508 COSMOS. 



tern which bears his immortal name as an hypothesis con- 

 venient for making astronomical calculations, and one which 

 might be devoid of foundation. " By no other arrangement," 

 he exclaims with enthusiasm, " have I been able to find so ad- 

 mirable a symmetry of the universe, and so harmonious a con- 

 nection of orbits, as by placing the lamp of the world {lucer- 

 nam mundi), the Sun, in the midst of the beautiful temple of 

 nature as on a kingly throne, ruling the whole family of cir- 

 cling stars that revolve around him {circumagentem guhernans 

 astrorumfamiliam)."* Even the idea of universal gravita- 

 tion or attraction {appetentia qumdam naturalis partibus in- 

 dita) toward the sun as the center of the world {centrum 

 mundi), and which is inferred from the force of gravity in 

 spherical bodies, seems to have hovered before the mind of 

 this great man, as is proved by a remarkable passage in the 

 9th chapter of the 1st book De Revolutionibus.\ 



* Quis enim in hoc pulcherrimo templo lampadem banc in alio vel 

 meliori loco poueret, quam unde totum simul possit illuminare? Siqui- 

 dem non inepte quidam lucernara mundi, alii mentem, alii rectorera 

 vocant. Trismegistus visibilem Deum, Sophoclis Electra intuentem 

 ouinia. Ita profecto tanqiiam in solio regal i Sol residens circumagen- 

 tem gubernat Astrorum lamiliara : Tellus quoque miuirne fraudatur lu- 

 nar! ministerio, sed ut Aristoteles de animalibus ait, maximam Luna 

 cum terra cognationem habet. Concepit iuterea a Sole terra, et im- 

 pregnatur annuo partu. Invenimus igitur sub hac ordinatione admi- 

 raudam mundi symmetriam ac certum harmoniiE nexum motus et mag- 

 nitudinis orbium; qualis alio raodo reperiri non potest. (Nicol. Copern., 

 De Revol. Orbium Coelestium, lib. i., cap. 10, p. 9, b.) In this passage, 

 which is not devoid of poetic grace and elevation of expi-ession, we rec 

 ognize, as in all the wrorks of the astronomers of the seventeenth cen 

 tury, traces of long acquaintance with the beauties of classical antiquity 

 Copernicus had in his mind Cic, Somn. Scip., c. 4 ; Pliu., ii., 4 ; and 

 Mercur. Trismeg., lib. v. (ed. Cracov., 1586), p. 195 and 201. The al- 

 lusion to the Electra of Sophocles is obscure, as the sun is never any 

 where expressly termed "all-seeing," as in the Iliad and the Odyssey, 

 and also in the Choephorcs of .4:schylus (v. 980), which Co})ernicua 

 would not probably have called Electra. According to BSckh's con- 

 jecture, the allusion is to be ascribed to an imperfect recollection of 

 verse 869 of the CEdipus Coloneus of Sophocles.^ It very singularly 

 happens that quite lately, in an otherwise instructive memoir (Czynski, 

 Kopernik et ses Travaux, 1847, p. 102), the Electra of the tragedian is 

 confounded with electric currents. The passage of Copernicus, quoted 

 above, is thus rendered : " If we take the sun for the torch of the uni- 

 verse, for its spirit and its guide — if Trismegistes call it a god, and if 

 Sophocles consider it to be an electrical power which animates and 

 contemplates all that is contained in creation — " 



t Pluribus ergo existentibus centris, de centro quoque mundi non 

 temere quis dubitabit, an videlicet fuerit istud gravitatis terrense, an 

 aliud. Equidem existimo, gravitatem non aliud esse, quam appeten- 

 tiam quaudam naturalem partibus inditam a divina provideutia officii 



