There was thus a real science of astronomy before we have any history of it. Some important discoveries had been made, and the first step had been taken towards cataloguing the fixed stars. It was certainly known to some of the students of the heavens, though perhaps only to a few, that the Earth was a sphere, freely suspended in space, and surrounded on all sides by the starry heavens, amongst which moved the Sun, Moon, and the five planets. The general character of the Sun's movement was also known; namely, that he not only moved day by day from east to west, as the stars do, but also had a second motion inclined at an angle to the first, and in the opposite direction, which he accomplished in the course of a year. To this sum of knowledge, no doubt, several nations had contributed. We do not know to what race we owe the constellations, but there are evidences of an elementary acquaintance with astronomy on the part of the Chinese, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Jews. But in the second stage of the development of the science the entire credit for the progress made belongs to the Greeks. The Greeks, as a race, appear to have been very little apt at originating ideas, but they possessed, beyond all other races, the power of developing and perfecting crude ideas which they had obtained from other sources, {21} and when once their attention was drawn to the movements of the heavenly bodies, they devoted themselves with striking ingenuity and success to devising theories to account for the appearances presented, to working out methods of computation, and, last, to devising instruments for observing the places of the luminaries in which they were interested.