Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/331

 Rh system identical with that which we call Copernican. Moreover, if we may trust to a somewhat obscure statement in Simplicius, there lived in the time of Alexander the Great an individual whose name we know not, but who actually did effect a combination of these ideas, and who is therefore worthily entitled to rank as a predecessor of Copernicus. Whether the heliocentric conception was ever presented to Aristarchus in concrete form, or was independently excogitated by him, we are without information; but it is impossible that his mind should not have received some fertile stimulus from the ideas already extant concerning the earth's revolution and rotation. Indeed, the way had been fairly prepared for a realization of the Copernican system; and as a matter of fact it was easier to arrive at this conception in the time of Aristarchus than subsequently, when the scheme of planetary movements had become hopelessly obscured through the invention, by Apollonius of Perga, of eccentrics and epicycles. The transition from Philolaus to Aristarchus is natural and easy as compared with the truly Herculean feat performed by Copernicus, who had first to clear away heaps of Augean refuse before the truth could again become manifest.

A melancholy interest in the fate of Aristarchus bids one inquire the reasons which prevented his theory from obtaining foothold. So far as history tells, it found but a solitary champion in the person of Seleuchus, who flourished half a century later than Aristarchus. To Archimedes, and presumably to contemporary mathematicians and philosophers, the insuperable objection to this system consisted in its stationing the fixed stars at an infinite distance from the earth. Moreover, as witness the clamant protests against the Sage of Athens—to say nothing of the witty caricatures of him in the 'Clouds'—followed in the end by his martyrdom; and as witness the charges preferred against Aristarchus by Cleanthes, any dislodgment of the earth from its sacred position in the 'hearth of the Universe' was tainted with suspicion of impiety. And when afterwards the Ptolemaic mechanism was introduced, blocking with its devices the brilliant conception of Aristarchus, fourteen centuries were required to roll by before this useless debris could be swept away.

Possibly yet other circumstances conspired to hinder the acceptance of the heliocentric system, the nature of which can not now be ascertained, any more than can the reasons which first carried conviction of its truth. But this much is clear, there can be a tragic history of ideas no less than of individuals: and in meditating on the fate of the many 'struck eagles' of the pagan world, who soared loftily even where we now stumble, one is reminded of that beautiful simile of Byron, which concludes in deepest pathos:

 Such is the aspect of this shore; 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!