154 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



scheme of the solar system. He made its blocks 

 eternal; and even to those who feared it, and desired 

 its overthrow, it was so obviously strong, 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 peace. 



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 generalisation 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 prob- 

 lem 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 tech- 

 nic of man. Her process is one of unravelling and un- 

 folding. The infinity of forms under which matter 

 appears was not imposed upon it by an external arti- 

 ficer; 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, seek- 

 ing refuge in Geneva, Paris, England, and Germany. 

 In 1592 he fell into the hands of the Inquisition at 

 Venice. He was imprisoned for many years, tried, 

 degraded, excommunicated, and handed over to the 



