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When a prominent member of Congress, of slightly convivial turn, went
to sleep on the floor of the House of Representatives and suddenly
awakening, convulsed the assemblage by demanding in a loud voice,
"Where am I at?" he propounded an inquiry that is indisputably a
classic.
With the very first glimmering of intelligence, and as far back as
history goes, man has always asked that question, also three others:
Where am I?
Who am I?
What am I here for?
Where am I going?
A question implies an answer and so, coeval with the questioner, we
find a class of Volunteers springing into being, who have taken upon
themselves the business of answering the interrogations.
And as partial payment for answering these questions, the man who
answered has exacted a living from the man who asked, also titles, honors,
gauds, jewels and obsequies.
Further than this, the Volunteer who answered has declared himself
exempt from all useful labor. This[Pg
92] Volunteer is our theologian.
Walt Whitman has said:
I think I could turn and live with
animals, they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their
condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep
for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their
duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is
demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind
that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the
whole earth.
But we should note this fact: Whitman merely wanted to live with
animals—he did not desire to become one. He wasn't willing to forfeit
knowledge; and a part of that knowledge was that man has some things yet
to learn from the patient brute. Much of man's misery has come from his
persistent questioning.
The book of Genesis is certainly right when it tells us that man's
troubles came from a desire to know. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is
bitter, and man's digestive apparatus is ill-conditioned to digest it. But
still we are grateful, and good men never forget that it was woman who
gave the fruit to man[Pg
93]—men learn nothing alone. In the Garden of Eden, with
everything supplied, man was an animal, but when he was turned out and had
to work, strive, struggle and suffer, he began to grow.
The Volunteers of the Far East have told us that man's deliverance from
the evils of life must come through killing desire; we will reach
Nirvana—rest—through nothingness. But within a decade it has been
borne in upon a vast number of the thinking men of the world that
deliverance from sorrow and discontent was to be had not through ceasing
to ask questions, but by asking one question more. The question is this,
"What can I do?"
When man went to work, action removed the doubt that theory could not
solve.
The rushing winds purify the air; only running water is pure; and the
holy man, if there be such, is the one who loses himself in persistent,
useful effort. By working for all, we secure the best results for self,
and when we truly work for self, we work for all.
In that thoughtful essay by Brooks Adams, "The Law of Civilization
and Decay," the author says, "Thought is one of the
manifestations of human energy, and among the earlier and simpler phases
of thought, two stand conspicuous—Fear and Greed: Fear, which, by
stimulating the imagination, creates a belief in an invisible world, and
ultimately develops a priesthood."[Pg
94]
The priestly class evolves naturally into being everywhere as man
awakens and asks questions. "Only the Unknown is terrible," says
Victor Hugo. We can cope with the known, and at the worst we can overcome
the unknown by accepting it. Verestchagin, the great painter who knew the
psychology of war as few have known, and went down to his death
gloriously, as he should, on a sinking battleship, once said, "In
modern warfare, when man does not see his enemy, the poetry of the battle
is gone, and man is rendered by the Unknown into a quaking coward."
But when enveloped in the fog of ignorance every phenomenon of Nature
causes man to quake and tremble—he wants to know! Fear prompts him to
ask, and Greed—greed for power, place and pelf—answers.
To succeed beyond the average is to realize a weakness in humanity and
then bank on it. The priest who pacifies is as natural as the fear he
seeks to assuage—as natural as man himself.
So first, man is in bondage to his fear, and this bondage he exchanges
for bondage to a priest. First, he fears the unknown; second, he fears the
priest who has power with the unknown.
Soon the priest becomes a slave to the answers he has conjured forth.
He grows to believe what he at first pretended to know. The punishment of
every liar is that he eventually believes his lies. The mind[Pg
95] of man becomes tinted and subdued to what he works in, like
the dyer's hand.
So we have the formula: Man in bondage to fear. Man in bondage to a
priest. The priest in bondage to a creed.
Then the priest and his institution become an integral part and parcel
of the State, mixed in all its affairs. The success of the State seems to
lie in holding belief intact and stilling all further questions of the
people, transferring all doubts to this Volunteer Class which answers for
a consideration.
Naturally, the man who does not accept the answers is regarded as an
enemy of the State—that is, the enemy of mankind.
To keep this questioner down has been the problem of every religion.
And the great problem of progress has been to smuggle the newly-discovered
truth past Cerberus, the priest, by preparing a sop that was to him
palatable.
From every branch of Science the priest has been routed, save in
Sociology alone. Here he has stubbornly made his last stand, and is saving
himself alive by slowly accepting the situation and transforming himself
into the Promoter of a Social Club.[Pg
96]
The attempt to ascertain the truths of physical science outside
of theology was, in the early ages, very seldom ventured. When men wanted
to know anything about anything, they asked the priest.
Questions that the priest could not answer he declared were forbidden
of man to know; and when men attempted to find out for themselves they
were looked upon as heretics.
The early church regarded the earth as a flat surface with four
corners. And in proof of their position they quoted Saint Paul, who wanted
the gospel carried to the ends of the earth.
In fact, the universe was a house. The upper story was Heaven, the
lower story was the Earth, and the cellar was Hell. God, the angels and
the "saved" lived in Heaven, man lived on Earth, and the devils
and the damned had Hell to themselves.
"And there shall be no night there," and this was proven by
the stars, which were regarded as peepholes through which mortals could
catch glimpses of the wondrous light of Heaven beyond. Hell was below, as
was clearly shown by volcanoes, when the fierce fires occasionally forced
themselves up through. Darkness to children is always terrible, and the
night is regarded by them as the time of evil.
Later, Churchmen came to believe that the stars were jewels hung in the
sky every night by angels whose[Pg
97] business it was to look after them.
The word "firmament" means a solid dome or roof. This
firmament, the sky, was supposed to be the floor of Heaven. The firmament
had four corners and rested on the mountains, as the eye could plainly
see. When God's car was rolled across the floor we heard thunder, and his
movements were always accompanied by lightnings, winds, black clouds and
rain—all this so He could not be too plainly seen.
Heaven was only a little way off—a few miles at the most. So there
were attempts made at times by bad men to reach it. The Greeks had a story
about the Aloidæ who piled mountain upon mountain; the Bible story of the
Tower of Babel is the same, where the masons called, "More
mort," and those below sent up bricks. There is also an ancient
Mexican legend of giants who built the Pyramid of Cholula, and they would
have been successful in their attempts if fire had not been thrown down
upon them from Heaven. In all "Holy Writ" we find accounts of
"ascensions," "translations,"
"annunciations," and mortals caught up into the clouds. Many
people had actually seen angels ascending and descending.
"Messengers from on high" and God's secretaries were
constantly coming down on delicate errands. Everything that man did was
noted and written down. We were watched all the time by unseen beings. The
Bible tells of how the Earth was eventually to be[Pg
98] destroyed, and then there would be only Heaven and Hell.
God, His Son and the angels were going to come down, and for ages men
watched the heavens to see them appear.
All sensitive children, born of orthodox Christian parents, who heard
the Bible read aloud, looked fearfully into the sky for "signs and
wonders." The Bible tells in several places of devils breaking out of
Hell and roaming over the earth. Dante fully believed in this
three-story-house idea, and pictures with awful exactness the details,
which he gained from the preaching of the priests. Dante was never honored
by having his books placed on the "Index." On the contrary, he
got his vogue largely through the recommendation of the priests. To them
he was a true scientist, for he corroborated their statements.
The Christian Fathers ridiculed the idea of the earth being round,
because, if this were so, how could the people on the other side see the
Son of Man when He came in the sky? Besides that, if the earth were round
and turned on its axis, we would all fall off into space.
The idea that there was an ocean above the earth, in the heavens, was
brought forward to show the goodness and wisdom of God. Without this there
would be no rain and hence no vegetation, and man would soon perish. In
Genesis we read that God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst
of the waters, and[Pg
99] let it divide the waters from the waters," And in
Psalms, "Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens and ye waters that be
above the heavens." Then we hear, "The windows of Heaven were
opened." So this thought of the waters above the earth was fully
proved, accepted and fixed, and to pray for rain was quite a natural
thing.
The English Prayer-Book contained such prayers up to within a very few
years ago, and in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-three the Governor of Kansas set
apart a day upon which the people were to pray that God would open the
windows of Heaven and send them rain. They also prayed to be delivered
from grasshoppers, just as in Queen Elizabeth's time the Prayer-Book had
this, "From the Turk and the Comet, good Lord deliver us."
In the Sixth Century, Cosmos, one of the Saints, wrote a complete
explanation of the phenomena of the heavens. To account for the movement
of the sun, he said God had His angels push it across the firmament and
put it behind a mountain each night, and the next morning it was brought
out on the other side. He met every objection by citations from Job,
Genesis, Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes and the New Testament, and wound up with an
anathema upon any or all who doubted or questioned in this matter of
astronomy.
The whole Christian idea of the Universe was simple, plain and
plausible. The child-mind could easily accept it, and when backed up by
the Holy Book, written[Pg
100] at God's dictation, word for word, infallible and
absolutely true in every part, one does not wonder that progress was
practically blocked for fourteen hundred years, but the real miracle is
that it was not blocked forever.[Pg
101]
Thousands of years before Christ, the Chinese had mapped the
heavens and knew the movements of the planets so well that they correctly
prophesied the positions of the various constellations many years in
advance. Twenty-five hundred years before our Christian era a Chinese
Governor put to death the astronomers Hi and Ho because they had failed to
foretell an eclipse, quite according to the excellent Celestial plan of
killing the doctor when the patient dies.
Sir William Hamilton points out the fact that the Chinese, five
thousand years ago, knew astronomy as well as we do, and that Christian
astrology grew out of Chinese astronomy, in an effort to foretell the
fortunes of men.
Fear wants to know the future, and astrology and priesthood are
synonymous terms, since the business of the priest has always been to
prophesy, a profession he has not yet discarded. Their prophecies are at
present innocuous and lightly heeded. They preach that perfect faith will
move a mountain, but energetic railroad-builders of today find it quicker
and cheaper to tunnel.[Pg
102]
A certain type of man accepts a certain theory.
The Christian view of creation was practically the conception of the
Greeks before Thales. This wise man, in the Sixth Century before Christ,
taught that the earth was round, and that certain stars were also worlds.
He showed that the earth was round and proved it by the disappearance of
the ship as it sailed away. He located the earth, moon and sun so
perfectly that he prophesied an eclipse, and when it took place it so
terrified the Medes and the Lydians, who were in battle with each other,
that they threw down their arms and made peace. Thales had explained that
Atlas carried the world on his shoulder, but he didn't explain what Atlas
stood upon.
Pythagoras, one of the pupils of Thales, following the idea still
further, showed that the moon derived its light from the sun; that the
earth was a globe and turned daily on its axis.
He held that the sun was the center of the universe and that the
planets revolved around it. Anaxagoras followed a few years later than
Pythagoras, and became convinced that the sun was merely a ball of fire
and therefore should not be worshiped; that it follows a natural law, that
nothing ever happens by chance, and that to pray for rain is absurd.
For his honesty in expressing what he thought was truth, the priests of
Athens had Anaxagoras and his[Pg
103] family exiled to perpetual banishment from Athens and all
of his books were burned.
Plato touched on Astronomy, for he touches on everything, and fully
believed that the earth was round.
His pupil, Aristotle, taught all that Anaxagoras taught, and if he also
had not been exiled, but had been free to study, investigate and express
himself, he would have come very close to the truth.
Hipparchus, a hundred years after Aristotle, calculated the length of
the year to within six minutes, discovered the precession of equinoxes and
counted all the stars he could see, making a map of them.
Seventy years after Christ, Ptolemy, a Greco-Egyptian, but not of the
royal line of Ptolemies, published his great book, "The
Almagest." For over fourteen centuries it was the textbook for the
best astronomers.
It taught that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the
sun and the planets revolve around it. There were many absurdities,
however, that had to be explained, and the priests practically rejected
the whole book as "pagan" and taught an astronomy of their own,
founded entirely upon the Bible. They wanted an explanation that would be
accepted by the common people.
This astronomy was not designed to be very scientific, exact or
truthful—all they asked was, "Is it plausible?" Expediency, to
theology, has always been much more important than truth.[Pg
104]
"Besides," said Saint Basil, "what boots it concerning
all this conjecture about the stars, since the earth is soon to come to an
end, as is shown by our Holy Scriptures, and man's business is to prepare
his soul for eternity?"
This was the general attitude of the Church—exact truth was a matter
of indifference. And if Science tended to unseat men's faith in the Bible,
and in God's most holy religion, then so much the worse for Science.
It will thus plainly be seen why the Church felt compelled to fight
Science—the very life of the Church was at stake.
The Church was the vital thing—not truth. If truth could be taught
without unseating faith, why, all right, but anything that made men doubt
must be rooted out at any cost. And that is why priests have opposed
Science, not that they hate Science less, but that they love the Church
more.
From the time of Ptolemy to that of Copernicus—fourteen hundred
years—theology practically dictated the learning of the world. And to
Copernicus must be given the credit of having really awakened the science
of astronomy from her long and peaceful sleep.[Pg
105]
The little land that we know as Poland has produced some of the
finest and most acute intellects the world has ever known.
Tragic and blood-stained is her history, and this tragedy, perhaps, has
been a prime factor in the evolution of her men of worth. Poland has been
stamped upon and pushed apart; and a persecuted people produce a pride of
race that has its outcrop in occasional genius.
Recently we heard of the great Paderewski playing before the Czar, and
His Majesty, in a speech meant to be very complimentary, congratulated the
company that so great a genius as he was a citizen of Russia.
"Your Majesty, I am not a Russian—I am a Pole!" was the
proud reply.
The Czar replied, smiling, "There is no such country as
Poland—now there is only Russia!"
And Paderewski replied, "Pardon my hasty remark—you speak but
truth." And then he played Chopin's "Funeral March," a
dirge not only to the great men of Poland gone, but to Poland herself.
Nicholas Copernicus was born at the quaint old town of Thorn, in
Poland, February Nineteen, Fourteen Hundred Seventy-three. The family name
was Koppernigk, but Nicholas latinized it when he became of age, and
seemingly separated from his immediate kinsmen forever.
His father was a merchant, fairly prosperous, and only[Pg
106] in the line of money-making was he ambitious. In the
Koppernigks ran a goodly strain of Jewish blood, but a generation before,
pressure and expediency seemed to combine, so that the family, as we first
see them, were Christians. No soil can grow genius, no seed can produce
it—it springs into being in spite of all laws and rules and regulations.
"No hovel is safe from it," says Whistler.
The portraits of Copernicus reveal a man of most marked personality:
proud, handsome, self-contained, intellectual. The head is massive, eyes
full, luminous, wide apart, his nose large and bold, chin strong, the
mouth alone revealing a trace of the feminine, as though the man were the
child of his mother. This mother had a brother who was a bishop, and the
mother's ambition for her boy was that he should eventually follow in the
footsteps of this illustrious brother who was known for a hundred miles as
a preacher of marked ability.
So we hear of the young man being sent to the University of Cracow, as
the preliminary to a great career.
The father bitterly opposed the idea of taking his son out of the
practical world of business, and this evidently led to the breach that
caused young Nicholas to discard the family name.
That Nicholas did not fully enter into his mother's plans is shown that
while at Cracow he devoted himself mostly to medicine. He was so
proficient in this that he secured a physician's degree; and having been
given[Pg 107]
leave to practise he revealed his humanity by declining to do so, turning
to mathematics with a fine frenzy.
This disposition to drop on a thing, turn loose on it, concentrate, and
reduce it to a chaos, is the true distinguishing mark of genius. The
difference in men does not lie in the size of their heads, nor in the
perfection of their bodies, but in this one sublime ability of
concentration—to throw the weight with the blow, live an eternity in an
hour—"This one thing I do!"
Copernicus at twenty-one was teaching mathematics at Cracow, and by his
extraordinary ability in this one direction had attracted the attention of
various learned men. In fact the authorities of the college had grown a
bit boastful of their star student, and when visiting dignitaries arrived,
young Copernicus was given chalk and blackboard and put through his paces.
Problems involving a dozen figures and many fractions were worked out by
him with a directness and precision that made him the wonder of that
particular part of the world.
The science of trigonometry was invented by Copernicus, and we see that
early in his twenties he was well on the heels of it, for he had then
arranged a quadrant to measure the height of standing trees, steeples,
buildings or mountains. For rest and recreation he painted pictures.
A college professor from Bologna traveling through Cracow met
Copernicus, and greatly impressed with[Pg
108] his powers, invited him to return with him to Bologna and
there give a course of lectures on mathematics.
Copernicus accepted, and at Bologna met the astronomer, Novarra. This
meeting was the turning-point of his life. Copernicus was then
twenty-three years of age, but in intellect he was a man. He had vowed a
year before that he would indulge in no trivial conversation about persons
or things—only the great and noble themes should interest him and occupy
his attention.
With commonplace or ignorant people he held no converse. He had
remarkable beauty of person and great dignity, and his presence at Bologna
won immediate respect for him.
Men accept other men at the estimate they place upon themselves.
In listening to lectures by Novarra, he perceived at once how
mathematics could be made valuable in calculating the movement of stars.
Novarra taught the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy for the esoteric few.
The Church is made up of men, and while priests for the most part are
quite content to believe what the Church teaches, yet it has ever been
recognized that there was one doctrine for the Few, and another for the
Many—the esoteric and the exoteric. The esoteric is an edged tool, and
only a very few are fit to handle it. The charge of heresy is only for
those who are so foolish as to give out these edged[Pg
109] tools to the people. You may talk about anything you want,
provided you do not do it; and you may do anything you want, provided you
do not talk about it.
The proposition that the earth was flat, had four corners, and the
stars were jewels hung in the sky as "signs," and were moved
about by angels, was all right for the many, but now and then there were
priests who were not content with these child-stories—they wanted
truth—and these usually accepted the theories of Ptolemy.
Novarra believed that the earth was a globe; that this globe was the
center of the universe, and that around the earth the sun, moon and
certain stars revolved. The fixed stars he still regarded as being hung
against the firmament, and that this firmament was turned in some
mysterious way, en masse.
Copernicus listened silently, but his heart beat fast. He had found
something upon which he could exercise his mathematics. He and Novarra sat
up all night in the belfry of the cathedral and watched the stars.
They saw that they moved steadily, surely and without caprice. It was
all natural, and could be reduced, Copernicus thought, to a mathematical
system.
Astrology and astronomy were not then divorced. It was astrology that
gave us astronomy. The angel that watched over a star looked after all
persons who were born under that star's influence, or else appointed[Pg
110] some other angel for the purpose. Every person had a
guardian angel to protect him from the evil spirits that occasionally
broke out of Hell and came up to earth to tempt men.
Mathematics knows nothing of angels—it only knows what it can prove.
Copernicus believed that, if certain stars did move, they moved by some
unalterable law of their own. In riding on a boat he observed that the
shores seemed to be moving past, and he concluded that a part, at least,
of the seeming movements of planets might possibly be caused by the moving
of the earth.
In talking with astrologers he perceived that very seldom did they know
anything of mathematics. And this ignorance on their part caused him to
doubt them entirely.
His faith was in mathematics—the thing that could be proved—and he
came to the conclusion that astronomy and mathematics were one thing, and
astrology and child-stories another.
He remained at Bologna just long enough to turn the astrologers out of
the society of astronomers.
Novarra's lectures on astronomy were given in Latin, and in truth all
learning was locked up in this tongue. But astrology and the theological
fairy-tales of the people floated free. They were a part of the vagrant
hagiology of the roadside preachers, who with lurid imaginations said the
things they thought would help[Pg
111] carry conviction home and make "believers."
From Bologna Copernicus then moved on to Padua, where he remained two
years, teaching and giving lectures. Here he devoted considerable time to
chemistry, and on leaving he was honored by being given a degree by the
University. Next we find him at Rome, a professor in mathematics and also
giving lectures on chemistry. His lectures were not for the
populace—they were for the learned few. But they attracted the attention
of the best, and were commented upon and quoted by the various other
teachers, preachers and lecturers. A daring thinker who expresses himself
without reservation states the things that various others know and would
like to state if they dared. It is often very convenient when you want a
thing said to enclose the matter in quotation-marks. It relieves one from
the responsibility of standing sponsor for it, if the hypothesis does not
prove popular.
Copernicus was only nineteen years old when Columbus discovered
America, but it seems he did not hear of Columbus until he reached Bologna
in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-five. At Rome he made various references to
Columbus in his lectures; dwelt upon the truth that the earth was a globe;
mentioned the obvious fact that in sailing westward Columbus did not sail
his ship over the edge of the earth into Hell, as had been prophesied he
would.
He also explained that the red sky at sunset was not[Pg
112] caused by the reflections from Hell, nor was the sun moved
behind a mountain by giant angels at night. Copernicus was a Catholic, as
all teachers were, but he had been deceived by the esoteric and the
exoteric, and had really thought that the priests and so-called educated
men actually desired, for themselves, to know the truth.
At Padua he had learned to read Greek, and had become more or less
familiar with Pythagoras, Hipparchus, Aristotle and Plato. He quoted these
authors and showed how in some ways they were beyond the present. This was
all done in the exuberance of youth, with never a doubt as to the value
and the beauty of the Church. But he was thinking more of truth than of
the Church, and when a cardinal from the Vatican came to him, and in all
kindness cautioned him, and in love explained it was all right for a man
to believe what he wished, but to teach others things that were not
authorized was a mistake.
Copernicus was abashed and depressed.
He saw then that his lectures had really been for himself—he was
endeavoring to make things plain to Copernicus, and the welfare of the
Church had been forgotten.
He ceased lecturing for a time, but private pupils came to him, and
among them astrologers in disguise, and these went away and told broadcast
that Copernicus was teaching that the movements of the stars[Pg
113] were not caused by angels, and that "God was being
dethroned by a tape-measure and a yardstick." Alchemy had a strong
hold upon the popular mind, and these alchemists and astrologers were
fortune-tellers and derived a goodly income from the people.
They had their stands in front of all churches and turned in a goodly
tithe "for the benefit of the poor."
When the astrologers attacked Copernicus he tried to explain that the
heavens were under the reign of natural law, and that so far as he knew
there was no direct relationship between the stars and the men upon earth.
The answer was, "You yourself foretell the eclipse, and assume to
know when a star will be in a certain place a hundred years in advance;
now, if you can prophesy about stars, why can't we foretell a man's
future?"
Copernicus proudly declined to answer such ignorance, but went on to
say that alchemy was a violence to chemistry as much as astrology was to
astronomy. In chemistry there were exact results that could be computed by
mathematics and foretold; it was likewise so in astronomy.
Copernicus was philosopher enough to know that astrology led to
astronomy, and alchemy led to chemistry, but he said all he wished to do
was to eliminate error and find the truth, and when we have ascertained
the laws of God in reference to these things, we should discard the use of
black cats, goggles, peaked hats,[Pg
114] red fire and incantations—these things were sacrilege.
And the enemy declared that Copernicus was guilty of heresy in saying they
were guilty of sacrilege. Moreover, black cats were not as bad as
blackboards.
The Pope certainly had no idea of treating Copernicus harshly; in fact,
he greatly admired him—but peace was the thing desired. Copernicus was
creating a schism, and there was danger that the revenues would be
affected. The Pope sent for Copernicus, received him with great honor,
blessed him, and suggested that he return at once to his native town of
Thorn and there await good news that would come to him soon.
Copernicus was overwhelmed with gratitude—he was in difficulties.
Certain priests had publicly denounced him; others had urged him on to
unseemliness in debate; he had stated things he could not prove, even
though he knew they were true—but the Pope was his friend! He loved the
Church; he felt how necessary it was to the people, and at the last, the
desire of his heart was to bless and benefit the world.
He fell on his knees and attempted to kiss the Pope's foot, but the
Holy Father offered him his hand instead, smiled on him, stroked his head,
and an attendant was ordered to place about his neck a chain of gold with
a crucifix that would protect him from all harm. A purse was placed in his
hand, and he was sent upon his way relieved, happy—wondering, wondering![Pg
115]
When Copernicus reached his native town of Thorn, the local clergy
turned out in a procession to greet him, and a solemn service of
thanksgiving was held for his safe return home.
Copernicus was only twenty-seven years of age, and what he had done was
not quite clear to his uncle, the bishop, and the other dignitaries, but
word had come from the secretary of the Pope that he should be honored,
and it was all so done, in faith, love and enthusiasm.
Very shortly after this Copernicus was made Canon of the Cathedral at
Frauenburg. The town of Frauenburg has now only about twenty-five hundred
people, and it certainly was no larger then. The place is slow, sleepy,
and quite off the beaten track of travel.
When Canon Copernicus preached now, it was to a dear, stupid lot of old
marketwomen and overworked men and mischievous children. Oratory is a
collaboration—let him wax eloquent about the precession of the
equinoxes, and prate of Plato and Pythagoras if he wished—no one could
understand him! Rome is wise—the crystallized experience of centuries is
hers. Responsibility tames a man—marriage, political office, churchly
preferment—read history and note how these things have dulled the bright
blade of revolution and turned the radical into a Presbyterian professor
at Princeton, a staunch upholder of the[Pg
116] Established Order!
Plato said that Solar Energy found one of its forms of expression in
man. Some men are much more highly charged with it than others; your
genius is a man who does things. Do not think to dam up the red current of
his life—he may die.
Copernicus set to work practising medicine, and gave his services
gratis to the poor, who came for many miles to consult him.
He went from house to house and ordered his people to clean up their
back yards, to ventilate their houses, to bathe and be decent and orderly.
He devised a system of sewerage, and utilized the belfry of his church as
a water-tower so as to get a water pressure from the little stream that
ran near the town. The remains of this invention are to be seen there in
the church-steeple even unto this day.
King Sigismund of Poland had heard of the attacks made by Copernicus
upon the alchemists, and sent for him that he might profit by his advice,
for it seems that the King, too, had been having experience with
alchemists. In their seeking after a way to make gold out of the baser
metals they had actually succeeded. At least they said so, and had made
the King believe it.
They had shown the King how he could cheapen his coinage one-half, and
"it was just as good!" The King could not tell the difference
when the coins were new, but alas! when they went beyond the borders of
Poland they could only be passed at one-half their face-value;[Pg
117] travelers refused to accept them; and even the merchants
at home were getting afraid.
Copernicus analyzed some of this money made for the King by his
alchemist friends and found a large alloy of tin, copper and zinc. He
explained to the King that by mixing the metals they did not change their
nature nor value. Gold was gold, and copper was copper—God had made
these things and hid them in the earth and men might deceive some men—a
part of the time—but there was always a retribution. Debase your
currency, and soon it will cease to pass current. No law can long uphold a
fictitious value.
The King urged Copernicus to write a book on the subject of coinage.
The permission of the Pope was secured, and the book written. The work
is valuable yet, and reveals a deep insight into the heart of things. The
man knew political economy, and foretold that a people who debased their
currency debased themselves.
"Money is character," he said, "and if you pretend it is
one thing, and it turns out to be another, you lose your reputation and
your own self-respect. No government can afford to deceive the governed.
If the people lose confidence in their rulers, a new government will
spring into being, built upon the ruins of the old. Government and
commerce are built on confidence."
Then he went on to show that German gold was valuable everywhere,
because it was pure; but Polish gold[Pg
118] and Russian gold were below par, because the money had
been tampered with, and as no secrets could be kept long, the result was
the matter exactly equalized itself, save that Russians and Polanders had
in a large degree lost their characters through belief in miracles.
Copernicus advocated a universal coinage, to be adopted by all civilized
nations, and the amount of alloy should be known and plainly stated, and
this alloy should simply be the seigniorage, or what was taken out to
cover the cost of mintage.
King Sigismund circulated this valuable book by Copernicus among all
the courts of Europe, and it need not be stated that the suggestions made
by Copernicus have been adopted by civilized nations everywhere.[Pg
119]
The humdrum duties of a country clergyman did not still the
intense longing of Copernicus to know and understand the truth. He visited
the sick, closed the eyes of the dying, kept his parish register, but his
heart was in mathematics, and so there is shown at Thorn an old church
register kept by Copernicus, where, in the back, are great rows of figures
put down by the Master as he worked at some astronomical problem. In the
upper floor of the barn, back of the old dilapidated farmhouse where he
lived for forty years, he cut holes in the roof, and also apertures in the
sides of the building, through which he watched the movements of the
stars. He lived in practical isolation and exile, for the Church had
forbidden him to speak in public except upon themes that the Holy Fathers
in their wisdom had authorized. None was to invite him to speak, read his
writings or hold converse with him, except on strictly church matters.
Copernicus knew the situation—he was a watched man. For him there was
no preferment: he knew too much! As long as he kept near home and did his
priestly work, all was well; but a trace of ambition or heresy, and he
would be dealt with. The Universities and all prominent Churchmen were
secretly ordered to leave Copernicus and his vagaries severely alone. But
the stars were his companions—they came out for him nightly and moved in
majesty across the sky. "They[Pg
120] do me great honor," he said; "I am forbidden to
converse with great men, but God has ordered for me a procession."
When the whole town slept, Copernicus watched the heavens, and made minute
records of his observations. He had brought with him from Rome copies made
by himself from the works of the prominent Greek astronomers, and the
"Almagest" of Ptolemy he knew by heart.
He digested all that had been written on the subject of astronomy;
slowly and patiently he tested every hypothesis with his rude and
improvised instruments. "Surely God will not damn me for wanting to
know the truth about His glorious works," he used to say.
Emerson once wrote this: "If the stars came out but once in a
thousand years, how men would adore!" But before he had written this,
Copernicus had said: "To look up at the sky, and behold the wondrous
works of God, must make a man bow his head and heart in silence. I have
thought and studied, and worked for years, and I know so little—all I
can do is to adore when I behold this unfailing regularity, this
miraculous balance and perfect adaptation. The majesty of it all humbles
me to the dust."
It was ostracism and exile that gave Copernicus the leisure to pursue
his studies in quiet, undiverted, undisturbed. He was relieved from
financial pinch, having all he needed for his simple, homely wants. The
mental distance that separated him from his[Pg
121] parishioners made him free, and the order that he should
not travel and that none should visit him made him master of his time.
There were no interruptions—"God has set me apart," he wrote,
"that I may study and make plain His works." But still, that he
could not make his discoveries known was a constant, bitter disappointment
to him.
In astronomy he found a means of using his mighty mathematical genius
for his own pleasure and amusement. The Pope had, in seeking to subdue
him, merely supplied the exact conditions he required to do his work—yet
neither knew it. So mighty is Destiny: we work for one thing and fail to
get it, but in our efforts we find something better.
The simple, hard-working gardeners with whom Copernicus lived, had a
reverent awe for the great man; they guessed his worth, but still had
suspicions of his sanity. His nightly vigils they took for a sort of
religious ecstasy, and a wholesome fear made them quite willing not to do
anything that might disturb him.
So passed the days away, and from a light-hearted, ambitious man,
Copernicus had grown old and bowed, and nearly blind from constant
watching of the stars and writing at night.
But his book, "The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies," was at
last complete. For forty years he had worked at it, and for twenty-seven
years, he himself says, not a day or a night had passed without his having[Pg
122] added something to it.
He felt that he had in this book told the truth. If men wanted to know
the facts about the heavens they would find them here. He had approached
the subject with no preconceived ideas; he had ever been willing to
renounce a theory when he found it wrong. He knew what all other great
astronomers had taught, and out of them all he had built a Science of
Astronomy that he knew would stand secure.
But what should he do with all this mass of truth he had discovered? It
was in his own brain, and it was in the three thousand pages of this book,
which had been rewritten five times. In a few years at most, his brain
would be stilled in death; and in five minutes, ignorance and malice might
reduce the book to ashes, and the forty years' labor of
Copernicus—working, dreaming, calculating, weeping, praying—would all
go for naught and be but a tale that is told. Others might have lived such
lives and known as much as he, and all was lost!
To send the book frankly to Rome and ask the Censor for the privilege
to publish it, was out of the question entirely—the request would be
refused, the manuscript destroyed, and his own life might be in danger.
To publish it at home without the consent of his Bishop would be
equally dangerous. There would be a bonfire of every copy in the public
square; for in this volume, all that the priests taught of astronomy had
been[Pg 123]
contradicted and refuted.
And then it occurred to him to send the manuscript to the free city of
Nuremberg, the home of science, art and free speech, where men could print
what they thought was truth—Nuremberg, the home of Albrecht Durer. With
the book he sent a bag of gold, his savings of a lifetime, to pay the
expense of printing the volume and putting it before the world.
To better protect himself, Copernicus wrote a preface, dedicating the
book to the Pope Paul, thus throwing himself upon the mercy of His
Holiness. He would not put the work out anonymously, as his friends in
Nuremberg, for his own safety, had advised. And neither would he flee to
Nuremberg for protection; he would stay at home—he was too old to travel
now—besides, he had forgotten how to talk and act with men of talent.
How would Rome receive the book? He could only guess—he could only
guess.
The months went by, and fear, anxiety and suspense had their sway. He
was stricken with fever. In his delirium he called aloud, "The
book—tell me—they surely have not burned it—you know I wrote no word
but truth—oh, how could they burn my book!"
But on May Twenty-third, Fifteen Hundred Forty-three, a messenger came
from Nuremberg.
He carried a copy of the printed book—he was admitted to the
sick-room, and placed in the hands of the stricken[Pg
124] man the volume. A gleam of sanity came to Copernicus. He
smiled, and taking the book gazed upon it, stroked its cover as though
caressing it, opened it and turned the leaves. Then closing the book and
holding it to his heart, he closed his eyes, and sank to sleep, to awake
no more.
His body was buried with simple village honors, and laid to rest
beneath the floor of the Cathedral where he had so long ministered, side
by side with a long line of priests. On the little slab that marked his
resting-place no mention was made of the mighty work he had done for
truth. There were fears that when the character of his book was known, the
grave of Copernicus would not remain undisturbed, and so the inscription
on the headstone was simply this: "I ask not the grace accorded to
Paul; not that given to Peter; give me only the favor which Thou didst
show to the thief on the cross."[Pg
125]
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