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The significance of the Plurality of Worlds is indeed much greater
than that of a pioneer work in popularisation and a model in the art
of making technical subjects interesting. We must remember that at
this time the belief that the sun revolves round the earth still
prevailed. Only the few knew better. The cosmic revolution which is
associated with the names of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo was
slow in producing its effects. It was rejected by Bacon; and the
condemnation of Galileo by the Church made Descartes, who dreaded
nothing so much as a collision with the ecclesiastical authorities
unwilling to insist on it. [Footnote: Cp. Bouillier, Histoire de la
philosophie cartesienne, i. p. 42-3.] Milton's Raphael, in the
Eighth Book of Paradise Lost (published 1667), does not venture to
affirm the Copernican system; he explains it sympathetically, but
leaves the question open. [Footnote: Masson (Milton's Poetical
Works, vol. 2) observes that Milton's life (1608-74) "coincides with
the period of the struggle between the two systems" (p.


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