212 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



brilliant philosophical faith preceded the slower if surer 

 march of science. The great worlds of the universe 

 are of two kinds the suns, in which fire is the pre- 

 dominating element, and from which light is diffused ; 

 and the earths or planets, in which water predominates 

 and which reflects light. To the first class belong 

 the so-called fixed stars, from which our sun would 

 appear no larger and no brighter than they appear to 

 us ; to the second belong the moon, Mercury, and 

 other planets, all in one and the same ethereal space, 

 suspended in free air and balanced by their own weight 

 as is our earth. In all are seas and woods, rivers, 

 men, cattle, reptiles, birds, fishes, as on the earth, and 

 in all the same continuous changes occur. 1 No one 

 is in the centre of the universe rather than another, 

 for about all equally extends immeasurable space with 

 its innumerable stars. Of these " first bodies " one 

 kind could not exist without the other, for it is by the 

 concourse of contraries and opposites that nature 

 provides for movement, life, and growth in things. 

 About each of the scintillating stars, or suns, which we 

 see, there must circle planets which are for the most 

 part invisible to us, but which may become visible. 2 

 In the same way, both on account of the smallness of 

 their bodies, and especially on that of the less intensity 

 of reflected light in comparison with light of original 

 force, the planets which are about our fixed star, the 

 sun, would not be seen from any of the others. The 

 discovery in the last half- century of what is almost 

 certainly a satellite of Sirius confirms in this also 

 Comets. Bruno's " anticipation of nature." Another of these 

 was his theory of comets, 3 which he held to be of the 



1 De 1mm. bk. iv. ch. 3. a Ch. 8 (p. 42 f.). 



3 Ch. 4, Schol. cf. bk. iv. ch. 13 (Op. Lat. \. 2. 67). 



