Coming to details, we find that Bruno shakes himself free from the tyranny of Aristotle,--a mighty audacity, to measure which we must remember that upon Aristotle’s arbitrary dicta the fathers and doctors of the Catholic Church had based their dogmas. Though a pagan, he had been for fifteen hundred years the logical pillar of Christendom, uncanonized, yet deserving canonization along with St. Thomas and St. Augustine. Bruno dared to attack the mighty despot in his very strongholds, the Sorbonne and Oxford, and, by so doing, helped to clear the road for subsequent explorers of philosophy and science. Equally courageous was his championship of the discoveries and theories of Copernicus. Bruno, we may safely say, was the first man who realized the full meaning of the Copernican system,--a meaning which even to-day the majority have not grasped. He saw that it was not merely a question as to whether the earth moves round the sun, or the sun moves round the earth; but that when Copernicus traced the courses of our solar system, and saw other and yet other systems beyond, he invalidated the strong presumption upon which dogmatic Christianity was reared. According to the old view, the earth was the centre of the universe, the especial gem of God’s creation; as a final mark of his favor, God created man to rule the earth, and from among men he designated a few--his “chosen people”--who should enjoy everlasting bliss in heaven. But it follows from Copernicus’s discoveries, that the earth is but one of a company of satellites which circle round the sun; that the sun itself is but one of innumerable other suns, each with its satellites; that there are probably countless inhabited orbs; that the scheme of salvation taught by the old theology is inadequate to the new conceptions we are bound to form of the majesty, justice, and omnipotence of the Supreme Ruler of an infinite universe. The God whom Bruno apprehended was not one who narrowed his interests to the concerns of a Syrian tribe, and of a sect of Christians on this little ball of earth, but one whose power is commensurate with infinitude, and who cherishes all creatures and all things in all worlds. Copernicus himself did not foresee the full significance of the discovery which dethroned the earth and man from their supposed preeminence in the universe; but Bruno caught its mighty import, and the labors of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, and Darwin have corroborated him.