The Sleepwalkers (101 page)

The
jealous
Ignatius,
who
wants
the
place
of
honour
in
Hell
for
himself,
debunks
Copernicus:

"But
for
you,
what
new
thing
have
you
invented,
by
which
our
Lucifer
gets
any
thing?
What
cares
hee
whether
the
earth
travell,
or
stand
still?
Hath
your
raising
up
of
the
earth
into
heaven,
brought
men
to
that
confidence,
that
they
build
new
towers
or
threaten
God
againe?
Or
do
they
out
of
this
motion
of
the
earth
conclude,
that
there
is
no
hell,
or
deny
the
punishment
of
sin?
Do
not
men
beleeve?
Do
they
not
live
just
as
they
did
before?
Besides,
this
detracts
from
the
dignity
of
your
learning,
and
derogates
from
your
right
and
title
of
comming
to
this
place,
that
those
opinions
of
yours
may
very
well
be
true...
But
your
inventions
can
scarce
bee
called
yours,
since
long
before
you,
Heraclides
,
Ecphantus
,
and
Aristarchus
thrust
them
into
the
world:
who
notwithstanding
content
themselves
with
lower
roomes
among
the
other
Philosophers,
and
aspire
not
to
this
place,
reserved
onely
for
Antichristian
Heroes
...
Let
therefore
this
little
Mathematitian
,
dread
Emperour,
withdraw
himselfe
to
his
owne
company."

Ignatius
was
published
in
1611.
It
reflects,
broadly
speaking,
the
attitude
of
the
two
generations
between
Copernicus
and
Donne.
But
those
two
generations
who
ignored
Copernicus
were
mistaken;
the
"little
Mathematitian",
that
pale,
sour,
insignificant
figure,
ignored
by
his
contemporaries
and
those
who
immediately
succeeded
them,
was
to
throw
a
giant
shadow
on
the
history
of
mankind.

How
is
this
last
paradox
in
a
paradoxical
story
to
be
explained?
How
was
it
possible
that
the
faulty,
self-contradictory
Copernican
theory,
contained
in
an
unreadable
and
unread
book,
rejected
in
its
time,
was
to
give
rise,
a
century
later,
to
a
new
philosophy
which
transformed
the
world?
The
answer
is
that
the
details
did
not
matter,
and
that
it
was
not
necessary
to
read
the
book
to
grasp
its
essence.
Ideas
which
have
the
power
to
alter
the
habits
of
human
thought
do
not
act
on
the
conscious
mind
alone;
they
seep
through
to
those
deeper
strata
which
are
indifferent
to
logical
contradictions.
They
influence
not
some
specific
concept,
but
the
total
outlook
of
the
mind.

The
heliocentric
idea
of
the
universe,
crystallized
into
a
system
by
Copernicus,
and
restated
in
modern
form
by
Kepler,
altered
the
climate
of
thought
not
by
what
it
expressly
stated,
but
by
what
it
implied.
Its
implications
were
certainly
not
conscious
in
Copernicus'
mind,
and
acted
on
his
successors
by
equally
insidious,
subterranean
channels.
They
were
all
negative,
all
destructive
to
the
solid
edifice
of
medieval
philosophy,
undermining
the
foundations
on
which
it
rested.

6.
The Delayed Effect

The
medieval
Christian
universe
had
hard,
firm
limits
in
space,
time,
and
knowledge.
Its
extension
in
time
was
limited
to
the
relatively
short
span
between
the
creation
of
the
world,
which
lay
some
five
thousand
years
back,
and
the
second
coming
of
Christ
which
lay
ahead,
and
which
many
expected
to
occur
in
the
foreseeable
future.
Thus
the
history
of
the
universe
was
thought
to
be
limited
to
something
of
the
order
of
two
or
three
hundred
generations
from
beginning
to
end.
God
had
modelled
his
world
on
the
art
form
of
the
short
story.

In
space,
the
world
was
equally
bounded
by
the
ninth
sphere,
beyond
which
lay
the
heavenly
Empyrean.
It
was
not
necessary
for
the
sophisticated
to
believe
strictly
in
all
that
was
said
about
heaven
and
hell;
but
the
existence
of
solid
boundaries
in
time
and
space
were
a
habit
of
thought
as
self-evident
as
the
walls
and
ceiling
of
his
room,
as
his
own
birth
and
death.

Thirdly,
there
were
equally
firm
limits
to
the
progress
of
knowledge,
technology,
science,
social
organization;
all
of
which
had
been
completed
long
ago.
There
was
a
final
truth
regarding
every
subject,
as
finite
and
bounded
as
the
universe
itself.
The
truth
about
religion
was
revealed
in
the
Scriptures;
the
truth
about
geometry
in
Euclid,
the
truth
about
physics
in
Aristotle.
The
science
of
the
ancients
was
taken
as
Gospel
truth,
not
because
of
any
particular
respect
for
the
pagan
Greeks,
but
because
it
was
obvious
that
since
they
had
come
so
much
earlier
they
had
harvested
all
there
was
to
harvest
in
these
fields,
and
left
nothing
but
a
few
stray
stalks
to
pick
in
the
way
of
tidying
up.
Since
there
was
only
one
answer
to
every
question,
and
the
ancients
had
filled
in
all
the
answers,
the
edifice
of
knowledge
was
completed.
If
the
answer
did
not
happen
to
fit
the
facts,
the
error
was
blamed
on
the
scribes
who
copied
the
ancient
manuscript.
The
authority
of
the
ancients
did
not
rest
on
idolatry,
but
on
the
belief
in
the
finite
nature
of
knowledge.