THE STRUGGLE FOR MORE LIGHT 



of orthodoxy, was not slow in following. In 

 1473, Copernicus had been born. Before De Soto 

 had reached the Mississippi river, Copernicus had 

 completed his life's work, and on his dying day, 

 in the year 1543, he received the first copy of his 

 great work, " De Revolutionibus Orbium Celes- 

 tium" (The Revolution of Celestial Bodies). In 

 order to understand the powerful impression 

 made by this work, we must fully enter into the 

 spirit of those times. For centuries it had been 

 a gospel truth that the earth stood still, that it 

 was the center of the universe, that the sun, 

 moon, and stars revolved around it from East to 

 West. Now this daring astronomer' claimed that 

 the earth was moving around itself from West 

 to East, and around the sun in a wide orbit, and 

 that the sun was the center of its planetary sys- 

 tem. That was contrary to all the established 

 teachings of the dogmatic scientists, it was op- 

 posed to the revealed "truths" of the Bible, it 

 was heresy. Anathema sit! 



But the time was approaching, when the 

 anathema of the church did not stop the wheels 

 of scientific progress any more. The cities need- 

 ed the help of science and protected their scien- 

 tific explorers. In 1616, Harvey discovered the 

 circulation of the blood, a new step toward an 



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