are
made, like our sun, to enjoy perpetual rest.

SAGREDUS: The scheme is simple and satisfactory; but, tell me, how is it
that Pythagoras and Copernicus, who first brought it forward, could make
so few converts?

SALVIATUS: If you know what frivolous reasons serve to make the vulgar,
contumacious and indisposed to hearken, you would not wonder at the
paucity of converts. The number of thick skulls is infinite, and we need
neither record their follies nor endeavour to interest them in subtle
and sublime ideas. No demonstrations can enlighten stupid brains.

My wonder, Sagredus, is different from yours. You wonder that so few are
believers in the Pythagorean hypothesis; I wonder that there are any to
embrace it. Nor can I sufficiently admire the super-eminence of those
men's wits that have received and held it to be true, and with the
sprightliness of their judgments have offered such violence to their
senses that they have been able to prefer that which their reason
asserted to that which sensible experience manifested. I cannot find any
bounds for my admiration how that reason was able, in Aristarchus and
Copernicus, to commit such a rape upon their senses, as in despite
thereof to make herself mistress of their credulity.

SAGREDUS: Will there still be strong opposition to the Copernican
system?

SALVIATUS: Undoubtedly; for there are evident and sensible facts to
oppose it, requiring a sense more sublime than the common and vulgar
senses to assist reason.

SAGREDUS: Let us, then, join battle with those antagonistic facts.

SALVIATUS: I am ready. In the first place, Mars himself charges hotly
against the truth of the Copernican system. According to the Copernican
system, that planet should appear sixty times as large when at its
nearest as when at its farthest; but this diversity of magnitude is not
to be seen. The same difficulty is seen in the case of Venus. Further,
if Venus be dark, and shine only with reflected light, like the moon, it
should show lunar phases; but these do not appear.

Further, again, the moon prevents the whole order of the Copernican
system by revolving round the earth instead of round the sun. And there
are other serious and curious difficulties admitted by Copernicus
himself. But even the three great difficulties I have named are not
real. As a matter of fact, Mars and Venus do vary in magnitude as
required by theory, and Venus does change its shape exactly like the
moon.

SAGRED