he truth--now so
commonplace, then so astounding--that the sun and planets do not revolve
about the earth, but that the earth and planets revolve about the sun:
this man was Nicholas Copernicus.

Copernicus had been a professor at Rome, and even as early as 1500
had announced his doctrine there, but more in the way of a scientific
curiosity or paradox, as it had been previously held by Cardinal de
Cusa, than as the statement of a system representing a great fact in
Nature. About thirty years later one of his disciples, Widmanstadt, had
explained it to Clement VII; but it still remained a mere hypothesis,
and soon, like so many others, disappeared from the public view. But
to Copernicus, steadily studying the subject, it became more and more
a reality, and as this truth grew within him he seemed to feel that at
Rome he was no longer safe. To announce his discovery there as a theory
or a paradox might amuse the papal court, but to announce it as a
truth--as THE truth--was a far different matter. He therefore returned
to his little town in Poland.

To publish his thought as it had now developed was evidently dangerous
even there, and for more than thirty years it lay slumbering in the mind
of Copernicus and of the friends to whom he had privately intrusted it.

At last he prepared his great work on the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Bodies, and dedicated it to the Pope himself. He next sought a place of
publication. He dared not send it to Rome, for there were the rulers of
the older Church ready to seize it; he dared not send it to Wittenberg,
for there were the leaders of Protestantism no less hostile; he
therefore intrusted it to Osiander, at Nuremberg.(45)

(45) For the germs of heliocentric theory planted long before, see Sir
G. C. Lewis; and for a succinct statement of the claims of Pythagoras,
Philolaus, Aristarchus, and Martianus Capella, see Hoefer, Histoire de
l'Astronomie, 1873, p. 107 et seq.; also Heller, Geschichte der Physik,
Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, pp. 12, 13; also pp. 99 et seq. For germs among
thinkers of India, see Whewell, vol. i, p. 277; also Whitney, Oriental
and Linguistic Studies, New York, 1874; Essay on the Lunar Zodiac, p.
345. For the views of Vincent of Beauvais, see his Speculum Naturale,
lib. xvi, cap. 21. For Cardinal d'Ailly's view, see his treatise De
Concordia Astronomicae Veritatis cum Theologia (in his Ymago Mundi
and separately). For general statement of De Cusa's work, see Dra