When we study the great conflict in the time of Coppernicus between the ancient and modern ideas, our sympathies naturally go out towards those who supported the latter, which are now known to be more accurate, and we are apt to forget that those who then spoke in the name of the ancient astronomy and quoted Ptolemy were indeed believers in the doctrines which they had derived from the Greeks, but that their methods of thought, their frequent refusal to face facts, and their appeals to authority, were all entirely foreign to the spirit of the great men whose disciples they believed themselves to be. CHAPTER III. THE MIDDLE AGES. “The lamp burns low, and through the casement bars Grey morning glimmers feebly.” BROWNING’S _Paracelsus_. 55. About fourteen centuries elapsed between the publication of the _Almagest_ and the death of Coppernicus (1543), a date which is in astronomy a convenient landmark on the boundary between the Middle Ages and the modern world. In this period, nearly twice as long as that which separated Thales from Ptolemy, almost four times as long as that which has now elapsed since the death of Coppernicus, no astronomical discovery of first-rate importance was made. There were some important advances in mathematics, and the art of observation was improved; but theoretical astronomy made scarcely any progress, and in some respects even went backward, the current doctrines, if in some points slightly more correct than those of Ptolemy, being less intelligently held. In the Western World we have already seen that there was little to record for nearly five centuries after Ptolemy. After that time ensued an almost total blank, and several more centuries elapsed before there was any appreciable revival of the interest once felt in astronomy.