APPENDIX C: COPERNICUS 409 



and motions. For some employ concentric circles only ; others, eccen- 

 tric circles and epicycles ; and even by these means they do not com- 

 pletely attain the desired end. For, although those who have de- 

 pended upon concentric circles have shown that certain diverse mo- 

 tions can be deduced from these, yet they have not succeeded thereby 

 in laying down any sure principle, corresponding indisputably to 'the 

 phenomena. These, on the other hand, who have devised systems of 

 eccentric circles, although they seem in great part to have solved the 

 apparent movements by calculations which by these eccentrics are 

 made to fit, have nevertheless introduced many things which seem 

 to contradict the first principles of the uniformity of motion. Nor 

 have they been able to discover or calculate from these the main 

 point, which is the shape of the world and the fixed symmetry of its 

 parts; but their procedure has been as if someone were to collect 

 hands, feet, a head, and other members from various places, all very 

 fine in themselves, but not proportionate to one body, and no single 

 one corresponding in its turn to the others, so that a monster rather 

 than a man would be formed from them. Thus in their process of 

 demonstration which they term a "method," they are found to have 

 omitted something essential, or to have included something foreign 

 and not pertaining to the matter in hand. This certainly would never 

 have happened to them if they had followed fixed principles ; for if 

 the hypotheses they assumed were not false, all that resulted there- 

 from would be verified indubitably. Those things which I am say- 

 ing now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper 

 place. 



Therefore, having turned over in my mind for a long time this un- 

 certainty of the traditional mathematical methods of calculating the 

 motions of the celestial bodies, I began to grow disgusted that no 

 more consistent scheme of the movements of the mechanism of the 

 universe, set up for our benefit by that best and most law-abiding 

 Architect of all things, was agreed upon by philosophers who other- 

 wise investigate so carefully the most minute details of this world. 

 Wherefore I undertook the task of rereading the books of all the phi- 

 losophers I could get access to, to see whether anyone ever was of the 

 opinion that the motions of the celestial bodies were other than those 

 postulated by the men who taught mathematics in the schools. And 

 I found first, indeed, in Cicero, that Hicetas perceived that the Earth 

 moved ; and afterward in Plutarch I found that some others were of 



