458 FRAGMENTS OP SCIENCE. 



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 generalization 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 problem 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 technic of man. Her process is one of un- 

 raveling and unfolding. The infinity of forms under 

 which matter appears was not imposed upon it by an ex- 

 ternal artificer; 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, seeking refuge in 

 Geneva, Paris, England, and Germany. In 1592 he fell 

 into the hands of the Inquisition at Venice. He was im- 

 prisoned for many years, tried, degraded, excommunicated, 

 and handed over to the civil power, with the request that 

 he should be treated gently, and "without the shedding of 

 blood." This meant that he was to be burnt; and burnt 

 accordingly he was, on February 16, 1600. To escape a 

 similar fate Galileo, thirty-three years afterward, abjured 

 upon his knees, with his hands upon the holy Gospels, the 

 heliocentric doctrine, which he knew to be true. After 

 Galileo came Kepler, who from his German home defied 

 the ultramontane power. He traced out from pre-existing 

 observations the laws of planetary motion. Materials were 

 thus prepared for Newton, who bound those empirical laws 

 together by the principle of gravitation. 



