LITTLE and these alchemists and astrologers were fortune- 

 JOURNEYS tellers and derived a goodly income from the people. 



They had their stands in front of all the churches and 

 turned in a goodly tithe "for the benefit of the poor." 

 C[ When the astrologers attacked Copernicus he tried to 

 explain that the heavens were under the reign of nat- 

 ural law, and that so far as he knew there was no di- 

 rect relationship between the stars and the men upon 

 earth. The answer was, "You yourself foretell the 

 eclipse and you assume to know when a star will be 

 in a certain place a hundred years in advance, now if 

 you can prophesy about stars why can't we foretell a 

 man's future ? ' 



Copernicus proudly declined to answer such ignorance, 

 but went on to say alchemy was a violence to chem- 

 istry as much as astrology was to astronomy. In 

 chemistry there were exact results that could be com- 

 puted by mathematics and foretold it was likewise so 

 in astronomy. Copernicus was philosopher enough to 

 perceive that astrology led to astronomy, and al- 

 chemy led to chemistry, but he said all he wished to 

 do was to eliminate error and find the truth, and when 

 we have ascertained the laws of God in reference to 

 these things we should discard the use of black cats, 

 goggles, peaked hats, red fire and incantations these 

 things were sacrilege. And the enemy declared that 

 Copernicus was guilty of heresy in saying they were 

 guilty of sacrilege. Moreover, black cats were not as 

 bad as blackboards. 



The Pope certainly had no idea of treating Copernicus 

 20 



