Although Copernicus performed the immense service to astronomy of boldly directing general attention to the central position of the sun, he unfortunately took over for the new scheme the circular machinery of the Ptolemaic system. It therefore remained for the famous Kepler, who lived about a century after him, to find the complete solution. Just as Copernicus, for instance, had broken free from tradition with regard to the place of the sun; so did Kepler, in turn, break free from the spell of circular motion, and thus set the coping-stone to the new astronomical edifice. This astronomer showed, in fact, that if the paths of the planets around the sun, and of the moon around the earth, were not circles, but _ellipses_, the movements of these bodies about the sky could be correctly accounted for. The extreme simplicity of such an arrangement was far more acceptable than the bewildering intricacy of movement required by the Ptolemaic theory. The Copernican system, as amended by Kepler, therefore carried the day; and was further strengthened, as we have already seen, by the telescopic observations of Galileo and the researches of Newton into the effects of gravitation. And here a word on the circle, now fallen from its high estate. The ancients were in error in supposing that it stood entirely apart--the curve of curves. As a matter of fact it is merely _a special kind of ellipse_. To put it paradoxically, it is an ellipse which has no ellipticity, an oval without any ovalness! Notwithstanding all this, astronomy had to wait yet a long time for a definite proof of the revolution of the earth around the sun. The leading argument advanced by Aristotle, against the reality of any movement of the earth, still held good up to about seventy years ago. That philosopher had pointed out that the earth could not move about in space to any great extent, or the stars would be found to alter their apparent places in the sky, a thing which had never been observed to happen. Centuries ran on, and instruments became more and more perfect, yet no displacements of stars were noted. In accepting the Copernican theory men were therefore obliged to suppose these objects as immeasurably distant. At length, however, between the years 1835 and 1840, it was discovered by the Prussian astronomer, Bessel, that a star known as 61 Cygni--that is to say, the star marked in celestial atlases as No. 61 in the constellation of the Swan--appeared, during the course of a year, to perform a tiny circle in the heavens, such as would result from a movement on our own part around the sun. Since then about forty-three stars have been found to show minute displacements of a similar kind, which cannot be accounted for upon any other supposition than that of a continuous revolution of the earth around the sun. The triumph of the Copernican system is now at last supreme.