The more carefully they made their observations,
the more peculiar the motions seemed. One astronomer gave up the work
in despair, just like that unfortunate Greek philosopher who, because
he could not understand the tides of the Euboean Sea, drowned
himself in it. So this astronomer, who was a king,--Alphonsus of
Portugal,--unable to unravel the loops of the planets, said, in his
wrath, that if he had been called on by the Creator to assign the
planets their paths, he would have managed the matter a great deal
better. The plates of the old astronomical books became more and more
confusing, and cost more and more labor, as astronomers continued to
... "Build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances, to gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."
It was to the study of Mars, the wildest wanderer of all, that we owe
the removal of all these perplexities. The idea had occurred to the
great astronomer, Copernicus, that the complexities of the planets'
paths are not real, but are caused by the constant moving about of the
place from whence we watch the planets.
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