Milton's friends, the Smectymnians, in answer to Bishop Hall's Humble Remonstrance (1641), "had cited the Copernican doctrine as an unquestionable instance of a supreme absurdity." Masson has some apposite remarks on the influence of the Ptolemaic system "upon the thinkings and imaginations of mankind everywhere on all subjects whatsoever till about two hundred years ago."] Fontenelle's book was an event.

It disclosed to the general public a new picture of the universe, to which men would have to accustom their imaginations.
We may perhaps best conceive all that this change meant by supposing what a difference it would make to us if it were suddenly discovered that the old system which Copernicus upset was true after all, and that we had to think ourselves back into a strictly limited universe of which the earth is the centre.

The loss of its privileged position by our own planet; its degradation, from a cosmic point of view, to insignificance; the necessity of admitting the probability that there may be many other inhabited worlds--all this had consequences ranging beyond the field of astronomy.

It was as if a man who dreamed that he was living in Paris or London should awake to discover that he was really in an obscure island in the Pacific Ocean, and that the Pacific Ocean was immeasurably vaster than he had imagined.

The Marquise, in the Plurality of Worlds, reacts to the startling illumination: "Voila l'univers si grand que je m'y perds, je ne sais plus ou je suis; je ne suis plus rien .-- La terre est si effroyablement petite!" Such a revolution in cosmic values could not fail to exert a penetrating influence on human thought.