this befell me also. Then when I saw that some who appeared to be men of value held all this to be but toying and waste of time, I went elsewhere.
(Among the Astronomers.)
13. Then Impudence led me up some steps to what appeared a gallery. There I saw a crowd of men who were making ladders, and setting them up unto the sky; they then crawled up and caught at the stars, and spread over them strings, levels, rulers, weights and compasses; and they measured their courses. Then some, sitting down, wrote rules concerning such matters as to where, and when, and how stars must meet or diverge. And I wondered at the boldness of these people who dared thus to raise themselves, and to give orders to the stars; then, finding taste in this noble science, I also began strenuously to catch at the stars. But when I had but slightly busied myself with such endeavours, I clearly saw that the stars by no means danced in accordance with the fiddles[1] of these men. They indeed remarked this themselves, and named the "anomalitatem cœli" as the cause of the evil. They endeavoured to place the stars in order; now this way, now that. They even changed their places, tossing some downward toward the earth, while they raised others upward. Generally, they thus and by other means imagined "Hypotheses," but nothing verily seemed to avail.
- ↑ A proverbial expression in Bohemia.
