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Member 3. Air Corrected. With a Digression on Air.

But “assuming this,” let us grant their doctrine of the earth’s motion. If the earth moves, it is a planet and shines for those on the moon and for the other planetary inhabitants, just as the moon and they shine for us on earth. And shine it does, as Galileo, Kepler, and others prove.

Then, consequently, the rest of the planets are inhabited, as well as the moon. Kepler grants in his discussion with Galileo’s Starry Messenger “that there are inhabitants of Jupiter and Saturn,” and so on; and those several planets have their several moons around them, as the earth has hers, as Galileo has already demonstrated with his telescopes.

Four around Jupiter, two around Saturn—though Sitius the Florentine, Fortunio Liceti, and Giulio Cesare La Galla find fault with it. Yet Kepler, the emperor’s mathematician, confirms from his own experience that he saw as much with the same aid, and more around Mars and Venus. They hope to discover the rest, perhaps even among the fixed stars, as Bruno and Brutius have already asserted.

Then, I say, the earth and they are alike planets, alike inhabited, and alike moved around the sun, the common centre of the world. Perhaps those two green children who, according to William of Newburgh, fell from heaven in his time came from there; and so did that famous stone which fell from heaven in Aristotle’s time, in the third year of the eighty-fourth Olympiad, beside the streams of Capua, as recorded by Laertius and others; or the ancile, the shield in Numa’s time recorded by Festus.

We may likewise infer with Campanella and Bruno what Pythagoras, Aristarchus of Samos, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Melissus, Democritus, and Leucippus maintained in their respective ages: there are infinite worlds, infinite earths or systems “in infinite aether.” Eusebius gathers this from their doctrines, because there are infinite stars and planets like this one of ours. Some still do not hesitate to maintain and publicly defend it: “Full of hope, I look forward to wandering through innumerable worlds in eternity,” and so on. Nicholas Hill of London, Epicurean Philosophy.

For if the firmament is of such incomparable size as these Copernican giants would have it, “infinite, or approaching infinity,” so vast and full of innumerable stars, infinite in extent, one above another, some higher, some lower, some nearer, some farther off, so widely separated, and themselves so enormous—

So much so that, if the whole sphere of Saturn and everything contained within it, “the entire aggregate,” as Fromondus of Louvain argues in his treatise On the Immobility of the Earth, “were carried up among the stars, we could not see it except as a point, so immense is the distance between the earth and the fixed stars,” and so on. If our world is small by comparison, why may we not suppose a plurality of worlds? Why may those infinite stars visible in the firmament not be so many suns, each with its own fixed centre and its subordinate planets, just as the sun has his, always dancing around him?

Cardinal Cusanus, Walkarinus, Bruno, and some others have held this, and some still maintain it: “Minds nourished on Aristotelianism and accustomed to minute speculations may perhaps think otherwise,” and so on. Though they seem close to us, they are infinitely distant, and consequently there are infinite habitable worlds. What prevents it? Why should an infinite cause, such as God, not produce infinite effects, as Nicholas Hill argues in his Democritean Philosophy?

Kepler, I confess, will by no means admit Bruno’s infinite worlds, or that the fixed stars are so many suns with planets circling them. Yet that same Kepler, half in jest and half in earnest in his works on optics, his Lunar Geography, his Dream, and his Discussion with the Starry Messenger, seems partly to agree with this and partly to contradict it. He grants that the planets are inhabited; he is doubtful about the stars.

Tycho too, in his Astronomical Letters, is led by reflection on their vastness and magnitude to break into similar remarks. He will never believe that those enormous bodies were made for no other use than the one we perceive: to illuminate the earth, an imperceptible point in comparison with the whole.

But who is to dwell in these vast bodies, earths, worlds, “if they are inhabited? Rational creatures?” as Kepler asks. “Or have they souls to be saved? Or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they lords of the world? And how are all things made for man?” “It is difficult to untie this knot, because we have not yet explored everything that bears on it”: it is hard to determine. This alone he proves: that we are “in the foremost recess of the world,” in the best place, the best world, nearest the heart of the sun.

Tommaso Campanella, a Calabrian monk, agrees with this view of Kepler’s in book 2, chapter 4 of On the Sense of Things. He certainly supposes that they are inhabited, though he cannot say by what kind of creatures, and labours to prove it by every means; also that there are infinite worlds. He has written a Defence of Galileo and dedicates this doctrine of his to Cardinal Caetani.

5525.The shine of the earth does not by itself establish inhabitants on other worlds. Burton moves from the analogy between luminous bodies to a speculative conclusion. His long Kepler margin combines separate arguments rather than reproducing one continuous passage: comparison with Dissertatio confirms the moon, orbiting bodies, inhabitants and Tycho themes, but not the margin as a verbatim quotation.

5527.In the Dissertatio, Kepler entertains inhabitants of the moon and Jupiter; non tantum means “not only,” whereas Burton’s non tam means “not so much.” The later question about the use of Jupiter’s four companions argues from their supposed purpose, not from observed inhabitants. Burton combines excerpts and extends the statement to Saturn and other planets. His wording is preserved. The comparison uses the Latin text edited by Favaro; Burton’s folio references and immediate edition remain unverified.

5529.Galileo observed Jupiter’s four large moons. The two apparent companions of Saturn were unresolved parts of its rings, not two detected moons. In the opening of his Dissertatio, Kepler speculates about companions of Mars and Venus before receiving Galileo’s book and later hopes to discover them; he does not there report observing them. Burton’s claim of observation is preserved but not corroborated by that passage. Brutius is left unidentified. The margin is notable for Burton’s first-person claim to have seen Jovian satellites through an eight-foot telescope.

5531.Nubrigensis is William of Newburgh. History I.27, in Hamilton’s Latin edition (1856), I, pp. 73–75, says the children emerged from pits at Woolpit. They report coming from the land of Saint Martin and cannot explain how they arrived. This supplies no fall from heaven; Burton’s celestial speculation remains his own. Diogenes Laertius II.10–12 connects the Aegospotami stone with Anaxagoras, unlike Burton’s Aristotle, Capua and Olympiad details. The ancile is Numa’s legendary sacred shield; the Festus passage remains uncollated.

5534.Brunus is Giordano Bruno. Burton’s list compresses ancient positions on worlds that differ substantially and should not be accepted as a uniform doctrine. His abbreviated title for Eusebius is not securely resolved. Nicholas Hill’s wording and source title await direct collation; the Latin is translated afresh here.

5535.“Copernican giants” is Burton’s expansive, playful label. An indefinitely great universe and a strictly infinite one are not the same claim; the quoted Latin itself preserves the alternative. The sentence continues into the following aligned unit.

5536.Totum aggregatum means the whole collected system. Burton’s Latin has an awkward shift from the conditional evehatur to poterat and a delayed sed instar puncti; the translation gives its evident sense, invisibility except as a point. Fromondus’s precise text has not been independently collated.

5537.Cusanus is Nicholas of Cusa. Walkarinus is retained without a firm identification. The untranslated predicate in the fragment about Aristotelian minds is supplied minimally as “think.” Burton refers to Nicholas Hill’s philosophy first as Epicurean and then as Democritean; neither description is silently replaced.

5540.Perspectives are works on optics; Somnium means Dream. The margin dates publication to 1635; the Library of Congress copy is dated 1634. Burton’s date is retained, with his particular copy still unidentified. Kepler’s Dissertatio distinguishes his speculations about planetary inhabitants from the infinity of worlds attributed to Bruno; Burton’s “half in jest and half in earnest” matters to the tone.

5541.Burton paraphrases Tycho rather than providing a precise locator. “Insensible” here means too small to perceive, not lacking consciousness. Kepler’s discussion also mentions Tycho’s inference from the size of the celestial globes; Tycho’s letters themselves remain uncollated.

5543.The margin and body ask related but not identical questions. The body adds souls requiring salvation; the Latin margin concerns rank, purpose and humanity’s place in creation. Both are preserved independently. “Foremost recess” closely renders præcipuo mundi sinu; Burton supplies his own more expansive English explanation after it.

5545.Campanella’s De sensu rerum and Apologia pro Galileo are distinct works; the margin gives Frankfurt dates of 1620 and 1622. The claims about inhabited and infinite worlds and the precise dedication have not yet been checked against those editions. The modernized personal names do not resolve that bibliographical uncertainty.