COPPERNICUS 171 



ing in his day. Men could hardly construct a mechanical theory 

 of the heavens before they had felt the need of a mechanical 

 explanation of the simple facts of their daily lives. 



These were his limitations the natural limitations of his 

 age. They should in nowise detract from the just measure of 

 his strength. He achieved a lasting work. This comes to few. 

 It was enough. 



He died as he had lived, in far-away Poland, seven years 

 after Erasmus, three before Luther, while Henry VIII. ruled in 

 England and Franois Premier in France, and while the Medici 

 still moulded the brilliant life of Florence. No doubt he died 

 content content and convinced ; but neither his death nor 

 his book made any stir. He wrote, of course, in Latin ; his 

 book seems never to have been translated into any other tongue 

 until the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. It could 

 not be read by the vulgar. The lives of men went on just as 

 before. There is little evidence to show that any one dreamed 

 that he had exploded a bomb-shell. It was just seventy-five 

 years before trie Church thought enough about the matter to 

 ban his book from Christian eyes. How came it, then, that 

 his ideas were not to live a little, then to be forgotten, like those 

 of Aristarchus, for another eighteen hundred years ? 



