98 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



of the heavenly bodies and their movements. 

 These labours, which commenced in 1218, and are 

 said to have lasted till 1262, resulted in a more 

 exact series of observations than had hitherto been 

 made. They were published, and became generally 

 known as the Tables of Toledo. 1 



It was in such a direction indeed that the line 

 of true progress lay. As alchemy rose into a real 

 chemistry rather by the practice of the laboratory 

 than by the theory of the schools, so it was with 

 regard to astronomy. The scheme of Ptolemy with 

 its various modifications necessarily held the field, 

 imperfect and erroneous as it was, till wider and more 

 exact observations, such as those for which the wise 

 king of Castile thus provided had, in the course 

 of after ages, furnished adequate ground for the 

 magical and illuminative speculations of Copernicus, 

 Galileo, and Newton. 



Favourable, however, as Scot's situation in 

 Toledo undoubtedly was, much of what we are con- 

 sidering lay beyond his reach, being yet in the 

 womb of the future. The Moorish astronomers, and 

 he doubtless with them, felt far from satisfied 

 with the Ptolemaic system as expounded in the 

 Almagest. While no one as yet ventured to 

 interfere with its fundamental conception of the 

 earth as the centre of the universe, every fresh 

 observation, by bringing into view more of the 

 delicacy and subtlety of the heavenly movements, 

 made additions and modifications of that theory 

 constantly necessary. Hence arose a series of 

 Arabian works on the sphere, each superseding that 

 which had preceded it, and reflecting the last results 



1 Romanus de Higuera, a very doubtful authority. 



