Such a conflict took place rather more than 300 years ago at the opening of the Modern Era of astronomy. It was a conflict between two schools of science--between the disciples of Aristotle and Claudius Ptolemy on the one hand and the disciples of Copernicus on the other. It has often been represented as a conflict between religion and science, whereas that which happened was that the representatives of the older school of science made use of the powers of the Church to persecute the newer school as represented by Galileo. That persecution was no doubt a flagrant abuse of authority, but it should be impossible at the present day for any one to claim a theological standing for either theory, whether Copernican or Ptolemaic. So long as evidence sufficient to demonstrate the Copernican hypothesis was not forthcoming, it was possible for a man to hold the Ptolemaic, without detracting from his scientific position, just as it is thought no discredit to Sir William Herschel that he held his curious idea of a cool sun under the conditions of knowledge of a hundred years ago. Even at the present day, we habitually use the Ptolemaic phraseology. Not only do we speak of "sunrise" and "sunset," but astronomers in strictly technical papers use the expression, "acceleration of the sun's motion" when "acceleration of the earth's motion" is meant. The question as to whether the earth goes round the sun or the sun goes round the earth has been decided by the accumulation of evidence. It was a question for evidence to decide. It was an open question so long as the evidence available was not sufficient to decide it. It was perfectly possible at one time for a scientific or a religious man to hold either view. Neither view interfered with his fundamental standing or with his mental attitude towards either sun or earth. In this respect--important as the question is in itself--it might be said to be a mere detail, almost a matter of indifference. But it is not a mere detail, a matter of indifference to either scientist or religious man, as to what the sun and earth _are_--whether he can treat them as things that can be weighed, measured, compared, analyzed, as, a few pages back, we have shown has been done, or whether, as one of the chief astrologers of to-day puts it, he-- "Believes that the sun is the body of the Logos of this solar system, 'in Him we live and move and have our being.' The planets are his angels, being modifications in the consciousness of the Logos," and that the sun "Stands as Power, having Love and Will united."