler had been 

 reading in the "Philosophia Magnetica of William Gilbert 

 the Englishman," and that his argument thereon was 

 that if the earth had magnetic properties, it was "neither 

 incredible nor absurd" that the same might be equally 

 true of other "primary bodies." 2 The Gilberto-Keplerian 

 theory, however, had no more health in it than there was 

 in the other tenet which the two philosophers held in 

 common namely, that the earth is alive and has a soul. 

 No one cares to remember now the odd vagaries of the 

 great student of the stars who overthrew the old astronomy. 

 He willingly renounced many of them himself as his 

 knowledge of phenomena grew wider; nor have they ever 

 dimmed the glory which all the world accords to the finder 

 of the laws whereby the planets move in eternal harmony 

 with the Almighty Will. 



"Having held and believed that the Sun is the Center 

 of the Universe and immovable, and that the earth is not 

 the center of the same and that it does move ... I abjure 

 with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest 

 the said errors and heresies and generally all and every 

 error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church," 

 wrote Galileo Galilei, in mortal terror of the Inquisition; 

 that was in i633. 3 Twenty years before, under the protec- 

 tion of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he had asserted the 

 heliocentric doctrine, with no worse result than a friendly 

 admonition from Cardinal Bellarmine, and he had agreed 

 not to promulgate it further. But, as the world grew wiser, 

 it smiled at the theological claims to infallibility in matters 



1 Kircher. Magnes sive De Arte Magnetica. Cologne, 1641. 



2 Kepler: Epitome. Ast. Copernic. Frankfort, 1635. 



Whewell: Hist. Indue. Sci. London, 1837, Vol. II., 133. Hallam: 

 Lit. Europe. Part III., cviii. 



