of two opposite assertions, made by the same
individual, could possibly escape being a lie. It was not
'sophistry,' but the dread of theologic vengeance, that generated this
double dealing with conviction; and it is astonishing to notice what
lengths were allowed to men who were adroit in the use of artifices
of this kind.

Towards the close of the stationary period a word-weariness, if I may
so express it, took more and more possession of men's minds.
Christendom had become sick of the School Philosophy and its verbal
wastes, which led to no issue, but left the intellect in everlasting
haze. Here and there was heard the voice of one impatiently crying in
the wilderness, 'Not unto Aristotle, not unto subtle hypothesis, not
unto church, Bible, or blind tradition, must we turn for a knowledge
of the universe, but to the direct investigation of nature by
observation and experiment.' In 1543 the epoch-marking work of
Copernicus on the paths of the heavenly bodies appeared. The total
crash of Aristotle's closed universe, with the earth at its centre,
followed as a consequence, and 'The earth moves!' became a kind of
watchword among intellectual freemen. Copernicus was Canon of the
church of Frauenburg in the diocese of Ermeland. For three-and-thirty
years he had withdrawn himself from the world, and devoted himself to
the consolidation of his great scheme of the solar system. He made
its blocks eternal; and even to those who feared it, and desired its
overthrow, it was so obviously strong, that they refrained for a time
from meddling with it. In the last year of the life of Copernicus his
book appeared: it is said that the old man received a copy of it a few
days before his death, and then departed in peace.

The Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was one of the earliest
converts to the new astronomy. Taking Lucretius as his exemplar, he
revived the notion of the infinity of worlds; and, combining with it
the doctrine of Copernicus, reached the sublime generalisation that
the fixed stars are suns, scattered numberless through space, and
accompanied by satellites, which bear the same relation to them that
our earth does to our sun, or our moon to our earth. This was an
expansion of transcendent import; but Bruno came closer than this to
our present line of thought. Struck with the problem of the
generation and maintenance of organisms, and duly pondering it, he
came to the conclusion that Nature, in her product