‘Sir,’ I replied to him, ‘the majority of men, who only judge things by their senses, have allowed themselves to be persuaded by their eyes, and just as the man on board a ship which hugs the coastline believes that he is motionless and the shore is moving, so have men, revolving with the Earth about the sky, believed that it was the sky itself which revolved about them. Added to this there is the intolerable pride of human beings, who are convinced that nature was only made for them – as if it were likely that the Sun, a vast body four hundred and thirty-four times greater than the Earth, should only have been set ablaze in order to ripen their medlars and to make their cabbages grow heads!’

‘As for me, far from agreeing with their impudence, I believe that the planets are worlds surrounding the Sun and the fixed stars are also suns with planets surrounding them; that is to say, worlds which we cannot see from here, on account of their smallness, and because their light, being borrowed, cannot reach us. For how, in good faith, can one imagine these globes of such magnitude to be nothing but great desert countries, while ours, simply because we, a handful of vainglorious ruffians are crawling about on it, has been made to command all the others? What! Just because the Sun charts our days and years for us, does that mean to say it was only made to stop us banging our heads against the walls? No, no, if this visible god lights man’s way it is by accident, as the King’s torch accidentally gives light to the passing street-porter.’