These discoveries of Galileo made it clear that Aristotle, Ptolemy and the majority of those who had thought about these things in the last 2000 years had been utterly and hopelessly wrong. In estimating his position in the universe, man had up to now been guided mainly by his own desires, and his self-esteem; long fed on boundless hopes, he had spurned the simpler fare offered by patient scientific thought. Inexorable facts now dethroned him from his self-arrogated station at the centre of the universe; henceforth he must reconcile himself to the humble position of the inhabitant of a speck of dust, and adjust his views on the meaning of human life accordingly. The adjustment was not made at once. Human vanity, reinforced by the authority of the Church, contrived to make a rough road for those who dared draw attention to the earth’s insignificant position in the universe. Galileo was forced to abjure his beliefs. Well on into the eighteenth century the ancient University of Paris taught that the motion of the earth round the sun was a convenient _but false_ hypothesis, while the newer American Universities of Harvard and Yale taught the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems of astronomy side by side as though they were equally tenable. Yet men could not keep their heads buried in the sand for ever, and when at last its full implications were accepted, the revolution of thought initiated by Galileo’s observations of January 7, 1610, proved to be the most catastrophic in the history of the race. The cataclysm was not confined to the realms of abstract thought; henceforth human existence itself was to appear in a new light, and human aims and aspirations would be judged from a different standpoint. This oft-told story has been told once again, in the hope that it may serve to explain some of the interest taken in astronomy to-day. The more mundane sciences prove their worth by adding to the amenities and pleasures of life, or by alleviating pain or distress, but it may well be asked what reward astronomy has to offer. Why does the astronomer devote arduous nights, and still more arduous days, to studying the structure, motions and changes of bodies so remote that they can have no conceivable influence on human life? In part at least the answer would seem to be that many have begun to suspect that the astronomy of to-day, like that of Galileo, may have something to say on the enthralling question of the relation of human life to the universe in which it is placed, and on the beginnings, meaning and destiny of the human race. Bede records how, some twelve centuries ago, human life was compared in poetic simile to the flight of a bird through a warm hall in which men sit feasting, while the winter storms rage without.