"This is no ridiculous Imagination, for _New-France_ where we are, gives us a very convincing instance of it. The vast Continent of _America_ is one half of the Earth, which in spight of our Predecessors, who a Thousand times had cruised the Ocean, was not at that time discovered: Nor, indeed, was it then in being, no more than a great many Islands, Peninsules, and Mountains that have since started up in our Globe, when the Sun purged out its Excrements to a convenient distance, and of a sufficient Gravity to be attracted by the Center of our World; either in small Particles, perhaps, or, it may be also, altogether in one lump. That is not so unreasonable but that _St. Austin_[11] would have applauded to it, if that Country had been discovered in his Age. Seeing that great Man, who had a very clear Wit, assures us, That in his time the Earth was flat like the floor of an Oven, and that it floated upon the Water, like the half of an Orange: But if ever I have the honour to see you in _France_, I'll make you observe, by means of a most excellent Celescope, that some Obscurities, which from hence appear to be Spots, are Worlds a forming." My Eyes that shut with this Discourse, obliged the Vice-Roy to withdraw. [1] In connection with this discussion it is to be remembered that nearly two centuries were required for the Copernican system, promulgated in 1543, in the De orbium _coelestium revolutionibus_, to become generally popularized; and that in 1633, only sixteen years before the _Voyage to the Moon_ was written, Galileo had been compelled by the Inquisition to deny the motion of the earth. [2] According to the Ptolemaic system, still generally accepted by "modern Philosophers" at the time of Cyrano's writing, the fixed stars, the sun, the moon, and each of the five (then known) planets, revolved about the earth in different orbits, according to various "epicycles" and "excentrics." [3] The motion of the moon, for instance, was explained in the Ptolemaic system as an epicycle carried by an excentric; the centre of the excentric moving about the earth in a direction opposite to that of the epicycle. [4] The French has: "of the _two_ other motions": _i.e._, the movement of the fixed stars, and that of the planets. [5] _Gassendus_ or _Gassendi_ was Cyrano's own teacher of Philosophy. Of Provençal origin, and at first Professor in the University of Aix, he came to Paris in 1641, and gave both private lessons and public courses as Professor of the Collège Royal. It was in one of his private classes that Cyrano was a fellow-student with Chapelle, Hesnaut, Bernier, and almost certainly Molière; the most important group of young "libertins" (_i.e._ free-thinkers) of the epoch.