in the main. For
striking woodcuts showing the view taken of the successive heavens with
their choirs of angels, the earth being at the centre with the spheres
about it, and the Almighty on his throne above all, see the Neuremberg
Chronicle, ff. iv and v; its date is 1493. For charts showing the
continuance of this general view down to the beginning of the sixteenth
century, see the various editions of the Margarita Philosophica, from
that of 1503 onward, astronomical part. For interesting statements
regarding the Trinities of gods in ancient Egypt, see Sharpe, History of
Egypt, vol. i, pp. 94 and 101. The present writer once heard a lecture
in Cairo, from an eminent Scotch Doctor of Medicine, to account for the
ancient Hindu and Egyptian sacred threes and trinities. The lecturer's
theory was that, when Jehovah came down into the Garden of Eden and
walked with Adam in "the cool of the day," he explained his triune
character to Adam, and that from Adam it was spread abroad to the
various ancient nations.

II. THE HELIOCENTRIC THEORY.

But, on the other hand, there had been planted, long before, the
germs of a heliocentric theory. In the sixth century before our era,
Pythagoras, and after him Philolaus, had suggested the movement of the
earth and planets about a central fire; and, three centuries later,
Aristarchus had restated the main truth with striking precision. Here
comes in a proof that the antagonism between theological and scientific
methods is not confined to Christianity; for this statement brought
upon Aristarchus the charge of blasphemy, and drew after it a cloud of
prejudice which hid the truth for six hundred years. Not until the fifth
century of our era did it timidly appear in the thoughts of Martianus
Capella: then it was again lost to sight for a thousand years, until
in the fifteenth century, distorted and imperfect, it appeared in the
writings of Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa.

But in the shade cast by the vast system which had grown from the minds
of the great theologians and from the heart of the great poet there had
come to this truth neither bloom nor fruitage.

Quietly, however, the soil was receiving enrichment and the air warmth.
The processes of mathematics were constantly improved, the heavenly
bodies were steadily observed, and at length appeared, far from the
centres of thought, on the borders of Poland, a plain, simple-minded
scholar, who first fairly uttered to the modern world t