380 HISTORY OF FORMAL ASTRONOMY. 



which the Copernican Doctrine is established for 

 us, it is difficult for us not to attribute superior 

 sagacity and candour to those who held that side 

 of the question, and to imagine those who clung 

 to the Ptolemaic Hypothesis to have been blind 

 and prejudiced; incapable of seeing the beauty 

 of simplicity and symmetry, or indisposed to resign 

 established errours, and to accept novel and com- 

 prehensive truths. Yet in judging thus, we are 

 probably ourselves influenced by prejudices arising 

 from the knowledge and received opinions of our 

 own times. For is it, in reality, clear that, before 

 the time of Copernicus, the Heliocentric Theory 

 (that which places the center of the celestial mo- 

 tions in the Sun,) had a claim to assent so decidedly 

 superior to the Geocentric Theory, which places 

 the Earth in the center? What is the basis of 

 the heliocentric theory? That the relative mo- 

 tions are the same, on that and on the other sup- 

 position. So far, therefore, the two hypotheses are 

 exactly on the same footing. But, it is urged, on 

 the heliocentric side we have the advantage of sim- 

 plicity : true ; but we have, on the other side, the 

 testimony of our senses ; that is, the geocentric 

 doctrine is the obvious and spontaneous interpre- 

 tation of the appearances. Both these arguments, 

 simplicity on the one side, and obviousness on the 

 other, are vague, and we may venture to say, both 

 indecisive. We cannot establish any strong pre- 

 ponderance of probability in favour of the former 



