176 THE WORLD MACHINE 



editions of books and pamphlets were printed. You realise, 

 then, how it was that the discoveries of Columbus, of Da 

 Gama, of Magalhaens were so soon the common property of 

 all Europe. You realise that of the thousand " reformations " 

 which had been started in the thousand years of the ascendency 

 of the Church, it was Luther's, in the second decade of the 

 new century, which could make head, which no papal power 

 could stay. You realise that it was a changed world into 

 which, twenty years later, the work of Coppernicus was born. 

 The habit of books, the habit of reading, was spreading fast. 



Still, his disciples were few enough. There was, while he 

 lived, a young professor of mathematics in the University of 

 Wittenberg, Rheticus by name, so eager to know more of the 

 new ideas that he travelled to Poland to sit at the master's feet. 

 It is evident that even then reports of Coppernicus' theories 

 had begun to circulate. As early as 1536, from far-off Capua 

 and Southern Italy was a long way off then the Cardinal 

 Schonberg had written to him, saying : 



" I learn that you have established a new system of the 

 world, according to which you teach that the earth moves ; that 

 the sun occupies the deepest and, therefore, the middle place 

 of the world ; that the true heavens remain immovable and 

 eternal ; and that the moon, together with all the included 

 elements between the heaven of Mars and that of Venus, turn 

 in their yearly course about the sun. I hear that you have set 

 forth your entire system of astronomy in a commentary ; that 

 you have gathered up the carefully reckoned movements of the 

 planets into tables, to the profound wonderment of all who 

 have seen. Therefore do I beg you, most distinguished scholar, 

 that you communicate to the instructed among men your dis- 

 coveries, and that you will send to me as soon as possible your 

 nightly labours over the structure of the world, together with 

 the tables and anything else that you may have." 



He sends this by messenger, with money to defray all ex- 

 penses, so keen is the cardinal to learn of the new Word. After 

 the book had appeared, it found defenders here and there. 

 Rheticus teaches it at Wittenberg ; Michael Moestlin inculcates 

 it at Tubingen. It is his largest claim to fame that it was under 

 his influence that the mind of Kepler was formed. In England, 

 Gilbert of Colchester, physician to Queen Elizabeth, founder of 

 the new sciences of magnetism and electricity he, indeed, who 



