Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae: Liber I, part 8
3) If we have already assigned, with sufficient probability, the cause of the direction of the axis to the bodily form, according to straight fibres parallel to the axis, then the other informing of the globe, according to circular fibres, and the motive faculty depending upon it, becomes far more probable; since it has also been said above that the same globe, with respect to the course of the former, has the character of something at rest, and with respect to the circuit of the latter, the character of something movable.
Physicians have an example of such an interweaving of fibres, not merely twofold as here, but plainly threefold, in the substance of the stomach, which in like manner distributes the three faculties of the stomach among those three mutually interwoven orders of fibres: the attractive, the retentive and the expulsive.
4) In the first place, the distinction of the directions of motion can fittingly be assigned to this bodily form, since we have examples in which the form of a body becomes the cause of motion toward a certain quarter. For as the magnet draws iron to itself with one part and drives it from itself with the opposite part, so too by reason of this circular informing of the globe, arising from the motion first impressed, the globe is now rotated toward the quarter in which the circular fibres are ready.
But it seems impossible that anything material should move itself first. Even if this bodily form of the fibres were set up alone as the cause of the motion, that which is moved and that which moves would still not be the same. For as it is in a stone when it falls downward, so here too in the circular fibres of the globe these same circular fibres, by reason of their disposition in a circle, would be one thing, and the form according to this circularity of the body, together with its motive faculty, another; and, to gather everything distinguished so far into one bundle: the same globe will be at rest and subject to motion by reason of its straight fibres; by reason of its circular fibres it will be moved, and by the material inertia of these toward motion will receive an impetus; finally, by reason of the form extended through these circular fibres, it will move.
By what arguments, moreover, will you set a soul over this first motion, seated in the body of the Earth? By many, drawn partly from the motion itself, partly from other indications of a soul, partly from the examples of the bodies of the world.
What have you from the motion itself? First, even if the Earth is so informed by circular tracts that it seems fitted by them to impart motion to itself, yet these seem to be rather the instruments of the moving cause than the moving cause itself. So in the human body the nerves, muscles, ligaments, joints and bones, though most perfectly adapted to motion, are not the first moving cause, but only the instruments of the soul for moving the body.
Secondly, the constant vigour of this rotation, or its uniform speed, finds safer support in a soul than in a bodily faculty. For the measure of this speed arises from the proportion between the forces of the mover and the inertia or resistance of the matter, that is, from the excess of the former over the latter, or its victory. As we said before, then, the internal form of a body is less wearied than a species of motion brought in from outside, because the former, supported by its own proper subject, inheres closely and continuously, while the latter, a wanderer in a foreign subject, becomes the weaker than itself the more time it gains, as it were departing the farther from its source; so now too the power of the soul is more faithful and constant than a bodily form, because the soul puts forth its secondary acts from itself without damage to its source, being an entelechy that continually restores itself; but the bodily form is subject to time and does not endure without loss, even if it withers imperceptibly through the long passage of time, according to the saying: death comes even to rocks and marbles.
Thirdly, the very origin of this mover, as set out before, bears about it something nobler and more august than a bodily form. For if it is a species abstracted or flowing from the first moving cause, which made the beginning of this motion from outside, namely from God himself, what else will it be than the first mover, itself not movable, that is, a soul? For so God too is, above all being, the first moving cause and creator, and therefore he himself is transcendently essential motion, that is, eternal generation, of which all souls and spirits are the shadows, bearing his image in some degree, as shadows bear the image of bodies.
Fourthly, the office of this mover tends to the same conclusion. Grant that that uniformity and duration of the rotation needs nothing but a brute natural cause, and likewise even its very slight increase and decrease, tempered to the approach and recession of the Sun, a geometrical matter, the character of matter; yet there certainly remains that very slow inclination, whether of the axis or of the motion of the middle circle, about which we are uncertain, at least in this part of astronomy, whether it does not need the governance of a mind.
What you have said of the constancy of the motion seems to be weakened by the example of animals, which, though endowed with a soul, are nevertheless wearied. Animals have evident causes of their weariness in the condition of their bodies, which have their own changes, and not in the moving soul; but such causes are lacking in the globe of the Earth, which is perpetually disposed rather to motion or to rest equally. For privative states in matter are more lasting than positive ones, the offspring of forms, which can expire.
What are those other indications of a soul dwelling in the body of the Earth?
1. A perpetual and sensible subterranean heat. For cold is proper to matter as such; all heat, on the contrary, is a trace of soul, either gone before or present; for even fire has the matter on which it feeds and survives as begotten by the faculties of the soul.
2. The proper works of the soul, such as the generation of metals, minerals and fossils; the exudation of moisture, whence the perennial rise of rivers from mountains; the exudation of mists and the perpetual moist or dry exhalations, whence meteors of various kinds. So from blood, bile, phlegm, mucus, sweat, spittle and excrements we reason to the various faculties of the soul.
3. The faculties of the things dug out of the bowels of the Earth, such as that they are hot in potency, inflammable and convertible into light, to which the soul is akin: such are sulphur, marcasites that give sparks when struck, and finally the subterranean fires themselves. And these are observed only in the outer rind of the Earth; how much more wonderful things do you suppose are stored in its vast inner bosom, through seventeen hundred miles? We rightly argue, therefore, from the nature of the things generated to the generating cause. For so too we rightly reason in other cases that whatever thing concocts within itself oil, which is hot in potency and inflammable, is shaped by a soul.
4. The formative faculty in the air, whence locusts, flies, and even the six-cornered figure of snow; so lice born on the human body give indication of some faculty of soul present in that body. The formative faculty in the waters of sea and rivers, whence the ocean was called the father of monsters; the formative faculty on the surface of the Earth, whence so many kinds of plants growing of themselves, so many insects; the formative faculty in the inmost bowels of the Earth, plainly like that which is in females, so that it expresses within the species it meets outside: ships, fishes, kings, pontiffs, monks, soldiers in fossil form.
5. The exercise of geometry, which cannot be carried out without the work of a mind, and so of a soul. For it expresses the five regular solids in small stones, and six-sided figures in crystals and salts. So too from the six-sided figure of the cells we rightly conclude that the bees which fashion them are endowed with a soul and capable, in their own way, of geometry.
6. The perception of a foreign and celestial geometry, which consists in the meeting of rays, and the agitation of the subterranean matter in accordance with it. For the Earth exudes meteors according to the prescription of the aspects, whose formal principles are purely geometrical. So too of an animal that moves its feet according to the laws of some song, we rightly conclude that it perceives the song and understands its measure, and finally that it is ruled by a soul.
Although the soul of the Earth has and perceives all these things by primeval instinct, not by discourse and reasoning and progress, as men do.
Where do you say an example occurs in which a soul gives rotation to a globe? In the globe of the Sun, which, as will be proved in the theoretical part, both turns about in its own space and is endowed with a soul.
If there is a soul in the Earth, under what species of soul, then, do you reckon it? It constitutes a peculiar species; for it neither makes the Earth grow, nor feel, nor reason, as it were by discourse, but only moves it and carries forward the said works, accomplishing everything by instinct alone.
VI. Give the arguments drawn from the end of the motion. Although the natural philosophers, and Aristotle, the leader of the Peripatetics, knew that the circular motions of the heavenly bodies have their end in themselves, and are not moved for the sake of anything else than this very thing, that they may be moved, yet the sense of the eyes teaches us that this cannot be universally understood and granted of all circular motions. For experience testifies that, just as the eagle sails through the clouds not merely to exercise itself but chiefly to get its prey, so also the first motion occurs in order that all the parts of the Earth may successively enjoy the heat of the Sun, and that, if this motion did not exist, one hemisphere of the Earth might not be scorched while the other stiffened in perpetual frost.
Now it is not credible that the whole machine of the heavens should revolve for the sake of such a private necessity of its own, either about the Earth, from which it receives nothing, or even about the Sun, placed in the middle of its bosom; for the hollow figure of the machine cries out against it, from which we understand that, whether it rests or is moved, it enjoys the sight of the Sun (add, if you will, of the Earth) equally in either way. Therefore the heaven, and the Sun in it, if it is moved by the first motion, will be carried round by the first motion not for its own sake but for the sake of the Earth. But it is utterly absurd that so vast a mass, which the philosophers contend to be even more perfect than the globe of the Earth, should travel so great a journey in going round, because of the figure of this very narrow little ball (by which it comes about that the Earth cannot enjoy the whole fire of the Sun at one time), when the Earth can relieve it of this burden by the most economical turning of its little body; for it would be just as if a clumsy cook, disdaining to turn the meat fixed on the spit, should rather carry the fire round the meat in a circle.
The force of this argument will shine out chiefly below, in the third book, where we shall treat of the causes of the inclined axis of the Earth. For that the zodiac has been made oblique to the equator, the end and use of this appears nowhere in the whole world, but only on the surface of the Earth: why then should we seek the cause of this obliquity elsewhere than in the Earth itself, and in the inclined axis of its own body? Why shall we incline the ecliptic in the heavens through a space twenty thousand times greater (as is commonly computed), so that the terrestrial zone may enjoy the approach and recession of the Sun, when the same can be effected by a simple inclination of the axis of the Earth? Moreover, the motion follows the axis, for the sake of which the axis is posited.
It could also be argued from the principles of the philosophers, who hold the heaven to be a perfect body and the Earth an elementary and imperfect one, that rest, which is the negation of the first motion, belongs to the heaven, and motion itself to the Earth, because motion belongs to the class of things that are not but come to be; it does not therefore pertain to those which have the degree of their perfection perpetual in themselves, but to those which, unless they are moved, grow numb with sloth and corrupt, such as are, on the very Earth, the waters and the air and the many bodies living in these elements. Origanus used this argument.
VII. What argument have you for the Earth’s motion, from the effect of the motion itself? It has been found by the experience of sailors that the African ocean is navigated with more difficulty and in a longer space of time toward the east than toward the west, because it rushes with a perennial motion toward the west, where it is checked by no barriers of shores. So among the spice islands there is said to be a perpetual flow from the eastern ocean into the Indian ocean, swifter than any arrow, because, namely, an immense mass of waters piled up from the east against this barrier of islands presses upon it and urges it from without; in the southern ocean, which has the shores of America toward the east, there is almost no ebb and flow of the sea, because the ocean is carried continually from those shores toward the west, meeting within two thousand German miles no obstacle to its course. The same motion toward the west is felt also at the shores of America turned toward the north, and the flow is said, as if striking against them and following their direction, to be bent round toward the north, and thence, as it were, to spring back toward the east, but now outside the tropic.
Although the cause of this motion is manifest, namely the same as that of the reciprocal flow and ebb, the Moon drawing the waves toward the west, whither that course is held to run, as often as she is above the horizon; yet the circumstances already enumerated seem to add to the Moon the natural inertia of the waters toward motion, as they hold back in the west while the Earth withdraws toward the east.
But many things stand in the way of my believing that the Earth rotates, and first, sight: for if the mountains that lie to the west ascend toward the stars, it will seem that this rather than the other is false, that the stars descend, that is, set. Not at all: for ascent is judged by sight from the leaving of the plane on which we stand, and from the approach of a thing to the zenith, in which the stature of a man stands upright; but now it is the mountains themselves that form for us the visible plane, and they do not approach the zenith, because as far as the mountains advance, so far advances also the line in which the stature of the observer stands erect, and in that line the zenith, and so the zenith is always equally distant from the extremities of the ground on which the spectator stands, that is, from the farthest mountains: the mountains cannot therefore seem to ascend, even though the whole Earth truly rotates.
Grant that the mountains do not seem to ascend, yet they will seem simply and in general to move, and the stars to rest, which do rest. It does not follow, as is plain from very many examples. Virgil, as poets do, vividly expresses the sense of the eyes when he sings: “We sail out from the harbour, and the lands and cities recede,” though by this motion it is not the cities that recede from the ship, but the ship from the cities.
He who sails down a stream, if not warned beforehand, will think the neighbouring shores move in the opposite direction, and if the ship is carried past a stake which the current laps, submerged, the passengers will cry out that an otter is coming up to meet them. He who rides in a carriage forward between hedges will swear that the hedges rush in upon him from either side; he who rides backward will swear that the hedges flee: an impression which the eyes conceive and retain more deeply, even when the man is at rest. And he who is carried backward in a carriage from some tower of conspicuous height along a road directed from the tower will fear the ruin of the tower falling on his head. So one who beholds a cloud, broadly spread and breaking open, moving slowly from south to north, will swear that the stars which fall into the fissures and shine out from them move with the contrary motion from north to south.
But why, of two things, does that seem to be so which is false, rather than that which is true? The cause, sprouting from one root, extends into two branches. For motion is not the proper object of sight, nor has it a peculiar sense by which it is perceived, but is judged by the common sense. The common sense, however, is deceived chiefly in these two ways, which can be applied to the motion of the Earth: first, a man thinks his eyes are at rest whenever he knows that the motion by which the eyes are carried does not come from his own internal motive faculty, or when he does not feel that motion in his body, by the evidence of a shaking; as when a man is carried off by a ship, or, in the present case, by the very rolling of his place on the Earth. Next, things that appear larger and either exceed the eye or occupy it widely, these he thinks probably at rest, as a cloud, or the plane of the earth bounded by the farthest mountains; but things which appear small in comparison with those, as stars among the great volumes of clouds, the Sun and Moon above the widely spread plane of the Earth, to these most of all he ascribes that motion which is seen to occur, drawing his examples by habit from slings and missiles and little birds in the air, all of which are small. But this above all befalls him when those great and widely spread visible things keep the same position toward the eye, on account of a motion common to them with the sight itself: for so it comes about that, whatever truly happens, those great things are thought to be wholly at rest, because they do not change this position with respect to the eye.
Motion does not belong to a body that is in the centre; but the Earth is in the centre of the world. The latter of these propositions has not yet been proved by any reason, as was said in Part IV, and is without doubt false, as will be proved in the spherical doctrine; the other and former is true in a certain respect, and it is granted of the Earth that its innermost point is in the centre of the first motion and is not carried by this first motion from place to place, neither it nor the axis and poles; but all the parts of the body surrounding the axis, because they are outside the centre, are not prevented by this argument from being moved by a motion of rotation about the axis.
If the Earth were turned about its axis, then things thrown straight upward would not fall back into their former place from which they were thrown, since the centre indeed stays, but the place on the surface where the thrower stands meanwhile withdraws from the line drawn from the centre of the Earth to the projectile. If heavy bodies sought the centre by themselves and nothing besides, the argument would follow. But it was said in the earlier thesis that the goal of the motion of heavy bodies is not the centre in itself and first, but accidentally and secondarily, namely because the centre is the middle and innermost of the body, which heavy bodies seek in themselves and first, and by which they are attracted.
Since, however, heavy bodies seek the body of the Earth in itself and are sought by it, they will therefore be moved more strongly toward the nearer parts of the Earth than toward the more remote. Wherefore, as those near parts directly beneath pass by, heavy bodies in falling toward the passing surface also follow it circularly besides, just as if they were tied to the place over which they hang, by the perpendicular itself, and by infinite lines round about, like oblique sinews, less strong than it, all of which tend to be gradually drawn together into one.
But you have said that material bodies by their natural inertia resist a motion brought in upon them from outside; if that is true, heavy bodies will therefore extricate themselves somewhat from this rapture and from their perpendicular and the other bonds. They would extricate themselves somewhat if they were to depart from the Earth by an interval so great as to have a sensible proportion to the semidiameter of the Earth, or at least of the visible horizon; or if, like the huge ocean a little before, they were to the Earth in some proportion of size and force.
What, then, is the genuine figure of the motion of heavy bodies, with respect to the space of the world?
A certain diligent student of astronomy, but not sufficiently thoughtful, paints the fall of a stone toward the Earth as fluctuating on this side and beyond the perpendicular in serpentine windings, so that the windings correspond in number to the turnings of the Earth during the time the stone is falling; nor does he consider that the stone, left behind by the parts of the Earth to which it was at first perpendicular, comes into the grasp of the succeeding neighbouring parts, its descent always deflected toward the quarter in which the Earth turns, a little at the beginning, more and more at the end, because the grasp from nearby is stronger.
Therefore the figure of the motion of heavy bodies, if one of them were to fall from the most remote place in the heavens toward the Earth, turning at one fixed place, would be almost such as is here painted in rough fashion, where, the circle of the Earth being divided into 14 parts, the line of the fall is divided into as many unequal parts, short above and longer below, the parts of the circle in order, having discharged their office of drawing, have returned to their former places, and only three remain, forestalled by the end of the fall, which did not draw perpendicularly.
But at least cannon balls discharged, one toward the east, the other toward the west, will fall at unequal distances from the first place; farther toward the west, since the parts of the Earth lying toward the west, tending east, will meet the ball; shorter toward the east, because the eastern parts of the Earth, upon which the ball would have fallen if they stood still, flee from the ball toward the east. It is not rightly done that the spaces of the world are compared, as if the Earth were most distant from the discharged ball, when the only question is, with an apple held in one’s hands, in which direction it is more easily knocked out of them by a companion, a passenger in the same ship, not how far from the ship, or through how much space between the ship and the shores. For if you consider the shores, by as much as the ship flees from the higher place into which the apple is knocked, by so much nearly is the blow weaker with respect to the shores at rest, since what is beneath the one who strikes yields downward and the resistance is enfeebled; so what the downward flow of the ship was about to add to the leap of the apple, its yielding takes away again, by which the blow was supported. And conversely, what the swiftness of the ship was about to snatch from the downward leap of the apple, the stronger resistance adds to the violence of the blow; for the same force strikes more strongly downward when it is carried down from the ship than when it stands immovable on the shore. But when, as is right, the bare forces of the hand grasping the apple and the weight of the apple itself are considered, the force is indeed applied equally on both sides, and the magnitude of the effect, which outside the ship, the causes being compounded, is to follow, has nothing to do with this, though with respect to the ship alone (and not the shores also) the interval from it will be very nearly the same.
Let the same judgment, then, with the necessary changes, hold for cannon. A large ball, lasting two minutes of an hour in its flight through the air, passes westward through one German mile on the Earth, and meanwhile the Earth, beneath the equator, meets it through eight miles; wherefore, with respect to the space of the world, the ball is still carried toward the contrary quarter of the violent motion, namely toward the east, through seven miles, and the explosion toward the contrary quarter profits it nothing else, except that it consumes the eighth mile and makes the ball follow the more slowly toward the east; the powder cannot shake the ball entirely out of the hands of the Earth, as it were; it always remains entangled in the drawing power; if it has broken the grasp of the forefinger, it sticks in the grasp of the next little finger. On the contrary, a ball discharged toward the east, in the interval of the same time, is carried forward by the rapture of the Earth itself through eight miles, and adds a ninth of its own, being violently exploded likewise toward the east. Thus whether it be exploded east or west, it is always carried toward the east, only a little more in this case than in that. But this compounded space of the world has nothing to do with the space on the Earth, which men can measure; this is almost the same on both sides, because the force is the same, because the magnetic bonds are the same on both sides, from which the ball is as it were snatched away and transported farther on.
Yet two causes concur in the promotion toward the west. For the ball, inert of itself toward motion, if it were not carried toward the east, would remain of itself in the west, the place going away toward the east, and so it will be more easily promoted from its place to the west by the violent motion; but toward the east that motion must overcome not only the magnetic grasp of the Earth, but also the material inertia of the ball, which holds back in the west. Let this be granted as above about the ocean; but whatever it be, in a cannon ball certainly it is something inestimable, nor is there any sensible proportion of the one contest to the other. For if a cannon ball were exploded with the same force of powder, placed outside the attractive power of the Earth, it would fly across not merely one or eight miles of the space of the world, but plainly an incredible number of them.
Even supposing that the difference is perceptible in itself, still the occasion of testing it will be lacking. For who will make me certain of the same force of powder in each explosion, and of the other circumstances the same on both sides?
If the Earth went toward one quarter, clouds and birds would always seem to fly toward the quarter opposite to the west, because they would hang aloft. Not at all. Clouds or little birds are in no comparison with the mass of the waters of the ocean. Suppose, then, a cloud or a bird to stick suspended in the air, not rushing with impetus toward any side; it, like the falling stone above, bound by the power of the Earth to the fields beneath and around, will be turned together with the Earth (with respect to the space of the world), always hanging perpendicularly over the same place. Let the impetus of the animal be added to it as it moves in such a condition, it is plain that this will draw it out of its perpendicular into the quarter toward which the impetus inclines, and that without distinction, whether to the east or to the west.
If the Earth were turned, animals and buildings would be shaken and fall down, and growing things would be hindered and destroyed by this motion. None of this follows. For the motion is uniform and does not strike. For all these things, placed in the inmost bosom and embrace of the attractive power, and of the air and mountains going along together, and so carried round, nevertheless end in the greatest quiet. And so not even in ships carried uniformly down the most rapid rivers is any disturbance felt, nor are cups full of wine overturned.
But at least we should feel this motion in our bodies, even with closed eyes? Not at all. For not even in ships is motion always felt when they run uniformly, although there natural bodies are carried by their gravity, not to the ships as ships, but beyond the ships outward and downward to the lands beneath, at rest with respect to the river, while the ship carries them across this line; how much less shall we feel the motion of the Earth, we who are attracted by the gravity of our bodies nowhere else than to the moving lands on which we stand; and therefore we are not carried out of the line of natural attraction, since that line accompanies us carried along together.
But it can be seen in wheels set in rapid motion, that whatever is laid upon them leaps off, as if thrown by impetus, as you yourself alleged above. So, then, stones and iron tools would leap off the Earth and fall out of the heavens. Heavy bodies laid upon swift wheels are not attracted by the wheels by natural gravity, but by the Earth lying beneath the wheels; there, therefore, from the conflict of motions toward different quarters arises that impetus and leaping off; but if heavy bodies are bound to the wheel, they do not leap off. But stones are bound to the Earth by its attractive power and by their gravity tend toward no quarter outside the place of the Earth’s rotation; there is therefore no place for conflict and impetus. There, the heavier anything is in its quantity, the more efficacious the impetus becomes; here stones are not even heavy, if you remove in thought the Earth, which rotates.
If the Earth were turned with this very swift motion, a perpetual wind from the opposite direction of the motion would be felt. This might be granted of the highest summits of the mountains, and from this cooling the cause of perennial snows, even under the torrid zone, might be sought, likewise of the coldness of the east winds, the pleasantness of the morning and the like, provided that the lower mountains and the valleys hidden within those summits, which animals inhabit, were safe, and the air in them undisturbed and quiet through this outer friction, and the vapours that boil up free to rush in every direction. But it is not necessary that we grant what is objected. For the ethereal air is so many times thinner than our air, which living creatures draw in, that the friction against the ethereal air through a thousand miles in one hour is calmer, and so less perceptible, than the friction of a man’s face against the air as he walks through it half a mile in one hour.
What do you think should be answered to the authorities of all the sects and of all the orders, sacred and profane, which receive without dispute the contrary, that the Earth rests in the first motion and the heaven is moved? Copernicus answers thus. 1) Since the common people, the master of speech, express the sense of the eyes in the usage of speaking, while the philosopher inquires into the truth that lies beneath the apparent appearances of things, it is not absurd that the thoughts of the philosopher should be remote from the judgment of the common people.
2) Some places of Scripture are wrongly twisted to an astronomical purpose, and the judgments of those who are wont to do so, however rash, are to be despised; for it is plain that even the holy fathers of the Church sometimes spoke childishly of astronomical matters which they had not learned professionally, and sought a defence of their error in the Scriptures, as Lactantius, who could not believe the Earth to be round, to whom the book of Job, twisted to philosophical speculation contrary to the purpose of God speaking, will seem to give assent.
This answer can be explained at greater length. For astronomy opens the causes of natural things and inquires professionally into the deceptions of sight, whereas the sacred books, which deliver far loftier things, use the speech of men that they may be understood, and on that occasion touch, in passing at least and while doing something else, upon the appearances of natural things which meet the sight, whence the speech of men arose, and would do the very same even if all men were wholly agreed about the deceptions of sight. For not even we astronomers cultivate astronomy in order to change the speech of the common people, but that, while that speech remains, we may nevertheless open the doors of truth. That the planets stand or go backward, the solstices, the turnings of the Sun, that the Sun rises, sets, goes forth from one end of the heaven like a bridegroom from his chamber, is hidden in the other, climbs to the middle of the heaven, is moved against certain valleys and mountains: these things we use with the common people, that is, with the sense of the eyes, though none of them is true to the letter, all astronomers agreeing in this. How much less ought it to be demanded of the divinely inspired Scriptures that, rejecting the common custom of speaking, they should weigh their words to the exactness of natural science, and, with abstruse and untimely expressions about things beyond the grasp of those to be taught, disturb the simple people of God, and by that means block their way to their own far loftier genuine goal? See everywhere throughout this whole first book the traces of the popular expressions of Scripture about the figure of the world and its motions, about which there is no controversy; why then do we sweat here over the motion of the Earth alone?
Some things are also drawn in here which are not even to be examined by the sense of the eyes, but are plainly foreign to our purpose, as the circumstances of the text show; as when they speak not of the astronomical state or rest of the Earth, but of its physical duration, animals meanwhile perishing and being born on its surface, or when the firmness of the ground, on which animals walk, is compared with their various motions, or when there is an allegory, by which, through the confirmation of the pillars of the Earth, wars laid to rest and public tranquillity are signified.
3. As to the authority of the philosophers, Copernicus shows that there were not wanting, immediately among the beginnings of astronomy in its birth, men who held that the Earth is moved from west to east: Nicetas in Cicero, the Pythagoreans Philolaus and Ecphantus, Heraclides of Pontus in Plutarch; to whom add, from Archimedes and the same Plutarch, Aristarchus of Samos, the contemporary of Cleanthes, by whom he was accused of sacrilege before the Areopagites, for having disturbed the sacred rites of Vesta by asserting that the Earth is moved.
In our own time all the most eminent of the philosophers and astronomers agree with Copernicus; this ice is broken, we conquer by the better votes; against the rest almost superstition alone stands, or fear of Cleantheses. But this is over and above what is needed; for even if none of the earlier writers bore witness to this truth, it would be no less to be embraced by the philosopher. For as in Christian theology he acts preposterously who, having first sought the vote of reason, afterwards at last weighs authorities, so it is no less foolish in philosophy, having first weighed authorities, afterwards at last to pass to reasons. Although the common run of the literate, not much wiser than the illiterate, put forward authorities in public, yet within themselves they first condemn the absurd and unaccustomed doctrine as false, in the ignorance of the blind, and after they have decided that it must be repelled and destroyed by every means, then at last they look about for authorities and fortify and arm themselves with them, ready to receive the same, profane and sacred without distinction, in the same ways as Copernicus, if they were to find them standing on the side of the paradoxical doctrine: which they show in the book of Job, chapter 38, when someone proves from it that the Earth is flat and stretched to the line of a cord, and moreover set upon certain pillars, as the letter sounds,