8 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



astronomical purposes and, therefore, was under an 

 infinite disadvantage. His chief objection to the 

 system of Copernicus was one at which a modern 

 astronomer would smile, but which in those days 

 seemed very weighty namely, the enormous distance 

 at which you must suppose the fixed stars to be 

 situated, if it were true. The philosophers of that 

 age did not like to admit such a waste of space as 

 that which must intervene between the orbit of 

 Saturn and the stars. And, on the Copernican 

 theory, if the stars were not situated at an immense, 

 almost infinite distance, they ought to appear to 

 move in a way they certainly do not. Tycho Brahe 

 was born in 1546. His theory never made much 

 way ; it had not, I imagine, sufficient elements of 

 probability to recommend it generally ; while the 

 subsequent invention of the telescope, and the works 

 of Kepler and Galileo, coming so soon after Tycho 

 Brahe, prepared the way for that almost universal 

 reception of the Copernican system which we have 

 since witnessed. I shall refer later on to Tycho and 

 his observations. 



Such, then, was the state of astronomical theories 

 in the latter part of the sixteenth century. En- 

 lightened men like Copernicus had guessed not 

 accurately, it is true, but with a considerable 

 approach to accuracy at the real facts of the case. 

 Tycho Brahe (who, I suspect, would have been con- 

 verted to Copernicanism if his life had been pro- 

 longed) had suggested a system of compromise not 



