Sierras, Andes, Lanos, as Herrera, Laet, and [3066]Acosta contend,
there is tam mirabilis et inopinata varietas, such variety of weather,
ut merito exerceat ingenia, that no philosophy can yet find out the
true cause of it. When I consider how temperate it is in one place,
saith [3067]Acosta, within the tropic of Capricorn, as about Laplata,
and yet hard by at Potosi, in that same altitude, mountainous alike,
extreme cold; extreme hot in Brazil, &c. Hic ego, saith Acosta,
philosophiam Aristotelis meteorologicam vehementer irrisi, cum, &c.,
when the sun comes nearest to them, they have great tempests, storms,
thunder and lightning, great store of rain, snow, and the foulest
weather: when the sun is vertical, their rivers overflow, the morning
fair and hot, noonday cold and moist: all which is opposite to us. How
comes it to pass? Scaliger poetices l. 3. c. 16. discourseth thus of
this subject. How comes, or wherefore is this temeraria siderum
dispositio, this rash placing of stars, or as Epicurus will, fortuita,
or accidental? Why are some big, some little, why are they so
confusedly, unequally situated in the heavens, and set so much out of
order? In all other things nature is equal, proportionable, and
constant; there be justae dimensiones, et prudens partium dispositio,
as in the fabric of man, his eyes, ears, nose, face, members are
correspondent, cur non idem coelo opere omnium pulcherrimo? Why are the
heavens so irregular, neque paribus molibus, neque paribus intervallis,
whence is this difference? Diversos (he concludes) efficere locorum
Genios, to make diversity of countries, soils, manners, customs,
characters, and constitutions among us, ut quantum vicinia ad
charitatem addat, sidera distrahant ad perniciem, and so by this means
fluvio vel monte distincti sunt dissimiles, the same places almost
shall be distinguished in manners. But this reason is weak and most
insufficient. The fixed stars are removed since Ptolemy's time 26. gr.
from the first of Aries, and if the earth be immovable, as their site
varies, so should countries vary, and diverse alterations would follow.
But this we perceive not; as in Tully's time with us in Britain, coelum
visu foedum, et in quo facile generantur nubes, &c., 'tis so still.
Wherefore Bodine Theat. nat. lib. 2. and some others, will have all
these alterations and effects immediately to proceed from those genii,
spirits, angels, which rule and domineer in several places; they cause
storms, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, ruins, tempests, great winds,
floods, &c., the philosophers of Conimbra, will refer this diversity to
the influence of that empyrean heaven: for some say the eccentricity of
the sun is come nearer to the earth than in Ptolemy's time, the virtue
therefore of all the vegetals is decayed, [3068]men grow less, &c.
There are that observe new motions of the heavens, new stars, palantia
sidera, comets, clouds, call them what you will, like those Medicean,
Burbonian, Austrian planets, lately detected, which do not decay, but
come and go, rise higher and lower, hide and show themselves amongst
the fixed stars, amongst the planets, above and beneath the moon, at
set times, now nearer, now farther off, together, asunder; as he that
plays upon a sackbut by pulling it up and down alters his tones and
tunes, do they their stations and places, though to us undiscerned; and
from those motions proceed (as they conceive) diverse alterations.
Clavius conjectures otherwise, but they be but conjectures. About
Damascus in Coeli-Syria is a [3069]Paradise, by reason of the plenty of
waters, in promptu causa est, and the deserts of Arabia barren, because
of rocks, rolling seas of sands, and dry mountains quod inaquosa (saith
Adricomius) montes habens asperos, saxosos, praecipites, horroris et
mortis speciem prae se ferentes, uninhabitable therefore of men, birds,
beasts, void of all green trees, plants, and fruits, a vast rocky
horrid wilderness, which by no art can be manured, 'tis evident.
Bohemia is cold, for that it lies all along to the north. But why
should it be so hot in Egypt, or there never rain? Why should those
[3070]etesian and northeastern winds blow continually and constantly so
long together, in some places, at set times, one way still, in the
dog-days only: here perpetual drought, there dropping showers; here
foggy mists, there a pleasant air; here [3071]terrible thunder and
lightning at such set seasons, here frozen seas all the year, there
open in the same latitude, to the rest no such thing, nay quite
opposite is to be found? Sometimes (as in [3072]Peru) on the one side
of the mountains it is hot, on the other cold, here snow, there wind,
with infinite such. Fromundus in his Meteors will excuse or solve all
this by the sun's motion, but when there is such diversity to such as
Perioeci or very near site, how can that position hold?
Who can give a reason of this diversity of meteors, that it should rain
[3073]stones, frogs, mice, &c. Rats, which they call _lemmer_ in
Norway, and are manifestly observed (as [3074]Munster writes) by the
inhabitants, to descend and fall with some feculent showers, and like
so many locusts, consume all that is green. Leo Afer speaks as much of
locusts, about Fez in Barbary there be infinite swarms in their fields
upon a sudden: so at Aries in France, 1553, the like happened by the
same mischief, all their grass and fruits were devoured, magna
incolarum admiratione et consternatione (as Valleriola obser. med. lib.
1. obser. 1. relates) coelum subito obumbrabant, &c. he concludes,
[3075]it could not be from natural causes, they cannot imagine whence
they come, but from heaven. Are these and such creatures, corn, wood,
stones, worms, wool, blood, &c. lifted up into the middle region by the
sunbeams, as [3076]Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence let
fall with showers, or there engendered? [3077]Cornelius Gemma is of
that opinion, they are there conceived by celestial influences: others
suppose they are immediately from God, or prodigies raised by art and
illusions of spirits, which are princes of the air; to whom Bodin. lib.
2. Theat. Nat. subscribes. In fine, of meteors in general, Aristotle's
reasons are exploded by Bernardinus Telesius, by Paracelsus his
principles confuted, and other causes assigned, sal, sulphur, mercury,
in which his disciples are so expert, that they can alter elements, and
separate at their pleasure, make perpetual motions, not as Cardan,
Tasneir, Peregrinus, by some magnetical virtue, but by mixture of
elements; imitate thunder, like Salmoneus, snow, hail, the sea's ebbing
and flowing, give life to creatures (as they say) without generation,
and what not? P. Nonius Saluciensis and Kepler take upon them to
demonstrate that no meteors, clouds, fogs, [3078]vapours, arise higher
than fifty or eighty miles, and all the rest to be purer air or element
of fire: which [3079]Cardan, [3080]Tycho, and [3081]John Pena
manifestly confute by refractions, and many other arguments, there is
no such element of fire at all. If, as Tycho proves, the moon be
distant from us fifty and sixty semi-diameters of the earth: and as
Peter Nonius will have it, the air be so angust, what proportion is
there betwixt the other three elements and it? To what use serves it?
Is it full of spirits which inhabit it, as the Paracelsians and
Platonists hold, the higher the more noble, [3082]full of birds, or a
mere vacuum to no purpose? It is much controverted between Tycho Brahe
and Christopher Rotman, the landgrave of Hesse's mathematician, in
their astronomical epistles, whether it be the same Diaphanum
clearness, matter of air and heavens, or two distinct essences?
Christopher Rotman, John Pena, Jordanus Brunus, with many other late
mathematicians, contend it is the same and one matter throughout,
saving that the higher still the purer it is, and more subtile; as they
find by experience in the top of some hills in [3083]America; if a man
ascend, he faints instantly for want of thicker air to refrigerate the
heart. Acosta, l. 3. c. 9. calls this mountain Periacaca in Peru; it
makes men cast and vomit, he saith, that climb it, as some other of
those Andes do in the deserts of Chile for five hundred miles together,
and for extremity of cold to lose their fingers and toes. Tycho will
have two distinct matters of heaven and air; but to say truth, with
some small qualification, they have one and the self-same opinion about
the essence and matter of heavens; that it is not hard and
impenetrable, as peripatetics hold, transparent, of a quinta essentia,
[3084]but that it is penetrable and soft as the air itself is, and that
the planets move in it, as birds in the air, fishes in the sea. This
they prove by motion of comets, and otherwise (though Claremontius in
his Antitycho stiffly opposes), which are not generated, as Aristotle
teacheth, in the aerial region, of a hot and dry exhalation, and so
consumed: but as Anaxagoras and Democritus held of old, of a celestial
matter: and as [3085] Tycho, [3086]Eliseus, Roeslin, Thaddeus,
Haggesius, Pena, Rotman, Fracastorius, demonstrate by their progress,
parallaxes, refractions, motions of the planets, which interfere and
cut one another's orbs, now higher, and then lower, as ♂ amongst the
rest, which sometimes, as [3087]Kepler confirms by his own, and Tycho's
accurate observations, comes nearer the earth than the ☉ and is again
eftsoons aloft in Jupiter's orb; and [3088]other sufficient reasons,
far above the moon: exploding in the meantime that element of fire,
those fictitious first watery movers, those heavens I mean above the
firmament, which Delrio, Lodovicus Imola, Patricius, and many of the
fathers affirm; those monstrous orbs of eccentrics, and Eccentre
Epicycles deserentes. Which howsoever Ptolemy, Alhasen, Vitellio,
Purbachius, Maginus, Clavius, and many of their associates, stiffly
maintain to be real orbs, eccentric, concentric, circles aequant, &c.
are absurd and ridiculous. For who is so mad to think that there should
be so many circles, like subordinate wheels in a clock, all
impenetrable and hard, as they feign, add and subtract at their
pleasure. [3089]Maginus makes eleven heavens, subdivided into their
orbs and circles, and all too little to serve those particular
appearances: Fracastorius, seventy-two homocentrics; Tycho Brahe,
Nicholas Ramerus, Heliseus Roeslin, have peculiar hypotheses of their
own inventions; and they be but inventions, as most of them
acknowledge, as we admit of equators, tropics, colures, circles arctic
and antarctic, for doctrine's sake (though Ramus thinks them all
unnecessary), they will have them supposed only for method and order.
Tycho hath feigned I know not how many subdivisions of epicycles in
epicycles, &c., to calculate and express the moon's motion: but when
all is done, as a supposition, and no otherwise; not (as he holds)
hard, impenetrable, subtile, transparent, &c., or making music, as
Pythagoras maintained of old, and Robert Constantine of late, but
still, quiet, liquid, open, &c.
If the heavens then be penetrable, as these men deliver, and no lets,
it were not amiss in this aerial progress, to make wings and fly up,
which that Turk in Busbequius made his fellow-citizens in
Constantinople believe he would perform: and some new-fangled wits,
methinks, should some time or other find out: or if that may not be,
yet with a Galileo's glass, or Icaromenippus' wings in Lucian, command
the spheres and heavens, and see what is done amongst them. Whether
there be generation and corruption, as some think, by reason of
ethereal comets, that in Cassiopea, 1572, that in Cygno, 1600, that in
Sagittarius, 1604, and many like, which by no means Jul. Caesar la
Galla, that Italian philosopher, in his physical disputation with
Galileis de phenomenis in orbe lunae, cap. 9. will admit: or that they
were created ab initio, and show themselves at set times. and as
[3090]Helisaeus Roeslin contends, have poles, axle-trees, circles of
their own, and regular motions. For, non pereunt, sed minuuntur et
disparent, [3091]Blancanus holds they come and go by fits, casting
their tails still from the sun: some of them, as a burning-glass,
projects the sunbeams from it; though not always neither: for sometimes
a comet casts his tail from Venus, as Tycho observes. And as
[3092]Helisaeus Roeslin of some others, from the moon, with little
stars about them ad stuporem astronomorum; cum multis aliis in coelo
miraculis, all which argue with those Medicean, Austrian, and Burbonian
stars, that the heaven of the planets is indistinct, pure, and open, in
which the planets move certis legibus ac metis. Examine likewise, An
coelum sit coloratum? Whether the stars be of that bigness, distance,
as astronomers relate, so many in [3093]number, 1026, or 1725, as J.
Bayerus; or as some Rabbins, 29,000 myriads; or as Galileo discovers by
his glasses, infinite, and that via lactea, a confused light of small
stars, like so many nails in a door: or all in a row, like those 12,000
isles of the Maldives in the Indian ocean? Whether the least visible
star in the eighth sphere be eighteen times bigger than the earth; and
as Tycho calculates, 14,000 semi-diameters distant from it? Whether
they be thicker parts of the orbs, as Aristotle delivers: or so many
habitable worlds, as Democritus? Whether they have light of their own,
or from the sun, or give light round, as Patritius discourseth? An
aeque distent a centra mundi? Whether light be of their essence; and
that light be a substance or an accident? Whether they be hot by
themselves, or by accident cause heat? Whether there be such a
precession of the equinoxes as Copernicus holds, or that the eighth
sphere move? An bene philosophentur, R. Bacon and J. Dee, Aphorism. de
multiplicatione specierum? Whether there be any such images ascending
with each degree of the zodiac in the east, as Aliacensis feigns? An
aqua super coelum? as Patritius and the schoolmen will, a crystalline
[3094]watery heaven, which is [3095] certainly to be understood of that
in the middle region? for otherwise, if at Noah's flood the water came
from thence, it must be above a hundred years falling down to us, as
[3096]some calculate. Besides, An terra sit animata? which some so
confidently believe, with Orpheus, Hermes, Averroes, from which all
other souls of men, beasts, devils, plants, fishes, &c. are derived,
and into which again, after some revolutions, as Plato in his Timaeus,
Plotinus in his Enneades more largely discuss, they return (see
Chalcidius and Bennius, Plato's commentators), as all philosophical
matter, in materiam primam. Keplerus, Patritius, and some other
Neoterics, have in part revived this opinion. And that every star in
heaven hath a soul, angel or intelligence to animate or move it, &c. Or
to omit all smaller controversies, as matters of less moment, and
examine that main paradox, of the earth's motion, now so much in
question: Aristarchus Samius, Pythagoras maintained it of old,
Democritus and many of their scholars, Didacus Astunica, Anthony
Fascarinus, a Carmelite, and some other commentators, will have Job to
insinuate as much, cap. 9. ver. 4. Qui commovet terram de loco suo,
&c., and that this one place of scripture makes more for the earth's
motion than all the other prove against it; whom Pineda confutes most
contradict. Howsoever, it is revived since by Copernicus, not as a
truth, but a supposition, as he himself confesseth in the preface to
pope Nicholas, but now maintained in good earnest by [3097]
Calcagninus, Telesius, Kepler, Rotman, Gilbert, Digges, Galileo,
Campanella, and especially by [3098]Lansbergius, naturae, rationi, et
veritati consentaneum, by Origanus, and some [3099]others of his
followers. For if the earth be the centre of the world, stand still,
and the heavens move, as the most received [3100]opinion is, which they
call inordinatam coeli dispositionem, though stiffly maintained by
Tycho, Ptolemeus, and their adherents, quis ille furor? &c. what fury
is that, saith [3101]Dr. Gilbert, satis animose, as Cabeus notes, that
shall drive the heavens about with such incomprehensible celerity in
twenty-four hours, when as every point of the firmament, and in the
equator, must needs move (so [3102]Clavius calculates) 176,660 in one
246th part of an hour, and an arrow out of a bow must go seven times
about the earth, whilst a man can say an Ave Maria, if it keep the same
space, or compass the earth 1884 times in an hour, which is supra
humanam cogitationem, beyond human conceit: ocyor et jaculo, et ventos,
aequante sagitta. A man could not ride so much ground, going 40 miles a
day, in 2904 years, as the firmament goes in 23 hours: or so much in
203 years, as the firmament in one minute: quod incredibile videtur:
and the [3103]pole-star, which to our thinking scarce moveth out of his
place, goeth a bigger circuit than the sun, whose diameter is much
larger than the diameter of the heaven of the sun, and 20,000
semi-diameters of the earth from us, with the rest of the fixed stars,
as Tycho proves. To avoid therefore these impossibilities, they ascribe
a triple motion to the earth, the sun immovable in the centre of the
whole world, the earth centre of the moon, alone, above ♂ and ☿,
beneath ♄, ♃, ♂ (or as [3104]Origanus and others will, one single
motion to the earth, still placed in the centre of the world, which is
more probable) a single motion to the firmament, which moves in 30 or
26 thousand years; and so the planets, Saturn in 30 years absolves his
sole and proper motion, Jupiter in 12, Mars in 3, &c. and so solve all
appearances better than any way whatsoever: calculate all motions, be
they in longum or latum, direct, stationary, retrograde, ascent or
descent, without epicycles, intricate eccentrics, &c. rectius
commodiusque per unicum motum terrae, saith Lansbergius, much more
certain than by those Alphonsine, or any such tables, which are
grounded from those other suppositions. And 'tis true they say,
according to optic principles, the visible appearances of the planets
do so indeed answer to their magnitudes and orbs, and come nearest to
mathematical observations and precedent calculations, there is no
repugnancy to physical axioms, because no penetration of orbs; but then
between the sphere of Saturn and the firmament, there is such an
incredible and vast [3105]space or distance (7,000,000 semi-diameters
of the earth, as Tycho calculates) void of stars: and besides, they do
so enhance the bigness of the stars, enlarge their circuit, to solve
those ordinary objections of parallaxes and retrogradations of the
fixed stars, that alteration of the poles, elevation in several places
or latitude of cities here on earth (for, say they, if a man's eye were
in the firmament, he should not at all discern that great annual motion
of the earth, but it would still appear punctum indivisibile and seem
to be fixed in one place, of the same bigness) that it is quite
opposite to reason, to natural philosophy, and all out as absurd as
disproportional (so some will) as prodigious, as that of the sun's
swift motion of heavens. But hoc posito, to grant this their tenet of
the earth's motion: if the earth move, it is a planet, and shines to
them in the moon, and to the other planetary inhabitants, as the moon
and they do to us upon the earth: but shine she doth, as Galileo,
[3106] Kepler, and others prove, and then per consequens, the rest of
the planets are inhabited, as well as the moon, which he grants in his
dissertation with Galileo's Nuncius Sidereus, [3107]that there be
Jovial and Saturn inhabitants, &c., and those several planets have
their several moons about them, as the earth hath hers, as Galileo hath
already evinced by his glasses: [3108]four about Jupiter, two about
Saturn (though Sitius the Florentine, Fortunius Licetus, and Jul.
Caesar le Galla cavil at it) yet Kepler, the emperor's mathematician,
confirms out of his experience, that he saw as much by the same help,
and more about Mars, Venus, and the rest they hope to find out,
peradventure even amongst the fixed stars, which Brunus and Brutius
have already averred. Then (I say) the earth and they be planets alike,
moved about the sun, the common centre of the world alike, and it may
be those two green children which [3109] Nubrigensis speaks of in his
time, that fell from heaven, came from thence; and that famous stone
that fell from heaven in Aristotle's time, olymp. 84, anno tertio, ad
Capuas Fluenta, recorded by Laertius and others, or Ancile or buckler
in Numa's time, recorded by Festus. We may likewise insert with
Campanella and Brunus, that which Pythagoras, Aristarchus, Samius,
Heraclitus, Epicurus, Melissus, Democritus, Leucippus maintained in
their ages, there be [3110]infinite worlds, and infinite earths or
systems, in infinito aethere, which [3111]Eusebius collects out of
their tenets, because infinite stars and planets like unto this of
ours, which some stick not still to maintain and publicly defend,
sperabundus expecto innumerabilium mundorum in aeternitate per
ambulationem, &c. (Nic. Hill. Londinensis philos. Epicur.) For if the
firmament be of such an incomparable bigness, as these Copernical
giants will have it, infinitum, aut infinito proximum, so vast and full
of innumerable stars, as being infinite in extent, one above another,
some higher, some lower, some nearer, some farther off, and so far
asunder, and those so huge and great, insomuch that if the whole sphere
of Saturn, and all that is included in it, totum aggregatum (as
Fromundus of Louvain in his tract, de immobilitate terrae argues)
evehatur inter stellas, videri a nobis non poterat, tam immanis est
distantia inter tellurem et fixas, sed instar puncti, &c. If our world
be small in respect, why may we not suppose a plurality of worlds,
those infinite stars visible in the firmament to be so many suns, with
particular fixed centres; to have likewise their subordinate planets,
as the sun hath his dancing still round him? which Cardinal Cusanus,
Walkarinus, Brunus, and some others have held, and some still maintain,
Animae, Aristotelismo innutritae, et minutis speculationibus assuetae,
secus forsan, &c. Though they seem close to us, they are infinitely
distant, and so per consequens, there are infinite habitable worlds:
what hinders? Why should not an infinite cause (as God is) produce
infinite effects? as Nic. Hill. Democrit. philos. disputes: Kepler (I
confess) will by no means admit of Brunus's infinite worlds, or that
the fixed stars should be so many suns, with their compassing planets,
yet the said [3112]Kepler between jest and earnest in his perspectives,
lunar geography, [3113] & somnio suo, dissertat. cum nunc. sider. seems
in part to agree with this, and partly to contradict; for the planets,
he yields them to be inhabited, he doubts of the stars; and so doth
Tycho in his astronomical epistles, out of a consideration of their
vastity and greatness, break out into some such like speeches, that he
will never believe those great and huge bodies were made to no other
use than this that we perceive, to illuminate the earth, a point
insensible in respect of the whole. But who shall dwell in these vast
bodies, earths, worlds, [3114] if they be inhabited? rational
creatures? as Kepler demands, or have they souls to be saved? or do
they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they
lords of the world? And how are all things made for man? Difficile est
nodum hunc expedire, eo quod nondum omnia quae huc pertinent explorata
habemus: 'tis hard to determine: this only he proves, that we are in
praecipuo mundi sinu, in the best place, best world, nearest the heart
of the sun. [3115]Thomas Campanella, a Calabrian monk, in his second
book de sensu rerum, cap. 4, subscribes to this of Kepler; that they
are inhabited he certainly supposeth, but with what kind of creatures