THE AGE OF REASON IN EUROPE, 511. CHAPTER XXII. THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON. REJECTION OF AUTHORITY AND TRADITION, AND ADOPTION OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH.-DISCOVERY OF THE TRUE POSITION OF THE EARTH IN THE UNIVERSE. Ecclesiastical Attempt to enforce the GEOCENTRIC DOCTRINE that the Earth is the Centre of the Universe, and the most important Body in it. The HELIOCENTRIC DOCTRINE that the Sun is the Centre of the Solar System, and the Earth a small Planet, comes gradually into Prominence. Struggle between the Ecclesiastical and Astronomical Parties.-Activity of the Inquisition.— Complete Overthrow of the Ecclesiastical Idea.· Rise of Physical Astronomy.-NEWTON.-Rapid and resistless Development of all Branches of Natural Philosophy. Final Establishment of the Doctrine that the Universe is under the Dominion of mathematical, and, therefore, necessary Laws. Progress of Man from Anthropocentric Ideas to the Discovery of his true Position and Insignif icance in the Universe. THE Age of Reason in Europe was ushered in by an astronomical controversy. Is the earth the greatest and most noble body in the universe, round which, as an immovable centre, the sun, and the various plan- An astronomets, and stars revolve, ministering by their light and other ical problem. qualities to the wants and pleasures of man, or is it an insignificant orb -a mere point-submissively revolving, among a crowd of compeers and superiors, around a central sun? The former of these views was authoritatively asserted by the Church; the latter, timidly suggested by a few thoughtful and religious men at first, in the end gathered strength and carried the day. Behind this physical question-a mere scientific problem-lay something of the utmost importance-the position of man in the Its important universe. The conflict broke out upon an ostensible issue, consequences. but every one saw what was the real point in the dispute. of the Age In the history of the Age of Reason in Europe, which is to fill the remaining pages of this book, I am constrained to commence with Treatment this astronomical controversy, and have therefore been led by of Reason. that circumstance to complete the survey of the entire period from the same, that is, the scientific point of view. Many different modes of treating it spontaneously present themselves; but so vast are the subjects to be brought under consideration, so numerous their connections, and so limited the space at my disposal, that I must give the preference 512 THE ASTRONOMICAL CONTROVERSY. to one which, with sufficient copiousness, offers also precision. Whoever will examine the progress of European intellectual advancement thus far manifested will find that it has concerned itself with three great questions: 1. The ascertainment of the position of the earth in the uni verse; 2. The history of the earth in time; 3. The position of man among living beings. Under this last is ranged all that he has done in scientific discovery, and all those inventions which are the characteristics of the present industrial age. Roman astro Where am I? What am I? we may imagine to have been the first exclamations of the first man awakening to conscious existence. Here, in our Age of Reason, we have been dealing with the same thoughts. They are the same which, as we have seen, occupied Greek intellectual life. When Halley's comet appeared in 1456, it was described by those who saw it as an object of "unheard-of magnitude;" its tail, nomical ideas. which shook down "diseases, pestilence, and war" upon earth, reached over a third part of the heavens. It was considered as connected with the progress of Mohammed II., who had just then taken Constantinople. It struck terror into all people. From his seat, invisible to it, in Italy, the sovereign pontiff, Calixtus III., issued his ecclesiastical fulminations; but the comet in the heavens, like the sultan on the earth, pursued its course undeterred. In vain were all the bells in Europe ordered to be rung to scare it away; in vain was it anathematized; in vain were prayers put up in all directions to stop it. True to its time, it punctually returns from the abysses of space, uninfluenced by any thing save agencies of a material kind. A signal lesson for the meditations of every religious man. More correct some of the Among the clergy there were, however, some who had more correct cosmic ideas than those of Calixtus. A century before Coperideas among nicus, Cardinal de Cusa had partially adopted the heliocentric clergy. theory, as taught in the old times by Philolaus, Pythagoras, and Archimedes. He ascribed to the earth a globular form, rotation on its axis, and a movement in space; he believed that it moves round the sun, and both together round the pole of the universe. and heliocen By geocentric theory is meant that doctrine which asserts the earth The geocentric to be the immovable centre of the universe; by heliocentric theory that which demonstrates the sun to be the centre of our planetary system, implying, as a necessary inference, that the earth is a very small and subordinate body revolving round the sun. tric theories. The geocentric I have already, in sufficient detail, described how the Roman Church had been constrained by her position to uphold the geocentric doctrine. She had come to regard it as absolutely essential to her sysdoctrine adopt- tem, the intellectual basis of which she held would be sapped if this doctrine should be undermined. Hence it was that such an alarm was shown at the assertion of the globular form of the ed by the Church. GEOCENTRIC AND HELIOCENTRIC DOCTRINES. 513 earth, and hence the surpassing importance of the successful voyage of Magellan's ship. That indisputable demonstration of the globular figure was ever a solid support to the scientific party in the portentous approaching conflict. the heliocentric Preparations had been silently making for a scientific revolution in various directions. The five memoirs of Cardinal Alliacus Preparations for "On the Concordance of Astronomy with Theology," show doctrine. the turn that thought was taking. His Imago mundi was published in 1460, and is said to have been a favorite work with Columbus. In the very Cathedral of Florence, Toscanelli had constructed his celebrated gnomon, 1468, a sun-ray, auspicious omen! being admitted through a plate of brass in the lantern of the cupola. John Muller, better known as Regiomontanus, had published an abridgment of Ptolemy's Almagest, 1520. Euclid had been printed with diagrams on copper as long before as 1482, and again in Venice twenty-three years subsequently. The Optics of Vitello had been published 1533. Fernel, physician to Henry II. of France, had even ventured so far, supported by Magellan's voyage, as to measure, 1527, the size of the earth, his method being to observe the height of the pole at Paris, then to proceed northward until its elevation was increased exactly one degree, and to ascertain the distance between the stations by the number of revolutions of his carriage wheel. He concluded that it is 24,480 Italian miles round the globe. The last attempt of the kind had been that of the Khalif Almaimon seven hundred years previously on the shore of the Red Sea, and with nearly the same result. The mathematical sciences were undergoing rapid advancement. Rhæticus had published his trigonometrical tables; Cardan, Tartaglia, Scipio Ferreo, and Stefel were greatly improving algebra. The first formal assertion of the heliocentric theory was made in a timid manner, strikingly illustrative of the expected opposition. It was by Copernicus, a Prussian, speaking of the revolutions of the copernicus, the heavenly bodies; the year was about 1536. In his preface, works of. addressed to Pope Paul III., whether written by himself, or, as some have affirmed, for him by Andreas Osiander, he complains of the imperfections of the existing system, states that he has sought among ancient writers for a better way, and so had learned the heliocentric doctrine. "Then I too began to meditate on the motion of the earth, and, though it appeared an absurd opinion, yet, since I knew that in previous times others had been allowed the privilege of feigning what circles they chose in order to explain the phenomena, I conceived that I might take the liberty of trying whether, on the supposition of the earth's motion, it was possible to find better explanations than the ancient ones of the revolutions of the celestial orbs." "Having, then, assumed the motions of the earth, which are hereafter explained, by laborious and long observation I at length found that, if K K the motions of the other planets be compared with the revolution of the earth, not only their phenomena follow from the suppositions, but also that the several orbs and the whole system are so connected in order and magnitude that no one point can be transposed without disturbing the rest, and introducing confusion into the whole universe." his system. The apologetic air with which he thus introduces his doctrine is again. Introduction of remarked in his statement that he had kept his book for thirty-six years, and only now published it at the entreaty of Cardinal Schomberg. The cardinal had begged of him a manuscript copy. "Though I know that the thoughts of a philosopher do not depend on the judgment of the many, his study being to seek out truth in all things as far as is permitted by God to human reason, yet, when I considered how absurd my doctrine would appear, I long hesitated whether I should publish my book, or whether it were not better to follow the example of the Pythagoreans and others, who delivered their doctrine only by tradition and to friends." He concludes: "If there be He fears being vain babblers, who, knowing nothing of mathematics, yet assume the right of judging on account of some place of Scripture perversely wrested to their purpose, and who blame and attack my undertaking, I heed them not, and look upon their judgments as rash and contemptible." accused of her esy. Copernicus clearly recognized not only the relative position of the earth, but also her relative magnitude. He says the magnitude of the world is so great that the distance of the earth from the sun has no apparent magnitude when compared with the sphere of the fixed stars. can theory. To the earth Copernicus attributed a triple motion-a daily rotation Early correction on her axis, an annual motion round the sun, a motion of of the Coperni- declination of the axis. The latter seemed to be necessary to account for the constant direction of the pole; but as this was soon found to be a misconception, the theory was relieved of it. With this correction, the doctrine of Copernicus presents a clear and great advance, though in the state in which he offered it he was obliged to retain the mechanism of epicycles and eccentrics, because he considered the planetary motions to be circular. It was the notion that, since the circle is the most simple of all geometrical forms, it must therefore be the most natural, which led to this imperfection. His work was published in 1543. He died a few days after he had seen a copy. Against the opposition it had to encounter, the heliocentric theory made its way slowly at first. Among those who did adopt it were some whose connection served rather to retard its progress, because of the ultraism of their views or the doubtfulness of their social position. Such Giordano Bruno Was Bruno, who contributed largely to its introduction into England, and who was the author of a work on the Plurality of Worlds, and of the conception that every star is a sun, having opaque of Nola. THE MARTYRDOM OF BRUNO. 515 the heliocen planets revolving round it-a conception to which the Copernican system suggestively leads. Bruno was born seven years after the death of Copernicus. He became a Dominican, but, like so many other thoughtful men of the times, was led into heresy on the doctrine of transubstantiation. Not concealing his opinions, he was persecuted, fled, and led a vagabond life in foreign countries, testifying that wherever he went he found skepticism under the polish of hypocrisy, and that he fought not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief. For teaching the rotation of the earth he had to fly to Switzerland, He teaches and thence to England, where, at Oxford, he gave lectures on tric theory, cosmology. Driven from England, France, and Germany in succession, he ventured in his extremity to return to Italy, and was arrested in Venice, where he was kept in prison in the Piombi for six years without books, or paper, or friends. Meantime the Inquisition demanded him. as having written heretical works. He was therefore surrendered to Rome, and, after a farther imprisonment of two years, tried, excommunicated, and delivered over to the secular authorities, to be punished "as mercifully as possible, and without the shedding of his blood," the abominable formula for burning a man alive. He had collected all the observations that had been made respecting the new star in Cassiopeia, 1572; he had taught that space is infinite, and that it is filled with self-luminous and opaque worlds, many of them inhabited—this being his capital offense. He believed that the world is animated by an intelligent soul, the cause of forms but not of matter; that it lives in all things, even such as seem not to live; that every thing is ready to become organized; that matter is the mother of forms and then their grave; that matter and the soul of the world together constitute God. His ideas were therefore pantheistic, "Est Deus in nobis." In his "Cena de le Cenere" he insists that the Scripture was not intended to teach science, but morals only. The severity with which he was treated was provoked by his asseverations that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor belief. This was the aim of his work entitled "The triumphant Beast." He was burnt at and is burnt Rome, February 16, 1600. With both a present and prophetic etic. truth, he nobly responded, when the atrocious sentence was passed upon him, "Perhaps it is with greater fear that ye pass this sentence upon me than I receive it." His tormentors jocosely observed, as the flames shut him out forever from view, that he had gone to the imaginary worlds he had so wickedly feigned. alive as a her This vigorous but spasmodic determination of the Church to defend herself was not without effect. It enabled her to hold fast the timid, the time-servers, the superficial. Among such may be mentioned Lord Bacon, who never received the Copernican system. With the Lord Bacon. audacity of ignorance, he presumed to criticise what he did not under |