Even this great book was as insufficient to stop the criticism of the action of the Congregations, as it was to stop the spread of the doctrine. So once again the father took up the cudgels in defense of the Church. The full title of his Apologia runs: "An Apologia in behalf of an argument from physical mathematics against the Copernican system, directed against that system by a new argument from the reflex motion of falling weights." (Venice, 1669). He states in this that his Almagestum Novum had received the approbation of professors of mathematics at Bologna, of one at Pisa, and of another at Padua, and he quotes the conclusion from Nicetas Orthodoxus ("a diatribe by Julius Turrinus, doctor of mathematics, philosophy, medicine, law, and Greek letters"): "That the sun is revolved by diurnal and by annual motion, and that the earth is at rest I firmly hold, infallibly believe, and openly confess, not because of mathematical reasons, but solely at the command of faith, by the authority of the Scriptures, and the nod of approval (nutu) of the Roman See, whose rules laid down at the dictation of the spirit of truth, may I, as befits everyone, uphold as law."[344]

Riccioli further on proceeds to answer his objecters, declaring that "the Church did not decide ex cathedra that the Scripture concerning movement should be interpreted literally; that the censure was laid by qualified theologians and approved by eminent cardinals, and was not merely provisional, nor for the time being absolute, since the contrary could never be demonstrated; and that while it was the primary intent of the Inquisitors to condemn the opinion as heretical and directly contrary to the Scriptures ... they added that it was absurd and false also in philosophy, in order, not to avert any objections which could be on the side of philosophy or astronomy, but only lest any one should say that Scripture is opposed to philosophy."[345] These answers are indicative of the type of criticism with which the Church had to cope even at that time.[346]

CHAPTER IV.

The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican System.

JUST as Tycho Brahe's system proved to be for some a good half-way station between the improbable Ptolemaic and the heretical Copernican system;[347] so the Cartesian philosophy helped others to reconcile their scientific knowledge with their reverence for the Scriptures, until Newton's work had more fully demonstrated the scientific truth.

Its originator, Réné Descartes[348] (1596-1650) was in Holland when word of Galileo's condemnation reached him in 1633, as he was seeking in the bookshops of Amsterdam and Leyden for a copy of the Dialogo.[349] He at once became alarmed lest he too be accused of trying to establish the movement of the earth, a doctrine which he had understood was then publicly taught even in Rome, and which he had made the basis of his own philosophy. If this doctrine were condemned as false, then his philosophy must be also; and, true to his training by the Jesuits, rather than go against the Church he would not publish his books. He set aside his Cosmos, and delayed the publication of the Méthode for some years in consequence, even starting to translate it into Latin as a safeguard.[350] His conception of the universe, the Copernican one modified to meet the requirements of a literally interpreted Bible, was not printed until 1644, when it appeared in his Principes.[351]

According to this statement which he made only as a possible explanation of the phenomena and not as an absolute truth, while there was little to choose between the Tychonic and the Copernican conceptions, he inclined slightly toward the former. He conceived of the earth and the other planets as each borne along in its enveloping heaven like a ship by the tide, or like a man asleep on a ship that was sailing from Calais to Dover. The earth itself does not move, but it is transported so that its position is changed in relation to the other planets but not visibly so in relation to the fixed stars because of the vast intervening spaces. The laws of the universe affect even the most minute particle, and all alike are swept along in a series of vortices, or whirlpools, of greater or less size. Thus the whole planetary system sweeps around the sun in one great vortex, as the satellites sweep around their respective planets in lesser ones. In this way Descartes worked out a mechanical explanation of the universe of considerable importance because it was a rational one which anyone could understand. Its defects were many, to be sure, as for example, that it did not allow for the elliptical orbits of the planets;[352] and one critic has claimed that this theory of a motionless earth borne along by an enveloping heaven was comparable to a worm in a Dutch cheese sent from Amsterdam to Batavia,—the worm has travelled about 6000 leagues but without changing its place![353] But this theory fulfilled Descartes's aim: to show that the universe was governed by mechanical laws of which we can be absolutely certain and that Galileo's discoveries simply indicated this.[354]

This exposition of the Copernican doctrine strongly appealed to the literary world of the 17th and 18th centuries in western Europe, especially in the Netherlands, in the Paris salons and in the universities.[355] M. Monchamp cites a number of contemporary comments upon its spread, in one of which it is claimed that in 1691, the university of Louvain had for the preceding forty years been practically composed of Cartesians.[356] For the time being, this theory was a more or less satisfactory explanation of the universe according to known laws; it answered to Galileo's observations; it was in harmony with the Scriptures, and its vortices paved the way for the popular acceptance of Newton's law of universal gravitation.

Protestant England was of course little disturbed by the decree against the Copernican doctrine, a fact that makes it possible, perhaps, to see there more clearly the change in people's attitude from antagonism to acceptance, than in Catholic Europe where fear of the Church's power, and respect for its decisions inhibited honest public expression of thought and conviction. While in England also the literal interpretation of the Scriptures continued to be with the common people a strong objection against the doctrine, the rationalist movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries along with Newton's great work, helped win acceptance for it among the better educated classes.

Bruno had failed to win over his English hearers, and in 1600 when the De Magnete was published, William Gilbert, (1540-1603) was apparently the only supporter of the earth's movement then in England,[357] and he advocated the diurnal motion only.[358] Not many, however, were as outspoken as Bacon in denunciation of the system; they were simply somewhat ironically indifferent. An exception to this was Dean Wren of Windsor (father of the famous architect). He could not speak strongly enough against it in his marginal notes on Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica. As Dr. Johnson wrote,[359] Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) himself in his zeal for the old errors, did not easily admit new positions, for he never mentioned the motion of the earth but with contempt and ridicule. This was not enough for the Dean, who wrote in the margin of Browne's book, at such a passage,[360] that there were "eighty-odd expresse places in the Bible affirming in plaine and overt terms the naturall and perpetuall motion of sun and moon" and that "a man should be affrighted to follow that audacious and pernicious suggestion which Satan used, and thereby undid us all in our first parents, that God hath a double meaning in his commands, in effect condemning God of amphibologye. And all this boldness and overweaning having no other ground but a seeming argument of some phenomena forsooth, which notwithstanding we know the learned Tycho, prince of astronomers, who lived fifty-two years since Copernicus, hath by admirable and matchlesse instruments and many yeares exact observations proved to bee noe better than a dreame."

Richard Burton (1576-1639) in The Anatomy of Melancholy speaks of the doctrine as a "prodigious tenent, or paradox," lately revived by "Copernicus, Brunus and some others," and calls Copernicus in consequence the successor of Atlas.[361] The vast extent of the heavens that this supposition requires, he considers "quite opposite to reason, to natural philosophy, and all out as absurd as disproportional, (so some will) as prodigious, as that of the sun's swift motion of the heavens." If the earth is a planet, then other planets may be inhabited (as Christian Huygens argued later on); and this involves a possible plurality of worlds. Burton laughs at those who, to avoid the Church attitude and yet explain the celestial phenomena, invent new hypotheses and new systems of the world, "correcting others, doing worse themselves, reforming some and marring all," as he says of Roeslin's endeavors. "In the meantime the world is tossed in a blanket amongst them; they hoyse the earth up and down like a ball, make it stand and goe at their pleasure."[362] He himself was indifferent.

Others more sensitive to the implications of this system, might exclaim with George Herbert (1593-1633):[363]

Or they might waver, undecided, like Milton who had the archangel answer Adam's questions thus:[364]

Whewell thinks[365] that at this time the diffusion of the Copernican system was due more to the writings of Bishop Wilkins than to those of any one else, for their very extravagances drew stronger attention to it. The first, "The Discovery of a New World: or a Discourse tending to prove that there may be another habitable world in the moon," appeared in 1638; and a third edition was issued only two years later together with the second book; "Discourse concerning a New Planet—that 'tis probable our Earth is one of the planets." In this latter, the Bishop stated certain propositions as indubitable; among these were, that the scriptural passages intimating diurnal motion of the sun or of the heavens are fairly capable of another interpretation; that there is no sufficient reason to prove the earth incapable of those motions which Copernicus ascribes to it; that it is more probable the earth does move than the heavens, and that this hypothesis is exactly agreeable to common appearances.[366] And these books appeared when political and constitutional matters, and not astronomical ones, were the burning questions of the day in England.

The spread of the doctrine was also helped by Thomas Salusbury's translations of the books and passages condemned by the Index in 1616 and 1619. This collection, "intended for gentlemen," he published by popular subscription immediately after the Restoration,[367] a fact that indicates that not merely mathematicians (whom Whewell claims[368] were by that time all decided Copernicans) but the general public were interested and awake.[369]

The appearance of Newton's Principia in 1687 with his statement of the universal application of the law of gravitation, soon ended hesitancy for most people. Twelve years later, John Keill, (1671-1721), the Scotch mathematician and astronomer at Oxford, refuted Descartes's theory of vortices and opened the first course of lectures delivered at Oxford on the new Newtonian philosophy.[370] Not only were his lectures thronged, but his books advocating the Copernican system in full[371] went through several editions in relatively few years.

In the Colonies, Yale University which had hitherto been using Gassendi's textbook, adopted the Newtonian ideas a few years later, partly through the gift to the university of some books by Sir Isaac himself, and partly through the enthusiasm of two young instructors there, Johnson and Brown, who in 1714-1722 widened the mathematical course by including the new theories.[372] The text they used was by Rohault, a Cartesian, edited by Samuel Clarke with critical notes exposing the fallacies of Cartesianism. This "disguised Newtonian treatise" was used at Yale till 1744. The University of Pennsylvania used this same text book even later.[373]

In 1710 Pope (1688-1744) refers to "our Copernican system,"[374] and Addison (1671-1719) in the Spectator (July 2, 1711) writes this very modern passage:

A little later, Cotton Mather declared (1721) that the "Copernican hypothesis is now generally preferred," and "that there is no objection against the motion of the earth but what has had a full solution."[376] Soon the semi-popular scientific books took up the Newtonian astronomy. One such was described as "useful for all sea-faring Men, as well as Gentlemen, and Others."[377] "Newtonianisme pour les Dames" was advertised in France in the forties.[378] By 1738 when Pope wrote the Universal Prayer:

the Copernican-Newtonian astronomy had become a commonplace to most well-educated people in England. To be sure, the great John Wesley (1770) considered the systems of the universe merely "ingenious conjectures," but then, he doubted whether "more than Probabilities we shall ever attain in regard to things at so great a distance from us."[379]

The old phraseology, however, did recur occasionally, especially in poetry and in hymns. For instance, a hymnal (preface dated 1806) contains such choice selections as:

and:

But too much importance should not be attributed to such passages; though poetry and astronomy need not conflict, as Keble illustrated:[381]

By the middle of the 18th century in England, one could say with Horne "that the Newtonian System had been in possession of the chair for some years;"[382] but it had not yet convinced the common people, for as Pike wrote in 1753, "Many Common Christians to this day firmly believe that the earth really stands still and that the sun moves all round the earth once a day: neither can they be easily persuaded out of this opinion, because they look upon themselves bound to believe what the Scripture asserts."[383]

There was, however, just at this time a little group of thinkers who objected to Newton's scheme, "because of the endless uninterrupted flux of matter from the sun in light, an expense which should destroy that orb."[384] These Hutchinsonians conceived of light as pure ether in motion springing forth from the sun, growing more dense the further it goes till it becomes air, and, striking the circumference of the universe (which is perhaps an immovable solid), is thrown back toward the sun and melted into light again. Its force as its tides of motion strike the earth and the other planets produces their constant gyrations.[385] Men like Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Sessions, and George Horne, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, as a weapon against rationalism, favored this notion that had been expounded by John Hutchinson (1674-1737) in his Moses's Principia (1724).[386] They were also strongly attracted by the scriptural symbolism with which the book abounds. Leslie Stephen summarizes their doctrines as (1) extreme dislike for rationalism, (2) a fanatical respect for the letter of the Bible, and (3) an attempt to enlist the rising powers of scientific enquiry upon the side of orthodoxy.[387] This "little eddy of thought"[388] was not of much influence even at that time, but it has a certain interest as indicating the positions men have taken when on the defensive against new ideas.

CHAPTER V.

The Church and the New Astronomy: Conclusion.

ASTRONOMICAL thought on the Continent was more hampered, in the Catholic countries especially, by the restrictive opinions of the Church. Yet in 1757, when the decree prohibiting all books dealing with the Copernican doctrine was removed from the Index, that system had already long been adopted by the more celebrated academies of Europe, for so Mme. de Premontval claimed in 1750; and it was then reaching out to non-scientific readers, through simple accounts for "ladies and others not well versed in these somewhat technical matters."[389] The great landmark in the development of the doctrine was the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687, though its effect in Europe was of course slower in being felt than it was in England. Newton's work and that of the astronomers immediately following him was influential except where the Church's prohibitions still held sway.

During this period, the books published in free Holland were more outspoken in their radical acceptance or in their uncertainty of the truth than were those published in the Catholic countries. Christian Huygens's treatises on the plurality of worlds not only fully accepted the Copernican doctrine, but like those of Bishop Wilkins in England, deduced therefrom the probability that the other planets are inhabited even as the earth is. A writer[390] on the sphere in 1697 stated the different theories of the universe so that his readers might choose the one that to them appeared the most probable. He himself preferred the Cartesian explanation as the simplest and most convenient of all, "though it should be held merely as an hypothesis and not as in absolute agreement with the truth." Pierre Bayle[391] also explained the different systems, but appears himself to waver between the Copernican and the Tychonic conceptions. He used, however, the old word "perigee" (nearness to the earth) rather than the Newtonian "perihelion" (nearness to the sun). His objections to the Copernican doctrine have a familiar ring: It is contrary to the evidence of the senses; a stone would not fall back to its starting-place, nor could a bird return to her nest; the earth would not be equidistant from the horizon and the two poles; and lastly it is contrary to the Scriptures. Only a few years later, however, De Maupertius wrote that no one at that day (1744) doubted any longer the motion of the earth around its axis, and he believed with Newton that the laws of gravity applied to the universe as well as to the earth. Then he proceeded to explain the Copernican system which he favored on the ground of its greater probability.[392]

Even in 1750, Mme. de Premontval thought it wiser to publish in Holland her little life of her father, Le Méchaniste Philosophe. This Jean Piegeon, she claimed, was the first man in France to make spheres according to the Copernican system. An orphan, he was educated by a priest; then took up carpentry and mechanics. When he tried to make a celestial sphere according to the Ptolemaic system, he became convinced of its falsity because of its complexities. Therefore he plunged into a study of the new system which he adopted. His first Copernican sphere was exhibited before Louis XIV at Versailles in 1706 and was bought by the king and presented to the Académie des Sciences.[393] The second was taken to Canada by one of the royal officials. Public interest in his work was keen; even Peter the Great, who was then in Paris, visited his workroom.[394] M. Piegeon also wrote a book on the Copernican system.[395]

It seems, however, as though M. Piegeon were slightly in advance of his age, or more daring, perhaps, than his contemporaries, for there was almost no outspoken support of the Copernican system at this time in France. Even Cassini of the French Académie des Sciences did not explicitly support it, though he spoke favorably of it and remarked that recent observations had demonstrated the revolutions of each planet around the sun in accordance with that supposition.[396] But the great orator, Bossuet, (1627-1703), clung to the Ptolemaic conception as alone orthodox, and scriptural.[397] Abbé Fénelon (1651-1715) writing on the existence of God, asked: "Who is it who has hung up this motionless ball of the earth; who has placed the foundations for it," and "who has taught the sun to turn ceasely and regularly in spaces where nothing troubles it?"[398] And a writer on the history of the heavens as treated by poets, philosophers and Moses (1739), tells Gassendi, Descartes and many other great thinkers that their ideas of the heavens are proved vain and false by daily experience as well as by the account of Creation; for the most enlightened experience is wholly and completely in accord with the account of Moses. This book was written, the author said, for young people students of philosophy and the humanities, also for teachers.[399]

The Jesuit order, still a power in Europe in the early 18th century, was bound to the support of the traditional view, which led them into some curious positions in connection with the discoveries made in astronomy during this period. Thus the famous Jesuit astronomer Boscovich (1711-1787) published in Rome in 1746 a study of the ellipticity of the orbits of planets which necessitated the use of the Copernican position; he stated he had assumed it as true merely to facilitate his labors. In the second edition (1785) published some years after the removal from the Index of the decree against books teaching the Copernican doctrine (at his instigation, it is claimed),[400] he added a note to this passage asking the reader to remember the time and the place of its former publication.[401] Just at the end of the preceding century, one of the seminary fathers at Liège maintained that were the earth to move, being made up of so many and divers combustible materials, it would soon burst into flames and be reduced to ashes![402]

During the 18th century at Louvain the Copernican doctrine was warmly supported, but as a theory. A MS. of a course given there in 1748 has come down to us, in which the professor, while affirming its hypothetical character, described it as a simple, clear and satisfactory explanation of the phenomena, then answered all the objections made against it by theologians, physicists, and astronomers.[403] A few years earlier, (1728) a Jesuit at Liège, though well acquainted with Newton's work, declared: "For my part I do not doubt the least in the world that the earth is eternally fixed, for God has founded the terrestrial globe, and it will not be shaken."[404] Another priest stated in the first chapter of his astronomy that the sun and the planets daily revolve around the earth; then later on, he explained the Copernican and the Tychonic schemes and the Cartesian theory of motion with evident sympathy.[405] Two others, one a Jesuit in 1682 at Naples,[406] the other in 1741 at Verona, frankly preferred the Tychonic system, and the latter called the system found by "Tommaso Copernico" a mere fancy.[407] Still another priest, evidently well acquainted with Bradley's work, as late as in 1774 declared that there was nothing decisive on either side of the great controversy between the systems.[408] At this time, however, a father was teaching the Copernican system at Liège without differentiating between thesis and hypothesis.[409] And a Jesuit, while he denied (1772) universal gravitation, the earth's movement, and the plurality of inhabited worlds, declared that the Roman Congregation had done wrong in charging these as heretical suggestions. In fact, M. Monchamp, himself a Catholic priest at Louvain, declared that the Newtonian proofs were considered by many in the 18th century virtually to abrogate the condemnation of 1616 and 1633; hence the professors of the seminary at Liège had adopted the Copernican system.[410]

The famous French astronomer Lalande, in Rome in 1757 when the Inquisition first modified its position, tried to persuade the authorities to remove Galileo's book also from the Index; but his efforts were unavailing, because of the sentence declared against its author.[411] In 1820 Canon Settele was not allowed by the Master of the Sacred Palace to publish his textbook because it dealt with the forbidden subject. His appeal to the Congregation itself resulted, as we have seen, in the decree of 1822 removing this as a cause for prohibition. Yet as late as in 1829, when a statue to Copernicus was being unveiled at Warsaw, and a great convocation had met in the church for the celebration of the mass as part of the ceremony, at the last moment the clergy refused in a body to attend a service in honor of a man whose book was on the Index.[412]

Thus the Roman Catholic Church by reason of its organization and of its doctrine requiring obedience to its authority was more conspicuous for its opposition as a body to the Copernican doctrine, even though as individuals many of its members favored the new system. But the Protestant leaders were quite as emphatic in their denunciations, though less influential because of the Protestant idea of the right to individual belief and interpretation. Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Turrettin,[413] Owen, and Wesley are some of the notable opponents to it. And when the scientific objections had practically disappeared, those who interpreted the Scriptures literally were still troubled and hesitant down to the present day. Not many years ago, people flocked to hear a negro preacher of the South, Brother Jasper, uphold with all his ability that the sun stood still at Joshua's command, and that today "the sun do move!" Far more surprising is this statement in the new Catholic Encyclopedia under "Faith," written by an English Dominican:

In astronomical thought as in many another field, science and reason have had a hard struggle in men's minds to defeat tradition and the weight of verbal inspiration. Within the Roman Catholic Church opposition to this doctrine was officially weakened in 1757, but not completely ended till the publication of the Index in 1835—the first edition since the decrees of 1616 and 1619 which did not contain the works of Copernicus, Galileo, Foscarini, à Stunica and Kepler. Since then, Roman Catholic writers have been particularly active in defending and explaining the positions of the Church in these matters. They have not agreed among themselves as to whether the infallibility of the Church had been involved in these condemnations, nor as to the reasons for them. As one writer has summarized these diverse positions,[414] they first claimed that Galileo was condemned not for upholding a heresy, but for attempting to reconcile these ideas with the Scriptures,—though in fact he was sentenced specifically for heresy. In their next defense they declared Galileo was not condemned for heresy, but for contumacy and want of respect to the Pope.[415] This statement proving untenable, others held that it was the result of a persecution developing out of a quarrel between Aristotelian professors and those professors who favored experiment,—a still worse argument for the Church itself. Then some claimed that the condemnation was merely provisional,—a position hardly warranted by the wording of the decrees themselves and flatly contradicted by Father Riccioli, the spokesman of the Jesuit authorities.[416] More recently, Roman Catholics have held that Galileo was no more a victim of the Roman Church than of the Protestant—which fails to remove the blame of either. The most recent position is that the condemnation of the doctrine by the popes was not as popes but as men simply, and the Church was not committed to their decision since the popes had not signed the decrees. But two noted English Catholics, Roberts and Mivart, publicly stated in 1870 that the infallibility of the papacy was fully committed in these condemnations by what they termed incontrovertible evidence.[417]

One present-day Catholic calls the action of the Congregations "a theoretical mistake;"[418] another admits it was a deplorable mistake, but practically their only serious one;[419] and a third considers it "providential" since it proved conclusively "that whenever there is apparent contradiction between the truths of science and the truths of faith, either the scientist is declaring as proved what in reality is a mere hypothesis, or the theologian is putting forth his own personal views instead of the teaching of the Gospel."[420] Few would accept today, however, the opinion of the anonymous writer in the Dublin Review in the forties that "to the Pontiffs and dignitaries of Rome we are mainly indebted for the Copernican system" and that the phrases "heretical" and "heresy" in the sentence of 1633 were but the stylus curiæ, for it was termed heresy only in the technical sense.[421]

The majority of Protestants, with the possible exception of the Lutherans, were satisfied with the probable truth of the Copernican doctrine before the end of the 18th century. Down to the present day, however, there have been isolated protests raised against it, usually on technical grounds supported by reference to the Scriptures. De Morgan refers to one such, "An Inquiry into the Copernican System ... wherein it is proved in the clearest manner, that the earth has only her diurnal motion ... with an attempt to point out the only true way whereby mankind can receive any real benefit from the study of the heavenly bodies, by John Cunningham, London, 1789." De Morgan adds that "the true way appears to be the treatment of heaven and earth as emblematical of the Trinity."[422] Another, by "Anglo-American," is entitled "Copernicus Refuted; or the True Solar System" (Baltimore, 1846). It begins thus:

This writer admits the earth's axial rotation, but declares the earth is fixed as a pivot in the center of the universe, because the poles of the earth are fixed and immovable, and that the sun as in the Tychonic scheme encircles the earth and is itself encircled by five planets.[423] His account of the origin of the Copernican system is noteworthy: it was originated by Pythagoras and his deciples but lay neglected because it was held to be untenable in their time; it was "revived when learning was at its lowest ebb by a monk in his cloister, Copernicus, who in ransacking the contents of the monastery happened to lay his hands on the MS. and then published it to the world with all its blunders and imperfections!"[424] One might remark that the Anglo-American's own learning was at very low ebb.

The Tychonic scheme was revived also some years later by a Dane, Zytphen (1856).[425] Three years after, an assembly of Lutheran clergy met together at Berlin to protest against "science falsely so-called,"[426] but were brought into ridicule by Pastor Knap's denunciations of the Copernican theory as absolutely incompatible with belief in the Bible. A Carl Schoepffer had taken up the defense of the Tychonic scheme in Berlin before this (1854) and by 1868 his lecture was in its seventh edition. In it he sought to prove that the earth revolves neither upon its own axis nor yet about the sun. He had seen Foucault's pendulum demonstration of the earth's movement, but he held that something else, as yet unexplained, caused the deviation of the pendulum, and that the velocity of the heavens would be no more amazing than the almost incredible velocity of light or of electricity.[427] His lecture, curiously enough, fell into the hands of the late General John Watts de Peyster of New York, who had it translated and published in 1900 together with a supplement by Frank Allaben.[428] Both these gentlemen accepted its scientific views and deductions, but the General refused to go as far as his colleague in the latter's enthusiastic acceptance of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures as a result of these statements.[429] A few months later, they published a supplementary pamphlet claiming to prove the possibility of the sun's velocity by the analogy of the velocity of certain comets.[430] A Professor J.R. Lange of California (a German), attracted by these documents, sent them his own lucubrations on this subject. He considered Newton's doctrine of universal attraction "nonsense," and had "absolute proof" in the fixity of the Pole Star that the earth does not move.[431] In a letter to General de Peyster, he wrote: "Let us hope and pray that the days of the pernicious Copernican system may be numbered,"[432]—but he did not specify why he considered it pernicious. The General was nearly eighty years old when he became interested in these matters, and he did not live long thereafter to defend his position. His biographers make no mention of it. The other men seem almost obsessed, especially Lange;—like the Italian painter, Sindico, who bombarded the director of the Paris Observatory in 1878 with many letters protesting against the Copernican system.[433]

German writers, whether Lutherans or not, appear to have opposed the system more often in the last century than have the writers of other nationalities. Besides those already mentioned, one proposed an ingenious scheme in which the sun moves through space followed by the planets as a comet is by its tail, the planets revolving in a plane perpendicular to that of the sun's path. A diagram of it would be cone-shaped. He included in this pamphlet, besides a list of his own books, (all published in Leipsic), a list of twenty-six titles from 1758 to 1883, books and pamphlets evidently opposed in whole or in part to the modern astronomy, and seventeen of these were in German or printed in Germany.[434] In this country at St. Louis was issued an Astronomische Unterredung (1873) by J.C.W.L.; according to the late President White, a bitter attack on modern astronomy and a decision by the Scriptures that the earth is the principal body of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that the sun and the moon only serve to light it.[435]

Such statements are futile in themselves nowadays, and are valuable only to illustrate the advance of modern thought of which these are the little eddies. While modern astronomers know far more than Copernicus even dreamed of, much of his work still holds true today. The world was slow to accept his system because of tradition, authority, so-called common sense, and its supposed incompatibility with scriptural passages. Catholic and Protestant alike opposed it on these grounds; but because of its organization and authority, the Roman Catholic Church had far greater power and could more successfully hinder and delay its acceptance than could the Protestants. Consequently the system won favor slowly at first through the indifference of the authorities, then later in spite of their active antagonism. Scholars believed it long before the universities were permitted to teach it; and the rationalist movement of the 18th century, the revolt against a superstitious religion, helped to overturn the age-old conception of the heavens and to bring Newtonian-Copernicanism into general acceptance.

The elements of this traditional conception are summarized in the fifth book of Bodin's Universæ Naturæ Theatrum, a scholar's account of astronomy at the close of the sixteenth century.[436] Man in his terrestrial habitation occupies the center of a universe created solely to serve him, God presides over all from the Empyrean above, sending forth his messengers the angels to guide and control the heavenly bodies. Such had been the thought of Christians for more than a thousand years. Then came the influence of a new science. Tycho Brahe "broke the crystal spheres of Aristotle"[437] by his study of the comet of 1572; Galileo's telescopes revealed many stars hitherto unknown, and partly solved the mysteries of the Milky Way; Kepler's laws explained the courses of the planets, and Newton's discovery of the universal application of the forces of attraction relieved the angels of their duties among the heavens. Thinkers like Bruno proposed the possibility of other systems and universes besides the solar one in which the earth belongs. And thus not only did man shrink in importance in his own eyes; but his conception of the heavens changed from that of a finite place inexplicably controlled by the mystical beings of a supernatural world, to one of vast and infinite spaces traversed by bodies whose density and mass a man could calculate, whose movements he could foretell, and whose very substance he could analyze by the science of today. This dissolution of superstition, especially in regard to comets was notably rapid and complete after the comet of 1680.[438] Thus the rationalist movement with the new science opened men's minds to a universe composed of familiar substances and controlled by known or knowable laws with no tinge remaining of the supernatural. Today a man's theological beliefs are not shaken by the discovery of a new satellite or even a new planet, and the appearance of a new comet merely provides the newspaper editor with the subject of a passing jest.

Yet it was fully one hundred and fifty years after the publication of the De Revolutionibus before its system met with the general approval of scholars as well as of mathematicians; then nearly a generation more had to elapse before it was openly taught even at Oxford where the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches had no control. During the latter part of this period, readers were often left free to decide for themselves as to the relative merits of the Tychonic and Copernican or Copernican-Cartesian schemes. But it took fully fifty years and more, besides, before these ideas had won general acceptance by the common people, so wedded were they to the traditional view through custom and a superstitious reverence for the Bible. Briefly then, the De Revolutionibus appeared in 1543; and quietly won some supporters, notably Bruno, Kepler and Galileo; the Congregations of the Index specifically opposed it in 1616 and 1633; however it continued to spread among scholars and others with the aid of Cartesianism for another fifty years till the appearance of Newton's Principia in 1687. Then its acceptance rapidly became general even in Catholic Europe, till it was almost a commonplace in England by 1743, two hundred years after its first formal promulgation, and had become strong enough in Europe to cause the Congregations in 1757 to modify their stand. Thereafter opposition became a curiosity rather than a significant fact. Only the Roman Church officially delayed its recognition of the new astronomy till the absurdity of its obsolete position was brought home to it by Canon Settele's appeal in 1820. Fifteen years later the last trace of official condemnation was removed, a little over two hundred years after the decrees had first been issued, and just before Bessel's discovery of stellar parallax at length answered one of the strongest and oldest arguments against the system. Since then have come many apologias in explanation and extenuation of the Church's decided stand in this matter for so many generations.

Though Galileo himself was forced to his knees, unable to withstand his antagonists, his work lived on after him; he and Copernicus, together with Kepler and Newton stand out both as scientists and as leaders in the advance of intellectual enlightenment. The account of their work and that of their less well-known supporters, compared with that of their antagonists, proves the truth of the ancient Greek saying which Rheticus used as the motto for the Narratio Prima, the first widely known account of the Copernican system: "One who intends to philosophize must be free in mind."

APPENDIX A.

Ptolemy: Syntaxis Mathematica (Almagest)