enough for terrestrial objects,
it was altogether false and illusory when applied to the heavens. Others
took the safer ground of refusing to look through the glass. One of
these who would not look at the satellites happened to die soon
afterward. "I hope," says Galileo, "that he saw them on his way to
heaven."

The way in which Kepler received the news is characteristic, though by
adding four to the supposed number of planets it might have seemed to
upset his notions about the five regular solids.

He says: "I was sitting idle at home thinking of you, most excellent
Galileo, and your letters, when the news was brought me of the discovery
of four planets by the help of the double eye-glass. Wachenfels stopped
his carriage at my door to tell me, when such a fit of wonder seized me
at a report which seemed so very absurd, and I was thrown into such
agitation at seeing an old dispute between us decided in this way, that
between his joy, my coloring, and the laughter of us both, confounded as
we were by such a novelty, we were hardly capable, he of speaking, or I
of listening.

"On our separating, I immediately fell to thinking how there could be
any addition to the number of planets without overturning my _Mysterium
Cosmographicon_, published thirteen years ago, according to which
Euclid's five regular solids do not allow more than six planets round
the sun. But I am so far from disbelieving the existence of the four
circumjovial planets that I long for a telescope to anticipate you if
possible in discovering two round Mars--as the proportion seems to me to
require--six or eight round Saturn, and one each round Mercury and
Venus."

As an illustration of the opposite school I will take the following
extract from Francesco Sizzi, a Florentine astronomer, who argues
against the discovery thus:

"There are seven windows in the head--two nostrils, two eyes, two ears,
and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two
unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and
indifferent. From which and many other similar phenomena of nature, such
as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather
that the number of planets is necessarily seven.

"Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye, and therefore
can have no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and
therefore do not exist.

"Besides, the Jews and other ancient nations as well as modern Europ