three
lectures in a certain academy, and to a crowded audience. Believing that
several were attracted more by the novelty of the subject than by any
other cause, and being firmly persuaded that this opinion was a piece of
solemn folly, I was unwilling to be present. Upon interrogating,
however, some of those who were there, I found that they all made it a
subject of merriment, with the exception of one, who assured me that it
was not a thing wholly ridiculous. As I considered this individual to be
both prudent and circumspect, I repented that I had not attended the
lectures; and, whenever I met any of the followers of Copernicus, I
began to inquire if they had always been of the same opinion. I found
that there was not one of them who did not declare that he had long
maintained the very opposite opinions, and had not gone over to the new
doctrines till he was driven by the force of argument. I next examined
them one by one, to see if they were masters of the arguments on the
opposite side; and such was the readiness of their answers, that I was
satisfied they had not taken up this opinion from ignorance or vanity.
On the other hand, whenever I interrogated the Peripatetics and the
Ptolemeans--and, out of curiosity, I have interrogated not a
few--respecting their perusal of Copernicus's work, I perceived that
there were few who had seen the book, and not one who understood it. Nor
have I omitted to inquire among the followers of the Peripatetic
doctrines, if any of them had ever stood on the opposite side; and the
result was, that there was not one. Considering, then, that nobody
followed the Copernican doctrine, who had not previously held the
contrary opinion, and who was not well acquainted with the arguments of
Aristotle and Ptolemy; while, on the other hand, nobody followed Ptolemy
and Aristotle, who had before adhered to Copernicus, and had gone over
from him into the camp of Aristotle;--weighing, I say, these things, I
began to believe that, if any one who rejects an opinion which he has
imbibed with his milk, and which has been embraced by an infinite
number, shall take up an opinion held only by a few, condemned by all
the schools, and really regarded as a great paradox, it cannot be
doubted that he must have been induced, not to say driven, to embrace it
by the most cogent arguments. On this account I have become very curious
to penetrate to the very bottom of the subject."[6]

[6] Systema Cosmicum, Dial.