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CHAPTER I. 

 PRELUDE TO THE INDUCTIVE EPOCH OF NEWTON. 



WE have now to contemplate the last and 

 most splendid period of the progress of 

 Astronomy; the grand completion of the history 

 of the most ancient and prosperous province of 

 human knowledge ; the steps which elevated this 

 science to an unrivalled eminence above other 

 sciences; the first great example of a wide and 

 complex assemblage of phenomena indubitably 

 traced to their single simple cause; in short, the 

 first example of the formation of a perfect Induc- 

 tive Science. 



In this, as in other considerable advances in 

 real science, the complete disclosure of the new 

 truths by the principal discoverer, was preceded by 

 movements and glimpses, by trials, seekings, and 

 guesses on the part of others; by indications, in 

 short, that men's minds were already carried by 

 their intellectual impulses in the direction in which 

 the truth lay, and were beginning to detect its 

 nature. In a case so important and interesting as 

 this, it is more peculiarly proper to give some view 

 of this prelude to the epoch of the full discovery. 



(Francis Bacon.) That Astronomy should be- 

 come Physical Astronomy, that the motions of 



