CHILDHOOD OF SCIENCE. 197 



jumble of machinery and clashing spheres which the ancients 

 had piled up in the heavens. 



According to this labored and complex system, the starry vault 

 was arched over by a series of spheres of the clearest crystal, 

 sliding one upon another in grooves or furrows parallel, serpen- 

 tine, or spiral. No less than twelve of these spheres, or deferents 

 as they were called, thus spanned the firmament. The outermost 

 one, the blue empyreal realm of the gods, was the "primiim 

 mobile" or the chief mover, within which the others grated, 

 slid, or clashed according to the requirements of the motions 

 they were set to produce. The fixed stars twinkled in one of 

 the furthest spheres. Saturn had one all to himself ; so Jupiter 

 and Mars. The sun was borne onward in another, and the moon 

 appropriated the lowest. But after all this comfortable arrange- 

 ment it was found that the planets would not keep their places 

 in the circles. The sun was much nearer to the earth in winter 

 than in summer; and the moon strayed into all manner of 

 devious paths. To arrange for these irregularities, other circles 

 were framed into the spheres, and the planets and luminaries re- 

 volved, each its own way, on epicycles whose centers were 

 carried forward in the deferents. Again, as new variations were 

 discovered, other wheel-work was added, new grooves were 

 notched in the solid arches, cycle on epicycle, centric on eccentric 

 were piled, until the heavens were such an orderless mass of 

 running gear as would have put to shame the genius of any 

 modern wheel-wright. Yet this was the time-honored astronomy 

 of the early centuries, the fondling of philosophy and the dogma 

 of the church. 



On it Copernicus, a traveled and accomplished scholar, labored 

 for fifteen years, till only getting confusion worse confounded he 

 finally abandoned the entire system of Ptolemy, fixed the sun in 

 the center of the universe, and set the other worlds revolving 

 about it. He gave to the earth the double motion of rotating on 

 its axis and following the other planets in almost inconceivable 

 distance and rapidity about the central luminary. It was a bold 

 and startling hypothesis ; so far beyond all conception that it did 

 not even disturb the watchful censors of the church of Rome. 



