686 COSMOS. 



the ideal links which connect the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries ; and we cannot delineate the extended astronomical 

 views of the latter of these epochs, without taking into consi- 

 deration the incitements yielded to it by the former. 



An erroneous opinion unfortunately prevails even in the 

 present day,* that Copernicus, from timidity and from appre- 

 hension of priestly persecution, advanced his views regarding 

 the planetary movement of the earth, and the position of the 

 sun in the centre of the planetary system as mere hypotheses 

 which fulfilled the object of submitting the orbits of the hea- 

 venly bodies more conveniently to calculation, " but which need 

 not necessarily either be true or even probable." These sin- 

 gular words certainly do occur in the anonymous preface f 



* Delambre, Hiatoire de I' Astronomic Moderne, t. i. p. 140. 



+ " Neque enim necesse est, eas hypotheses esse veras, imo ne veri- 

 similes quidem, sed sufficit hoc unum, si calculum observationibus con- 

 gruentem exhibeant," says the preface of Osiander. " The bishop of 

 Culm, Tidemann Gise, a native of Dantzig, who had for years urged 

 Copernicus to publish his work, at last received the manuscript, with the 

 permission of having it printed fully in accordance with his own free 

 pleasure. He sent it first to Rhseticus, Professor at Wittenberg, who 

 bad until recently been living for a long time with his te?cher at 

 Frauenburg. Rhsetieus considered Nuremberg as the most suitable 

 place for its publication, and entrusted the superintendence of the 

 printing to Professor Schoner and to Andreas Osiander." (Gassendi, 

 Vita Copernici, p. 319.) The expressions of praise pronounced on the 

 work, at the close of the preface, might be sufficient, to show without the 

 express testimony of Gassendi, that the preface was by another hand. 

 Osiander has used an expression, on the title of the first edition, (that of 

 Nuremberg, 1543,) which is always carefully avoided in all the writings 

 of Copernicus, " motus stellarum novis insuper ac admirabilibus hypo- 

 thesibus ornati," together with the very ungentle addition, "Igitur 

 studiose lector, erne, lege, fruere." In the second Basle edition of 

 1566, which I have very carefully compared with the first Nuremberg 

 edition, there is no longer any reference in the title of the book to the 

 "admirable hypothesis;" but Osiander's Prcefatiuncula, de Hypoihe- 

 sibus hujus Operis" as Gassendi calls the intercalated preface, is pre- 

 served. That Osiander, without naming himself, meant to show that 

 the Prcefatiuncula was by a different hand from the work itself, appears 

 very evident, from the circumstance of his designating the dedication to 

 Paul III. as the " Prcefatio Authoris." The 'first edition has only 196 

 leaves; the second 213, on account of the Narratio Prima of the astro- 

 nomer George Joachim Rhaeticus, and a letter addressed to Schoner, 

 which, as I have remarked in the text, was printed in 1541 by the in- 

 tervention of the mathematician Gassarus of Basle,, and gave to the 



