o4 COSMOS. 



The spots on the Sun, as I have already shown in the 

 Historical Epochs of the Physical Contemplation of the 

 Universe,* were not first observed by Gahleo, Scheiner, or 

 Harriot, but by John Fabricius of East Friesland, who also 

 was the first to describe, in a printed work, the phenomenon 

 he had seen. Both this discoverer and Gralileo, as may be 

 se3n by his letter to the Principe Cesi (25th of May, 1612), 

 were aware that the spots belonged to the body of the Sun 

 itself; but ten or twenty years later, Jean Tarde, a canon of 

 Sarlat, and a Belgian Jesuit, maintained almost simultane- 

 ously that the Sun's spots were the transits of small planets. 

 The one named them Sidera Borbonia, the other Sidera 

 Austriaca.i Scheiner was the first who employed blue and 



have usually been ascribed to later observers." It is, indeed, not only 

 possible, but even highly probable, that in districts w^here the Sun is 

 obscured for many months, as on the coast of Peru, during the garua, 

 even uncivilized nations may have seen Sun-spots with the naked eye ; 

 but no traveler has, as yet, afforded any evidence of such appearances 

 having attracted attention, or having been incorporated among the re- 

 ligious myths of their system of Sun-worship. The mere observation 

 of the rare phenomenon of a Sun-spot, when seen by the naked eye, in 

 the low, or faintly obscured, white, red, or perhaps greenish disk of the 

 Sun, would scarcely have led even experienced observers to conjecture 

 the existence of several envelopes around the dark body of the Sun. 

 Had Cardinal de Cusa known any thing of the spots of the Sun, he 

 would assuredly not have failed to refer to these macules Solis in the 

 many comparisons of physical and spiritual things in which he was too 

 much inclined to indulge. We need only recall the excitement and 

 bitter contention with which the discovenesof Joh. Fabricius and Gal- 

 ileo were received, soon after the invention of the telescope in the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century. 1 have already referred {Cos' 

 mos, vol. ii., p. 311) to the obscurely expressed astronomical views of 

 the cardinal, who died in 1464, and therefore nine years before the 

 birth of Copernicus. The remarkable passage, "Jam nobis manifest- 

 um est Terram in veritate moveri;" "Now it is evident that the Earth 

 really moves," occurs in lib. ii., cap. 12, De docta Ignorantia. Accord 

 ing to Cusa, motion pervades every portion of the celestial regions; we 

 do not even find a star that does not describe a circle. " Terra non 

 potest esse fixa, sed movetur ut aliae stellae;" "The Earth can not be 

 fixed, but moves like other stars." The Earth, however, does not re- 

 volve round the Sun, but the Earth and the Sun rotate " around the 

 ever-changing pole of the universe." Cusa did not, therefore, hold the 

 Copernican views, as has been so successfully shown by Dr. Clemens's 

 discovery, in the hospital at Cues, of the fragmentary notice written in 

 the cardinal's own hand in 1444. * Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 324-326. 



t Borbonia Sidera, id est, planetoe qui Solis luraina circumvolitant 

 motu proprio et regulari, false hactenus ab helioscopis maculae Solis 

 nuncupati, ex novis observationibus Joannis Tarde, 1620. Austriaca 

 Sidera heliocyclica astronomicis hypothesibus illigata opera Caroli Mai- 

 apertii Belgae Montensis e Societate Jesu, 1633. The latter work has 

 at all events the merit of affording observations of a succession of spots 



