SEQUEL TO COPERNICUS. 415 



our own times has said, "gave the holding turn to 

 the opinions of mankind respecting the Copernican 

 system." We may trace this effect in Bacon, even 

 though he does not assent to the motion of the 

 earth. "We affirm," he says 8 , "the sun-following 

 arrangement (solisequium) of Venus and Mercury ; 

 since it has been found by Galileo that Jupiter also 

 has attendants." 



The Nuncius Sidereus contained other disco- 

 veries which had the same tendency in other ways. 

 The examination of the moon showed, or at least 

 seemed to show, that she was a solid body, with 

 a surface extremely rugged and irregular, This, 

 though perhaps not bearing directly upon the ques- 

 tion of the heliocentric theory, was yet a blow to 

 the Aristotelians, who had, in their philosophy, 

 made the moon a body of a kind altogether dif- 

 ferent from this, and had given an abundant quan- 

 tity of reasons for the visible marks on her surface, 

 all proceeding on these preconceived views. Others 

 of his discoveries produced the same effect; for 

 instance, the new stars invisible to the naked eye, 

 and those extraordinary appearances called nebula. 



But before the end of the year, Galileo had new 

 information to communicate, bearing more decid- 

 edly on the Copernican controversy. This intelli- 

 gence was indeed decisive with regard to the mo- 

 tion of Venus about the sun ; for he found that that 

 planet, in the course of her revolution, assumes the 



8 Thema Cceli, ix. p. 253. 



