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In the days before Copernicus, the conception of the "universe" was defensible on scientific grounds: the diurnal revolution of the heavenly bodies bound them together as all parts of one system, of which the earth was the centre.
With the book he sent a bag of gold, his savings of a lifetime, to pay the expense of printing the volume and putting it before the world. To better protect himself, Copernicus wrote a preface, dedicating the book to the Pope Paul, thus throwing himself upon the mercy of His Holiness. He would not put the work out anonymously, as his friends in Nuremberg, for his own safety, had advised.
"An argument against the existence of God and the immortality of the soul would be sooner tolerated than the idea that the earth moves." In reply to this fusillade, in Sixteen Hundred Thirty-two Galileo put forth his book entitled, "The Dialogue," which was intended to place the ideas of Copernicus in popular form.
For the first time since Antiquity, man walks free of all political and intellectual trammels, erect, conscious of his own thoughts, master of his own actions; ready to seek for truth across the ocean like Columbus, or across the heavens like Copernicus; to seek it in criticism and analysis like Machiavelli or Guicciardini, boldly to reproduce it in its highest, widest sense like Michael Angelo and Raphael.
She straightened herself suddenly and stood rigid. "Hark!" she exclaimed. "Is that Mr. Droop comin' back, d'you s'pose?" There were distinctly audible footsteps on the path. Phoebe came out into the hall on tiptoe and stood beside her sister. There was a knock on the door. The two sisters gripped each other's arms excitedly. "'Taint Copernicus!" Rebecca whispered very low.
"And poets like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakspeare, Göthe and Hugo?" "Not a doubt of it." "And philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Bacon, Kant?" "Why not?" "And scientists like Euclid, Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Pascal?" "I should think so." "And famous actors, and singers, and composers, and and photographers?" "I could almost swear to it."
On the appearance of the immortal work of Copernicus, in which it was taught that the earth rotated on its axis, and that the earth, like the other planets, revolved round the sun, orthodoxy stood aghast. After due examination it was condemned as heretical in 1615. Galileo was suspected, on no doubt excellent grounds, of entertaining the objectionable views of Copernicus.
Immediately the Church condemned the statements of Copernicus and forbade Galileo to teach or discuss them. All books which affirmed the motion of the earth were forbidden, and to read the work of Copernicus was declared to risk damnation. All branches of the Protestant Church, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican, vied with each other in denouncing the Copernican doctrine.
And was not the earth certainly flat, as millions of flats believed it to be? The Catholic Inquisition forced Galileo to recant, and Protestant Luther called Copernicus "an old fool." Chemistry was opposed as an impious prying into the secrets of God. It was put in the same class with sorcery and witchcraft, and punished in the same way.
If such a crater as Copernicus or the still larger one named Theophilus, which is situated in the western hemisphere of the moon, on the shore of the "Sea of Nectar," ever had a conical mountain rising from its rim, the height attained by the peak, if the average slope were about 30°, would have been truly stupendous fifteen or eighteen miles!
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