PRELUDE TO THE EPOCH OF COPERNICUS. 381 



doctrine, without going much further into the ar- 

 guments of the question. 



Nor, when we speak of the superior simplicity 

 of the Copernican theory, must we forget, that 

 though this theory has undoubtedly, in this respect, 

 a great advantage over the Ptolemaic, yet that the 

 Copernican system itself is very complex, when it 

 undertakes to account, as the Ptolemaic did, for 

 the inequalities of the motions of the sun, moon, 

 and planets ; and that, in the hands of Copernicus, 

 it retained a large share of the eccentrics and 

 epicycles of its predecessor, and, in some parts, with 

 increased machinery. The heliocentric theory, with- 

 out these appendages, would not approach the 

 Ptolemaic, in the accurate explanation of facts; 

 and as those who had placed the sun in the center 

 had never, till the time of Copernicus, shown how 

 the inequalities were to be explained on that sup- 

 position, we may assert that after the promulga- 

 tion of the theory of eccentrics and epicycles on 

 the geocentric hypothesis, there was no published 

 heliocentric theory which could bear a comparison 

 with that hypothesis. 



It is true, that all the contrivances of epicycles, 

 and the like, by which the geocentric hypothesis 

 was made to represent the phenomena, were sus- 

 ceptible of an easy adaptation to a heliocentric 

 method, when a good mathematician had once pro- 

 posed to himself the problem ; and this was pre- 

 cisely what Copernicus undertook and executed. 



