Page:On the Magnet - Gilbert (1900 translation of 1600 work).djvu/261

 laying down a rule for such considerable inequalities in the motion of the stars, explained that the eighth sphære does not move with a continuous motion from west to east; but is shaken with a certain motion of trepidation, by which the first points of Aries and Libra in the eighth heaven describe certain small circles with diameters equal to about nine degrees, around the first points of Aries and Libra in the ninth sphære. But since many things absurd and impossible as to motion follow from this motion of trepidation, that theory of motion is therefore long since obsolete. Others therefore are compelled to attribute the motion to the eighth sphære, and to erect above it a ninth heaven also, yea, and to pile up yet a tenth and an eleventh: In the case of mathematicians, indeed, the fault may be condoned; for it is permissible for them, in the case of difficult motions, to lay down some rule and law of equality by any hypotheses. But by no means can such enormous and monstrous celestial structures be accepted by philosophers. And yet here one may see how hard to please are those who do not allow any motion to one very small body, the Earth; and notwithstanding they drive and rotate the heavens, which are huge and immense above all conception and imagination: I declare that they feign the heavens to be three (the most monstrous of all things in Nature) in order that some obscure motions forsooth may be accounted for. Ptolemy, who compares with his own the observations of Timocharis and Hipparchus, one of whom flourished 260 years, the other 460 years before him, thought that there was this motion of the eighth sphære, and of the whole firmament; and proved by help of numerous phenomena that it took place over the poles of the Zodiack, and, supposing its motion to be so far æquable, that the non-planetary stars in the space of 100 years completed just one degree beneath the Primum Mobile. After him 750 years Albategnius discovered that one degree was completed in a space of 66 years, so that a whole period would be 23,760 years. Alphonsus made out that this motion was still slower, completing one degree and 28 minutes only in 200 years; and that thus the course of the fixed stars went on, though unequally. At length Copernicus, by means of the observations of Timocharis, Aristarchus of Samos, Hipparchus, Menelaus, Ptolemy, Mahometes Aractensis, Alphonsus, and of his own, detected the anomalies of the motion of the Earth's axis: though I doubt not that other anomalies also will come to light some ages hence. So difficult is it to observe motion so slow, unless extending over a period of many centuries; on which account we still fail to understand the intent of Nature, what she is driving after through such inequality of motion. Let A be the pole of the Ecliptick, B C the Ecliptick, D the Æquator; when the pole of the Earth near the arctick circle of the Zodiack faces the point M, then there is an anomaly of the præcession of the æquinox at F;