ut anything that made men
doubt must be rooted out at any cost. And that is why priests have
opposed Science, not that they hate Science less, but that they love the
Church more.

From the time of Ptolemy to that of Copernicus--fourteen hundred
years--theology practically dictated the learning of the world. And to
Copernicus must be given the credit of having really awakened the
science of astronomy from her long and peaceful sleep.

* * * * *

The little land that we know as Poland has produced some of the finest
and most acute intellects the world has ever known.

Tragic and blood-stained is her history, and this tragedy, perhaps, has
been a prime factor in the evolution of her men of worth. Poland has
been stamped upon and pushed apart; and a persecuted people produce a
pride of race that has its outcrop in occasional genius.

Recently we heard of the great Paderewski playing before the Czar, and
His Majesty, in a speech meant to be very complimentary, congratulated
the company that so great a genius as he was a citizen of Russia.

"Your Majesty, I am not a Russian--I am a Pole!" was the proud reply.

The Czar replied, smiling, "There is no such country as Poland--now
there is only Russia!"

And Paderewski replied, "Pardon my hasty remark--you speak but truth."
And then he played Chopin's "Funeral March," a dirge not only to the
great men of Poland gone, but to Poland herself.

Nicholas Copernicus was born at the quaint old town of Thorn, in Poland,
February Nineteen, Fourteen Hundred Seventy-three. The family name was
Koppernigk, but Nicholas latinized it when he became of age, and
seemingly separated from his immediate kinsmen forever.

His father was a merchant, fairly prosperous, and only in the line of
money-making was he ambitious. In the Koppernigks ran a goodly strain of
Jewish blood, but a generation before, pressure and expediency seemed to
combine, so that the family, as we first see them, were Christians. No
soil can grow genius, no seed can produce it--it springs into being in
spite of all laws and rules and regulations. "No hovel is safe from it,"
says Whistler.

The portraits of Copernicus reveal a man of most marked personality:
proud, handsome, self-contained, intellectual. The head is massive, eyes
full, luminous, wide apart, his nose large and bold, chin strong, the
mouth alone revealing a trace of the feminine, as though the man were
the child of his mot