CHAPTER XIV 



BRUNO AND THE RECEPTION OF THE 

 COPPERNICAN IDEAS 



IN the fifteenth century chance shook from its box of miracles 

 another wonder than the discovery of the New World, hardly 

 less fateful in its effects. That was the printing-press. It is 

 with an ineffectual effort that we endeavour to realise now 

 what was the world like when it had no printed bulletins of 

 happenings on the earth, no chronicles and reviews for the easy 

 dissemination of ideas, impressions, discoveries ; no means for 

 the rapid duplication of a book. 



If now we look back into this time, we shall see how vitally 

 separated were the conditions under which Aristarchus in 

 Alexandria, Coppernicus in Frauenberg, wrought. The work of 

 the Polish innovator was printed. A little later yet another 

 invention was to confirm, for all time, their common idea. There 

 seems little to doubt that, alone, the introduction of the 

 printing-press into Europe would have saved the system of 

 Coppernicus from the fate of that of his forerunner in Alexandria. 



It was not so much the mere preservation of the printed 

 word. The papyri upon which the ideas of Aristarchus were 

 inscribed will last longer probably than any work of paper and 

 print. The employment of slaves as copyists ensured a tolerable 

 circulation for any work of note. We know that they had vast 

 libraries ; there were booksellers in that day as in this. Never- 

 theless, prodigious as was their industry, the hand could not 

 compete with the machine. The price of books even in 

 Alexandria was exorbitantly high ; they were the treasures of 

 rich men and kings. 



With the coming of the printing-press, says Draper, the 

 price of books was reduced by four-fifths. The use of electricity 

 in our time has not spread more swiftly than did the printing 

 art in the first thirty or fifty years after Gutenberg and Coster. 

 Between the years 1470 and 1500 more than ten thousand 



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