114 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



but that it was a globe whirling round the sun — 

 had thinkers sufficient straw to make bricks. 



The Adipones and Esquimaux, we are told, 

 " refuse to trouble themselves with questions of 

 origins, on the ground that the hard facts of life 

 leave no ground for otiose discussions " ; and it is 

 not surprising to find that astronomy flourished 

 chiefly in Egypt and Chaldaea, where the skies 

 were clear and the fields fertile, and the facts of 

 life less hard. Yet even in Egypt and Chaldaea 

 astronomy was cultivated chiefly for practical 

 purposes — in order to read fate in the stars, or to 

 know when the Nile might be expected to over- 

 flow — and any cosmological applications were 

 chiefly an afterthought. 



In the Middle Ages, astronomy made consider- 

 able progress in Europe. In 1536 Copernicus 

 propounded his heliocentric theory. Not long 

 afterwards, Bruno published his work on the 

 Plurality of Worlds, in which he taught that 

 every star might be a sun, with planets revolving 

 round it. In 1622 Kepler pubhshed his work 

 Epitome of the Copernican Astronomy. In 1632 

 GaHleo published his work. The System of the 

 Worlds and in 1686 Newton pubhshed his 

 Principia. 



But progress in astronomy was not necessarily 

 progress in cosmogony. For cosmogonies the 



