308 COSMOS. 



tern which bears his immortal name as an hypothesis con- 

 venient for making astronomical calculations, and one which 

 might be devoid of foundation. " By no other arrangement," 

 he exclaims with enthusiasm, " have I been able to find so ad- 

 mirable a symmetry of the universe, and so harmonious a con- 

 nection of orbits, as by placing the lamp of the world {liicer- 

 Tiam tiiundi), the Sun, in the midst of the beautiful temple of 

 nature as on a kingly throne, ruling the whole family of cir- 

 cling stars that revolve around him {circumagentem giibermms 

 astrorum familia')n).'''* Even the idea of universal gravita- 

 tion or attraction (appetentia qucedam naturalis partibus in- 

 dita) toward the sun as the center of the world {centrum 

 mundi), and which is inferred from the force of gravity in 

 spherical bodies, seems to have hovered before the mind of 

 this great man, as is proved by a remarkable passage in the 

 9th chapter of the 1st book De Revolutionibus.\ 



* Quis enim in hoc pulcherrirao templo lampadem hanc in alio vel 

 meliori loco poneret, quam unde totum simul possit illuminare ? Siqui- 

 dem non inepte quidam lucernam mundi, alii mentem, alii rectorem 

 vocant. Trismegistus visibilem Deum, Sophoclis Electra intuentem 

 omnia. Ita profecto tanquam in solio regali Sol I'esidens circumagen- 

 tem gubernat Astrorum familiam : Tellus quoque minirne fraudatur lu- 

 nari ministerio, sed ut Aristoteles de animalibus ait, maximam Luna 

 cum terra cognationem habet. Concepit interea a Sole terra, et im- 

 pregnatur annuo partu. Invenimus igitur sub hac ordinatione admi- 

 randam mundi symmetriam ac certum harmonise nexum motus et mag- 

 nitudinis orbium; qualis alio modo reperiri non potest. (Nicol. Copern., 

 De Revol. Orbium Coslestium, lib. i., cap. 10, p. 9, b.) In this passage, 

 which is not devoid of poetic grace and elevation of expression, we rec 

 ognize, as in all the wrorks of the astronomers of the seventeenth ceu 

 tury, traces of long acquaintance with the beauties of classical antiquity. 

 Copernicus had in his mind Cic, Somn. Scip., c#4 ; Plin., ii., 4; and 

 Mercur. Trismeg., lib. v. (ed. Cracov., 1586), p. 195 and 201. The al- 

 lusion to the Electra of Sophocles is obscure, as the sun is never any 

 where expressly termed "all-seeing," as in the Iliad and the Odyssey, 

 and also in the Choephorce of ^Eschylus (v. 980), which Copernicus 

 would not probably have called Electra. According to Bockh's con- 

 jecture, the allusion is to be ascribed to an imperfect recollection of 

 verse 869 of the CEdipus Colcmeus of Sophocles. It very singularly 

 happens that quite lately, in an otherwise instructive memoir (Czynski, 

 Kopernik et ses Travaux, 1847, p. 102), the Electra of the tragedian is 

 confounded with electric currents. The pass^e of Copernicus, quoted 

 above, is thus rendered : " If we take the sun for the torch of the uni- 

 verse, for its spirit and its guide — if Trismegistes call it a god, and if 

 Sophocles consider it to be an electrical power which animates and 

 contemplates all that is contained in creation — " 



t Pluribus ergo existeutibus centris, de centro quoque mundi non 

 temere quis dubitabit, an videlicet fuerit istud gravitatis terrenoe, an 

 aliud. Equidem existimo, gravitatem non aliud esse, quam appeteu- 

 tiam quandam naturalem partibus inditam a divina providentia offici? 



