Galilei, Galileo Dialogues on two world systems 1661, tr. Salusbury, Thomas

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347
spake not friendly, when you said you did not know that same
fallacy which you now confesse that you know very well.

SAGR. The very confession of knowing it may assure you
that I did not dissemble, when I said that I did not understand it;
for if I had had a mind, and would dissemble, who could hin­
der me from continuing in the same simulation, and denying still
that I understand the fallacy? I say therefore that I understood
not the same, at that time, but that I do now at this present ap­
prehend it, for that you have prompted my intellect, first by
telling me resolutely that it is null, and then by beginning to
question me so at large what thing that might be, whereby I
might come to know the station and retrogradation of the Pla­

nets; and because this is known by comparing them with the fix­
ed stars, in relation to which, they are seen to vary their mo­
tions, one while towards the West, and another towards the
East, and sometimes to abide immoveable; and because there
is not any thing above the Starry Sphere, immensely more remote
from us, and visible unto us, wherewith we may compare our
fixed stars, therefore we cannot discover in the fixed stars any
foot-steps of what appeareth to us in the Planets. This I believe
is the substance of that which you would force from me.

The station, di­
rection and retro­
gradation of the
Planets is known,
in relation to the
fixed stars.

SALV. It is so, with the addition moreover of your admi­

rable ingenuity; and if with half a word I did open your eyes,
you by the like have remembred me that it is not altogether im­
possible, but that sometime or other something observable may
be found amongst the fixed stars, by which it may be gathered
wherein the annual conversion resides, so as that they also no
lesse than the Planets and Sun it self, may appear in judgment to
bear witnesse of that motion, in favour of the Earth; for I do not
think that the stas are spread in a spherical superficies equally re­
mote from a common centre, but hold, that their distances from
us are so various, that some of them may be twice and thrice as
remote as others; so that if with the Telescope one should ob­
serve a very small star neer to one of the bigger, and which
therefore was very exceeding high, it might happen that some
sensible mutation might fall out between them, correspondent
to that of the superiour Planets. And so much shall serve to have
spoken at this time touching the stars placed in the Ecliptick.

Let us now come to the fixed stars, placed out of the Ecliptick,
and let us suppose a great circle erect upor [i. e. at right angles
to] the Plane of the ^{*} same; and let it, for example, be a cir­
cle that in the Starry Sphere answers to the Solstitial Colure,

and let us mark it C E H [in Fig. 8.] which shall happen to be
withal a Meridian, and in it we will take a star without the Eclip­
tick, which let be E. Now this star will indeed vary its elevati­