"My friends, however, dissuaded me from such a course and
admonished me that I ought to publish my book, which had lain
concealed in my possession not only nine years, but already into
four times the ninth year. Not a few other distinguished and very
learned men asked me to do the same thing, and told me that I
ought not, on account of my anxiety, to delay any longer in
consecrating my work to the general service of mathematicians.

"But your holiness will perhaps not so much wonder that I have
dared to bring the results of my night labors to the light of
day, after having taken so much care in elaborating them, but is
waiting instead to hear how it entered my mind to imagine that
the earth moved, contrary to the accepted opinion of
mathematicians--nay, almost contrary to ordinary human
understanding. Therefore I will not conceal from your holiness
that what moved me to consider another way of reckoning the
motions of the heavenly bodies was nothing else than the fact
that the mathematicians do not agree with one another in their
investigations. In the first place, they are so uncertain about
the motions of the sun and moon that they cannot find out the
length of a full year. In the second place, they apply neither
the same laws of cause and effect, in determining the motions of
the sun and moon and of the five planets, nor the same proofs.
Some employ only concentric circles, others use eccentric and
epicyclic ones, with which, however, they do not fully attain the
desired end. They could not even discover nor compute the main
thing--namely, the form of the universe and the symmetry of its
parts. It was with them as if some should, from different places,
take hands, feet, head, and other parts of the body, which,
although very beautiful, were not drawn in their proper