304 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION OF 



By tlie favour of his uncle, Lucas Waisselrode von Allen, ( 461 ) 

 Bishop of Ermland, he was named, in 1510, Canon at 

 Prauenburg, where he was engaged for thirty-three years in 

 .the completion of his work "De Revolutionibus Orbium 

 : Co3lestium." The first printed copy was brought to him 

 when in immediate preparation for death, and when his 

 strength of body and mind were failing: he saw it and 

 touched it; but temporal things were no farther heeded, 

 and he died, not, as Gassendi says, a few hours, ( 462 ) but 

 some days afterwards, on the 24th of May, 1543. Two 

 years previously, an important part of his doctrine had been 

 made known in print, by a letter from one of his most 

 zealous pupils and adherents, Joachim B/hseticus, to Johann 

 Schoner, Professor at Nuremberg. Yet it was not the pro- 

 mulgation of the Coperiiican theory, the renewed doctrine 

 of the solar orb forming the centre of our system, which 

 led, somewhat more than half a century after its first ap- 

 pearance, to the brilliant discoveries in space which mark 

 the beginning of the 17th century: these discoveries were 

 the result of an invention accidentally made, that of the 

 Telescope. Through them the doctrine of Copernicus was 

 perfected and enlarged. His fundamental views, confirmed 

 and extended by the results of physical astronomy (by the 

 newly discovered system of the satellites of Jupiter, and 

 by the phases of Yenus), pointed out to theoretical 

 astronomy the paths which must conduct to the sure at- 

 tainment of her aims, and incited to the solution of pro- 

 blems which required that the analytical calculus should be 

 carried to still higher degrees of perfection. As George 

 Peuerbach and Eegiomontanus (Johann Muller, of Konigs- 

 berg, in Franconia), exerted a beneficial influence on Coper- 



