PRELUDE TO THE EPOCH OF COPERNICUS. 385 



having heard or read the words which assert its 

 truth. 



It is impossible, therefore, for us to assent to 

 those views which would discover in the heliocentric 

 doctrines of the ancients, traces of a more profound 

 astronomy than any which they have transmitted 

 to us. Those doctrines were merely the plausible 

 conjectures of men with sound geometrical notions; 

 but they were never extended so as to embrace the 

 details of the existing astronomical knowledge ; and 

 perhaps we may say, that the analysis of the pheno- 

 mena into the arrangements of the Ptolemaic sys- 

 tem, was so much more obvious than any other, 

 that it must necessarily come first, in order to form 

 an introduction to the Copernican. 



The true foundation of the heliocentric theory 

 for the ancients, was, as we have intimated, its per- 

 fect geometrical consistency with the general fea- 

 tures of the phenomena, and its simplicity. But 

 it was unlikely that the human mind would be con- 

 tent to consider the subject under this strict and 

 limited aspect alone. In its eagerness for wide 

 speculative views, it naturally looked out for other 

 and vaguer principles of connexion and relation. 

 Thus, as it had been urged in favour of the geo- 

 centric doctrine, that the heaviest body must be 

 in the center, it was maintained, as a leading recom- 

 mendation of the opposite opinion, that it placed 

 the Fire, the noblest element, in the Center of the 

 Universe. The authority of mythological ideas was 



VOL. i. C c 



