_Astronomical Discoveries of Newton—Necessity of combined Exertion
to the Completion of great Discoveries—Sketch of the History of
Astronomy previous to the Time of Newton—Copernicus, 1473–1543—
Tycho Brahe, 1546–1601—Kepler, 1571–1631—Galileo, 1564–1642._
From the optical labours of Newton we now proceed to the history of his
astronomical discoveries—those transcendent deductions of human reason
by which he has secured to himself an immortal name, and vindicated
the intellectual dignity of his species. Pre-eminent as his triumphs
have been, it would be unjust to affirm that they were achieved by his
single arm. The torch of many a preceding age had thrown its light
into the strongholds of the material universe, and the grasp of many
a powerful hand had pulled down the most impregnable of its defences.
An alliance, indeed, of many kindred spirits had been long struggling
in this great cause, and Newton was but the leader of their mighty
phalanx,—the director of their combined genius,—the general who won the
victory, and therefore wears its laurels.
The history of science presents us with no example of an individual
mind throwing itself far in advance of its contemporaries. It is only
in the career of crime and ambition that reckless man takes the start
of his species, and, uncurbed by moral and religious restraint, erects
an unholy dynasty upon the ruins of ancient and venerable institutions.
The achievements of intellectual power, though often begun by one
mind and completed by another, have ever been the results of combined
exertions. Slow in their growth, they gradually approximate to a more
perfect condition:—the variety in the phenomena of nature call forth a
variety of intellectual gifts;—the powers of analysis and combination
are applied to the humbler labours of observation and experiment,
and in the ordeal of rival inquiry truth is finally purified from
error. How different is it with those systems which the imagination
rears,—those theories of wild import which are directed against the
consciences and hopes of man. The fatal upas-tree distils its poison
in the spring as well as the autumn of its growth, but the fruit which
sustains life must have its bud prepared before the approach of winter,
its blossom expanded in the spring, and its juices elaborated by the
light and heat of the summer and the autumnal sun.
In the century which preceded the birth of Newton the science of
astronomy advanced with the most rapid steps. Emerging from the
darkness of the middle ages, the human mind seemed to rejoice in its
new-born strength, and to apply itself with elastic vigour to unfold
the mechanism of the heavens. The labours of Hipparchus and Ptolemy
had indeed furnished many important epochs and supplied many valuable
data; but the cumbrous appendages of cycles and epicycles with which
they explained the stations and retrogradations of the planets, and the
vulgar prejudices which a false interpretation of Scripture had excited
against a belief in the motion of the earth, rendered it difficult even
for great minds to escape from the trammels of authority, and appeal to
the simplicity of nature.
The sovereign of Castile, the generous and noble-minded Alphonso,
had long before proscribed the rude expedients of his predecessors;
and when he declared that if the heavens were thus constituted,
he could have given the Deity good advice, he must not only have
felt the absurdity of the prevailing system, but must have obtained
some foresight of a more simple arrangement. But neither he nor the
astronomers whom he so liberally protected seem to have established a
better system, and it was left to Copernicus to enjoy the dignity of
being the restorer of astronomy.
This great man, a native of Thorn in Prussia, following his father’s
profession, began his career as a doctor of medicine, but an accidental
attendance on the mathematical lectures of Brudzevius excited a love
for astronomy, which became the leading passion of his life. Quitting
a profession uncongenial to such pursuits, he went to Bologna to
study astronomy under Dominic Maria; and after having enjoyed the
friendship and instruction of that able philosopher, he established
himself at Rome in the humble situation of a teacher of mathematics.
Here he made numerous astronomical observations which served him as
the basis of future researches; but an event soon occurred which,
though it interrupted for a while his important studies, placed him in
a situation for pursuing them with new zeal. The death of one of the
canons enabled his uncle, who was Bishop of Ermeland, to appoint him to
a canonry in the chapter of Frauenburg, where, in a house situated on
the brow of a mountain, he continued, in peaceful seclusion, to carry
on his astronomical observations. During his residence at Rome his
talents had been so well appreciated, that the Bishop of Fossombrona,
who presided over the council for reforming the calendar, solicited the
aid of Copernicus in this desirable undertaking. At first he entered
warmly into the views of the council, and charged himself with the
determination of the length of the year and of the month, and of the
other motions of the sun and moon that seemed to be required; but he
found the task too irksome, and probably felt that it would interfere
with those interesting discoveries which had already begun to dawn upon
his mind.
Copernicus is said to have commenced his inquiries by an historical
examination of the opinions of ancient authors on the system of the
universe; but it is more likely that he sought for the authority of
their great names to countenance his peculiar views, and that he was
more desirous to present his own theory as one that he had received,
rather than as one which he had invented. His mind had been long
imbued with the idea that simplicity and harmony should characterize
the arrangements of the planetary system, and, in the complication and
disorder which reigned in the hypothesis of Ptolemy, he saw insuperable
objections to its being regarded as a representation of nature. In the
opinions of the Egyptian sages, in those of Pythagoras, Philolaus,
Aristarchus, and Nicetas, he recognised his own earliest conviction
that the earth was not the centre of the universe; but he appears to
have considered it as still possible that our globe might perform some
function in the system more important than that of the other planets;
and his attention was much occupied with the speculation of Martianus
Capella, who placed the sun between Mars and the moon, and made
Mercury and Venus revolve round him as a centre; and with the system
of Apollonius Pergæus, who made all the planets revolve round the sun,
while the sun and moon were carried round the earth in the centre of
the universe. The examination, however, of these hypotheses gradually
dispelled the difficulties with which the subject was beset; and after
the labours of more than thirty years, he was permitted to see the
true system of the heavens. The sun he considered as immoveable in
the centre of the system, while the earth revolved between the orbits
of Venus and Mars, and produced by its rotation about its axis all
the diurnal phenomena of the celestial sphere. The precession of the
equinoxes was thus referred to a slight motion of the earth’s axis,
and the stations and retrogradations of the planets were the necessary
consequence of their own motions combined with that of the earth about
the sun. These remarkable views were supported by numerous astronomical
observations; and in 1530 Copernicus brought to a close his immortal
work on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies.
But while we admire the genius which triumphed over so many
difficulties, we cannot fail to commend the extraordinary prudence
with which he ushered his new system into the world. Aware of the
prejudices, and even of the hostility with which such a system would
be received, he resolved neither to startle the one nor provoke the
other. He allowed his opinions to circulate in the slow current of
personal communication. The points of opposition which they presented
to established doctrines were gradually worn down, and they insinuated
themselves into reception among the ecclesiastical circles by the very
reluctance of their author to bring them into notice. In the year
1534, Cardinal Schonberg, Bishop of Capua, and Gyse, Bishop of Culm,
exerted all their influence to induce Copernicus to lay his system
before the world; but he resisted their solicitations; and it was not
till 1539 that an accidental circumstance contributed to alter his
resolution. George Rheticus, professor of mathematics at Wirtemberg,
having heard of the labours of Copernicus, resigned his chair, and
repaired to Frauenberg to make himself master of his discoveries.
This zealous disciple prevailed upon his master to permit the
publication of his system; and they seem to have arranged a plan for
giving it to the world without alarming the vigilance of the church,
or startling the prejudices of individuals. Under the disguise of a
student of mathematics, Rheticus published in 1540 an account of the
manuscript volume of Copernicus. This pamphlet was received without
any disapprobation, and its author was encouraged to reprint it at
Basle, in 1541, with his own name. The success of these publications,
and the flattering manner in which the new astronomy was received by
several able writers, induced Copernicus to place his MSS. in the hands
of Rheticus. It was accordingly printed at the expense of Cardinal
Schonberg, and appeared at Nuremberg in 1543. Its illustrious author,
however, did not live to peruse it. A complete copy was handed to him
in his last moments, and he saw and touched it a few hours before his
death. This great work was dedicated to the Holy Pontiff, in order, as
Copernicus himself says, that the authority of the head of the church
might silence the calumnies of individuals who had attacked his views
by arguments drawn from religion. Thus introduced, the Copernican
system met with no ecclesiastical opposition, and gradually made its
way in spite of the ignorance and prejudices of the age.
Among the astronomers who provided the materials of the Newtonian
philosophy the name of Tycho Brahe merits a conspicuous place.
Descended from an ancient Swedish family, he was born at Knudstorp, in
Norway, in 1546, three years after the death of Copernicus. The great
eclipse of the sun which happened on the 26th August, 1560, while he
was at the University of Copenhagen, attracted his notice: and when
he found that all its phenomena had been accurately predicted, he was
seized with the most irresistible passion to acquire the knowledge of
a science so infallible in its results. Destined for the profession
of the law, his friends discouraged the pursuit which now engrossed
his thoughts; and such were the reproaches and even persecutions to
which he was exposed, that he quitted his country with the design of
travelling through Germany. At the very commencement of his journey,
however, an event occurred in which the impetuosity of his temper had
nearly cost him his life. At a wedding-feast in Rostock, a questionable
point in geometry involved him in a dispute with a Danish nobleman of
the same temperament with himself; and the two mathematicians resolved
to settle the difference by the sword. Tycho, however, seems to have
been second in the conflict, for he lost the greater part of his
nose, and was obliged to supply its place by a substitute of gold and
silver, which a cement of glue attached to his face. During his stay at
Augsburg he inspired the burgomaster of the city, Peter Hainzell, with
a love of astronomy. This public-spirited citizen erected an excellent
observatory at his own expense, and here Tycho began that distinguished
career which has placed him in the first rank of practical astronomers.
Upon his return to Copenhagen in 1570, he was received with every mark
of respect. The king invited him to court, and persons of all ranks
harassed him with their attentions. At Herritzvold, near his native
place, the house of his maternal uncle afforded him a retreat from the
gayeties of the capital, and he was there offered every accommodation
for the prosecution of his astronomical studies. Here, however, the
passion of love and the pursuits of alchymy distracted his thoughts;
but though the peasant girl of whom he was enamoured was of easier
attainment than the philosopher’s stone, the marriage produced an open
quarrel with his relations, which it required the interference of
the king to allay. In the tranquillity of domestic happiness, Tycho
resumed his study of the heavens, and in 1572 he enjoyed the singular
good fortune of observing, through all its variations, the new star
in Cassiopeia, which appeared with such extraordinary splendour as
to be visible in the daytime, and which gradually disappeared in the
following year.
Dissatisfied with his residence in Denmark, Tycho resolved to settle in
some distant country; and having gone as far as Venice in search of a
suitable residence, he at last fixed upon Basle, in Switzerland. The
King of Denmark, however, had learned his intention from the Prince
of Hesse; and when Tycho returned to Copenhagen to remove his family
and his instruments, his sovereign announced to him his resolution
to detain him in his kingdom. He presented him with the canonry of
Roschild, with an income of 2000 crowns per annum. To this he added
a pension of 1000 crowns; and he promised to give him the island of
Huen, with a complete observatory erected under his own eye. This
generous offer was instantly accepted. The celebrated observatory of
Uraniburg was established at the expense of about 20,000_l._; and in
this magnificent retreat Tycho continued for twenty-one years to enrich
astronomy with the most valuable observations. Admiring disciples
crowded to this sanctuary of the sciences to acquire the knowledge of
the heavens; and kings[34] and princes felt themselves honoured by
becoming the guests of the great astronomer of the age.
One of the principal discoveries of Tycho was that of the inequality
of the moon’s motion, called the variation. He detected, also, the
annual equation which affects the place of her apogee and nodes, and he
determined the greatest and the least inclination of the lunar orbit.
His observations on the planets were numerous and precise, and have
formed the data of the present generalizations in astronomy. Though
thus skilful in the observation of phenomena, his mind was but little
suited to investigate their cause, and it was probably owing to this
defect that he rejected the system of Copernicus. The vanity of giving
his own name to another system was not likely to actuate a mind such as
his, and it was more probable that he was led to adopt the immobility
of the earth, and to make the sun, with all his attendant planets,
circulate round it, from the great difficulty which still presented
itself by comparing the apparent diameter of the stars with the annual
parallax of the earth’s orbit.
The death of Frederick in 1588 proved a severe calamity to Tycho, and
to the science which he cultivated. During the first years of the
minority of Christian IV. the regency continued the royal patronage
to the observatory of Uraniburg; and in 1592 the young king paid a
visit of some days to Tycho, and left him a gold chain in token of his
favour. The astronomer, however, had made himself enemies at court, and
the envy of his high reputation had probably added fresh malignity to
the irritation of personal feelings. Under the ministry of Wolchendorf,
a name for ever odious to science, Tycho’s pension was stopped;—he was
in 1597 deprived of the canonry of Roschild, and was thus forced, with
his wife and children, to seek an asylum in a foreign land. His friend,
Henry Rantzau, of Wansbeck, under whose roof he found a hospitable
shelter, was fortunately acquainted with the emperor Rodolph II., who,
to his love of science, added a passion for alchymy and astrology.
The reputation of Tycho having already reached the imperial ear, the
recommendation of Rantzau was scarcely necessary to ensure him his
warmest friendship. Invited by the emperor, he repaired in 1599 to
Prague, where he met with the kindest reception. A pension of three
thousand crowns was immediately settled upon him, and a commodious
observatory erected for his use in the vicinity of that city. Here
the exiled astronomer renewed with delight his interrupted labours,
and the gratitude which he cherished for the royal favour increased
the satisfaction which he felt in having so unexpectedly found a
resting-place for approaching age. These prospects of better days were
enhanced by the good fortune of receiving two such men as Kepler and
Longomontanus for his pupils; but the fallacy of human anticipation was
here, as in so many other cases, strikingly displayed. Tycho was not
aware of the inroads which both his labours and his disappointments
had made upon his constitution. Though surrounded with affectionate
friends and admiring disciples, he was still an exile in a foreign
land. Though his country had been base in its ingratitude, it was yet
the land which he loved,—the scene of his earliest affection,—the
theatre of his scientific glory. These feelings continually preyed upon
his mind, and his unsettled spirit was ever hovering among his native
mountains. In this condition he was attacked with a disease of the most
painful kind, and though the paroxysms of its agonies had lengthened
intermissions, yet he saw that death was approaching. He implored his
pupils to persevere in their scientific labours. He conversed with
Kepler on some of the profoundest points of astronomy, and with these
secular occupations he mingled frequent acts of piety and devotion. In
this happy condition he expired without pain at the age of fifty-five,
the unquestionable victim of the councils of Christian IV.
Notwithstanding the accessions which astronomy had received from the
labours of Copernicus and Tycho, no progress was yet made in developing
the general laws of the system, and scarcely an idea had been formed
of the power by which the planets were retained in their orbits. The
labours of assiduous observers had supplied the materials for this
purpose, and Kepler arose to lay the foundations of physical astronomy.
John Kepler was born at Wiel, in Wirtemberg, in 1571. He was educated
for the church, and discharged even some of the clerical functions;
but his devotion to science withdrew him from the study of theology.
Having received mathematical instruction from the celebrated Mæstlinus,
he had made such progress in the science, that he was invited in 1594
to fill the mathematical chair of Gratz in Styria. Endowed with a
fertile imagination, his mind was ever intent upon subtle and ingenious
speculations. In the year 1596 he published his peculiar views in
a work on the Harmonies and Analogies of Nature. In this singular
production, he attempts to solve what he calls the great cosmographical
mystery of the admirable proportion of the planetary orbits; and by
means of the six regular geometrical solids,[35] he endeavours to
assign a reason why there are six planets, and why the dimensions of
their orbits and the time of their periodical revolutions were such as
Copernicus had found them. If a cube, for example, were inserted in a
sphere, of which Saturn’s orbit was one of the great circles, it would,
he supposed, touch by its six planes the lesser sphere of Jupiter;
and, in like manner, he proposes to determine, by the aid of the other
geometrical solids, the magnitude of the spheres of the other planets.
A copy of this work was presented by its author to Tycho Brahe, who had
been too long versed in the severe realities of observation to attach
any value to such wild theories. He advised his young friend “first to
lay a solid foundation for his views by actual observation, and then,
by ascending from these, to strive to reach the causes of things;”
and there is reason to think that, by the aid of the whole Baconian
philosophy, thus compressed by anticipation into a single sentence, he
abandoned for a while his visionary inquiries.
In the year 1598 Kepler suffered persecution for his religious
principles, and was compelled to quit Gratz; but though he was recalled
by the States of Styria, he felt his situation insecure, and accepted
of a pressing invitation from Tycho to settle at Prague, and assist
him in his calculations. Having arrived in Bohemia in 1600, he was
introduced by his friends to the Emperor Rodolph, from whom he ever
afterward received the kindest attention. On the death of Tycho in
1601, he was appointed mathematician to the emperor,—a situation in
which he was continued during the successive reigns of Matthias and
Ferdinand; but what was of more importance to science, he was put in
possession of the valuable collection of Tycho’s observations. These
observations were remarkably numerous; and as the orbit of Mars was
more oval than that of any of the other planets, they were peculiarly
suitable for determining its real form. The notions of harmony and
symmetry in the construction of the solar system, which had filled
the mind of Kepler, necessarily led him to believe that the planets
revolved with a uniform motion in circular orbits. So firm, indeed,
was this conviction, that he made numerous attempts to represent the
observations of Tycho by this hypothesis. The deviations were too
great to be ascribed to errors of observation; and in trying various
other curves, he was led to the discovery that Mars revolved round
the sun in an elliptical orbit, in one of the foci of which the sun
itself was placed. The same observations enabled him to determine the
dimensions of the planet’s orbit, and by comparing together the times
in which Mars passed over different portions of its orbit, he found
that they were to one another as the areas described by the lines
drawn from the centre of the planet to the centre of the sun, or, in
more technical terms, that the radius vector describes equal areas
in equal times. These two remarkable discoveries, the first that were
ever made in physical astronomy, were extended to all the other planets
of the system, and were communicated to the world in 1609, in his
“Commentaries on the Motions of the Planet Mars, as deduced from the
observations of Tycho Brahe.”
Although our author was conducted to these great laws by the patient
examination of well-established facts, his imagination was ever
hurrying him among the wilds of conjecture. Convinced that the mean
distances of the planets from the sun bore to one another some
mysterious relation, he not only compared them with the regular
geometrical solids, but also with the intervals of musical tones; an
idea which the ancient Pythagoreans had suggested, and which had been
adopted by Archimedes himself. All these comparisons were fruitless;
and Kepler was about to abandon an inquiry of about seventeen years’
duration, when, on the 8th March, 1618, he conceived the idea of
comparing the powers of the different members which express the
planetary distances, in place of the numbers themselves. He compared
the squares and the cubes of the distances with the same powers of the
periodic times; nay, he tried even the squares of the times with the
cubes of the distances; but his hurry and impatience led him into an
error of calculation, and he rejected this law as having no existence
in nature! On the 15th May, his mind again reverted to the same
notion, and upon making the calculations anew, and free from error, he
discovered the great law, that the squares of the periodic times of any
two planets are to one another as the cubes of their distances from the
sun. Enchanted with this unexpected result, he could scarcely trust his
calculations; and, to use his own language, he at first believed that
he was dreaming, and had taken for granted the very truth of which he
was in search. This brilliant discovery was published in 1619, in his
“Harmony of the World;” a work dedicated to James VI. of Scotland. Thus
were established what have been called the three laws of Kepler,—the
motion of the planets in elliptical orbits,—the proportionality between
the areas described and their times of description,—and the relations
between the squares of the periodic times and the cubes of the
distances.
The relation of the movements of the planets to the sun, as the general
centre of all their orbits, could not fail to suggest to Kepler that
some power resided in that luminary by which these various motions
were produced; and he went so far as to conjecture that this power
diminishes as the square of the distance of the body on which it was
exerted; but he immediately rejects this law, and prefers that of
the simple distances. In his work on Mars, he speaks of gravity as a
mutual and corporeal affection between similar bodies. He maintained
that the tides were occasioned by the moon’s attraction, and that the
irregularities of the lunar motions, as detected by Tycho, were owing
to the joint actions of the sun and the earth; but the relation between
gravity, as exhibited on the earth’s surface, and as conducting the
planets in their orbits, required more patience of thought than he
could command, and was accordingly left for the exercise of higher
powers.
The misery in which Kepler lived forms a painful contrast with the
services which he performed to science. The pension on which he
subsisted was always in arrears, and though the three emperors whose
reigns he adorned directed their ministers to be more punctual in its
payment, the disobedience of their commands was a source of continued
vexation to Kepler. When he retired to Sagan, in Silesia, to spend
in retirement the remainder of his days, his pecuniary difficulties
became still more harassing. Necessity at last compelled him to apply
personally for the arrears which were due; and he accordingly set out
in 1630 for Ratisbon; but in consequence of the great fatigue which so
long a journey on horseback produced, he was seized with a fever, which
carried him off on the 30th November, 1630, in the 59th year of his age.
While Kepler was thus laying the foundation of physical astronomy,
Galileo was busily employed in extending the boundaries of the solar
system. This distinguished philosopher was born at Pisa in 1564.
He was the son of a Florentine nobleman, and was educated for the
medical profession; but a passion for geometry took possession of his
mind, and called forth all his powers. Without the aid of a master,
he studied the writings of Euclid and of Archimedes; and such were
his acquirements, that he was appointed by the Grand-duke of Tuscany
to the mathematical chair of Pisa in the twenty-fifth year of his
age. His opposition to the Aristotelian philosophy gained him many
enemies, and at the end of three years he quitted Pisa, and accepted
of an invitation to the professorship of mathematics at Padua. Here
he continued for eighteen years adorning the university by his name,
and diffusing around him a taste for the physical sciences. With
the exception of some contrivances of inferior importance, Galileo
had distinguished himself by no discovery till he had reached the
forty-fifth year of his age. In the year 1609, the same year in which
Kepler published his celebrated commentary on Mars, Galileo paid a
visit to Venice, where he heard, in the course of conversation, that a
Dutchman of the name of Jansens had constructed and presented to Prince
Maurice an instrument through which he saw distant objects magnified
and rendered more distinct, as if they had been brought nearer to the
observer. This report was credited by some and disbelieved by others;
but, in the course of a few days, Galileo received a letter from James
Badovere at Paris, which placed beyond a doubt the existence of such
an instrument. The idea instantly filled his mind as one of the utmost
importance to science; and so thoroughly was he acquainted with the
properties of lenses, that he not only discovered the principle of its
construction, but was able to complete a telescope for his own use.
Into one end of a leaden tube he fitted a spectacle-glass plane on one
side and convex on the other, and in the other end he placed another
spectacle-glass concave on one side and plane on the other. He then
applied his eye to the concave glass, and saw objects “pretty large
and pretty near him.” They appeared three times nearer, and nine times
larger in surface, than to the naked eye. He soon after made another,
which represented objects above sixty times larger; and, sparing
neither labour nor expense, he finally constructed an instrument so
excellent, as “to show things almost a thousand times larger, and above
thirty times nearer to the naked eye.”
There is, perhaps, no invention that science has presented to man so
extraordinary in its nature, and so boundless in its influence, as
that of the telescope. To the uninstructed mind, the power of seeing
an object a thousand miles distant, as large and nearly as distinct
as if it were brought within a mile of the observer, must seem almost
miraculous; and to the philosopher, even, who thoroughly comprehends
the principles upon which it acts, it must ever appear one of the most
elegant applications of science. To have been the first astronomer in
whose hands such a gift was placed was a preference to which Galileo
owed much of his future reputation.
No sooner had he completed his telescope than he applied it to the
heavens, and on the 7th January, 1618, the first day of its use, he
saw round Jupiter three bright little stars lying in a line parallel
to the ecliptic, two to the east, and one to the west of the planet.
Regarding them as ordinary stars, he never thought of estimating their
distances. On the following day, when he accidentally directed his
telescope to Jupiter, he was surprised to see the three stars to the
west of the planet. To produce this effect it was requisite that the
motion of Jupiter should be direct, though, according to calculation,
it was actually retrograde. In this dilemma he waited with impatience
for the evening of the 9th, but unfortunately the sky was covered with
clouds. On the 10th he saw only two stars to the east—a circumstance
which he was no longer able to explain by the motion of Jupiter. He was
therefore compelled to ascribe the change to the stars themselves; and
upon repeating his observations on the 11th, he no longer doubted that
he had discovered three planets revolving round Jupiter. On the 13th
January he for the first time saw the fourth satellite.[36]
This discovery, though of the utmost importance in itself, derived an
additional value from the light which it threw on the true system of
the universe. While the earth was the only planet enlightened by a
moon, it might naturally be supposed that it alone was habitable, and
was therefore entitled to the pre-eminence of occupying the centre of
the system; but the discovery of four moons round a much larger planet
deprived this argument of its force, and created a new analogy between
the earth and the other planets. When Kepler received the “Sidereal
Messenger,” the work in which Galileo announced his discovery in 1610,
he perused it with the deepest interest; and while it confirmed and
extended his substantial discoveries, it dispelled at the same time
some of those harmonic dreams which still hovered among his thoughts.
In the “Dissertation” which he published on the discovery of Galileo,
he expresses his hope that satellites will be discovered round Saturn
and Mars,—he conjectures that Jupiter has a motion of rotation about
his axis,—and states his surprise, that, after what had been written on
the subject of telescopes by Baptista Porta, they had not been earlier
introduced into observatories.
In continuing his observations, Galileo applied his telescope to
Venus, and in 1610 he discovered the phases of that planet, which
exhibited to him the various forms of the waxing and the waning moon.
This fact established beyond a doubt that the planet revolved round
the sun, and thus gave an additional blow to the Ptolemaic system. In
his observations on the sun, Galileo discovered his spots, and deduced
from them the rotation of the central luminary. He observed that
the body of Saturn had handles attached to it; but he was unable to
detect the form of its ring, or render visible its minute satellites.
On the surface of the moon he discovered her mountains and valleys,
and determined the curious fact of her libration, in virtue of which
parts of the margin of her disk occasionally appear and disappear. In
the Milky Way he descried numerous minute stars which the unassisted
eye was unable to perceive; and as the largest fixed stars, in place
of being magnified by the telescope, became actually minute brilliant
points, he inferred their immense distance as rendered necessary by the
Copernican hypothesis. All his discoveries, indeed, furnished fresh
arguments in favour of the new system; and the order of the planets and
their relation to a central sun may now be considered as established by
incontrovertible evidence.
While Galileo was occupied with these noble pursuits at Pisa, to which
he had been recalled in 1611, his generous patron, Cosmo II. Grand-duke
of Tuscany, invited him to Florence, that he might pursue with
uninterrupted leisure his astronomical observations, and carry on his
correspondence with the German astronomers. His fame had now resounded
through all Europe;—the strongholds of prejudice and ignorance
were unbarred;—and the most obstinate adherents of ancient systems
acknowledged the meridian power of the day-star of science. Galileo
was ambitious of propagating the great truths which he contributed so
powerfully to establish. He never doubted that they would received
with gratitude by all,—by the philosopher as the consummation of
the greatest efforts of human genius,—and by the Christian as the
most transcendent displays of Almighty power. But he had mistaken
the disposition of his species, and the character of the age. That
same system of the heavens which had been discovered by the humble
ecclesiastic of Frauenberg, which had been patronised by the kindness
of a bishop, and published at the expense of a cardinal, and which
the pope himself had sanctioned by the warmest reception, was, after
the lapse of a hundred years, doomed to the most violent opposition,
as subversive of the doctrines of the Christian faith. On no former
occasion has the human mind exhibited such a fatal relapse into
intolerance. The age itself had improved in liberality;—the persecuted
doctrines themselves had become more deserving of reception;—the light
of the Reformed faith had driven the Catholics from some of their most
obnoxious positions;—and yet, under all these circumstances, the church
of Rome unfurled her banner of persecution against the pride of Italy,
against the ornament of his species, and against truths immutable and
eternal.
In consequence of complaints laid before the Holy Inquisition, Galileo
was summoned to appear at Rome in 1615, to answer for the heretical
opinions which he had promulgated. He was charged with “maintaining
as true the false doctrine held by many, that the sun was immoveable
in the centre of the world, and that the earth revolved with a
diurnal motion;—with having certain disciples to whom he taught the
same doctrine;—with keeping up a correspondence on the subject with
several German mathematicians;—with having published letters on the
solar spots, in which he explained the same doctrine as true;—and
with having glossed over with a false interpretation the passages of
Scripture which were urged against it.” The consideration of these
charges came before a meeting of the Inquisition, which assembled on
the 25th February, 1616; and the court, declaring their disposition to
deal gently with the prisoner, pronounced the following decree:—“That
Cardinal Bellarmine should enjoin Galileo to renounce entirely the
above-recited false opinions; that, on his refusal to do so, he
should be commanded by the commissary of the Inquisition to abandon
the said doctrine, and to cease to teach and defend it; and that, if
he did not obey this command, he should be thrown into prison.” On
the 26th of February Galileo appeared before Cardinal Bellarmine,
and, after receiving from him a gentle admonition, he was commanded
by the commissary, in the presence of a notary and witnesses, to
desist altogether from his erroneous opinions; and it was declared
to be unlawful for him in future to teach them in any way whatever,
either orally or in his writings. To these commands Galileo promised
obedience, and was dismissed from the Inquisition.
The mildness of this sentence was no doubt partly owing to the
influence of the Grand-duke of Tuscany, and other persons of rank and
influence at the papal court, who took a deep interest in the issue
of the trial. Dreading, however, that so slight a punishment might
not have the effect of putting down the obnoxious doctrines, the
Inquisition issued a decree denouncing the new opinions as false and
contrary to the sacred writings, and prohibiting the sale of every book
in which they should be maintained.
Thus liberated from his persecutors, Galileo returned to Florence,
where he pursued his studies with his wonted diligence and ardour. The
recantation of his astronomical opinions was so formal and unreserved,
that ordinary prudence, if not a sense of personal honour, should
have restrained him from unnecessarily bringing them before the
world. No anathema was pronounced against his scientific discoveries;
no interdict was laid upon the free exercise of his genius. He was
prohibited merely from teaching a doctrine which the church of Rome
considered to be injurious to its faith. We might have expected,
therefore, that a philosopher so conspicuous in the eyes of the world
would have respected the prejudices, however base, of an institution
whose decrees formed part of the law of the land, and which possessed
the power of life and death within the limits of its jurisdiction.
Galileo, however, thought otherwise. A sense of degradation[37] seems
to have urged him to retaliate, and before six years had elapsed, he
began to compose his “Cosmical System, or Dialogues on the two greatest
Systems of the World, the Ptolemean and the Copernican,” the concealed
object of which is to establish the opinions which he had promised
to abandon. In this work the subject is discussed by three speakers,
Sagredo, Salviatus, and Simplicius, a peripatetic philosopher, who
defends the system of Ptolemy with much skill against the overwhelming
arguments of the rival disputants. Galileo hoped to escape notice by
this indirect mode of propagating the new system, and he obtained
permission to publish his work, which appeared at Florence in 1632.
The Inquisition did not, as might have been expected, immediately
summon Galileo to their presence. Nearly a year elapsed before they
gave any indication of their design; and, according to their own
statement, they did not even take the subject under consideration till
they saw that the obnoxious tenets were every day gaining ground, in
consequence of the publication of the Dialogues. They then submitted
the work to a careful examination, and having found it to be a direct
violation of the injunction which had been formerly intimated to
its author, they again cited him before their tribunal in 1633. The
venerable sage, now in his seventieth year, was thus compelled to
repair to Rome, and when he arrived he was committed to the apartments
of the Fiscal of the Inquisition. The unchangeable friendship, however,
of the Grand-duke of Tuscany obtained a remission of this severity, and
Galileo was allowed to reside at the house of the Tuscan ambassador
during the two months which the trial occupied. When brought before the
Inquisition, and examined upon oath, he acknowledged that the Dialogues
were written by himself, and that he obtained permission to publish
them without notifying to the person who gave it that he had been
prohibited from holding, defending, or teaching the heretical opinions.
He confessed also that the Dialogues were composed in such a manner,
that the arguments in favour of the Copernican system, though given as
partly false, were yet managed in such a manner that they were more
likely to confirm than overturn its doctrines; but that this error,
which was not intentional, arose from the natural desire of making an
ingenious defence of false propositions, and of opinions that had the
semblance of probability.
After receiving these confessions and excuses, the Inquisition allowed
Galileo a proper time for giving in his defence; but this seems to
have consisted solely in bringing forward the certificate of Cardinal
Bellarmine already mentioned, which made no allusion to the promise
under which Galileo had come never to defend, nor teach in any way
whatever, the Copernican doctrines. The court held this defence to be
an aggravation of the crime rather than an excuse for it, and proceeded
to pronounce a sentence which will be ever memorable in the history of
the human mind.
Invoking the name of our Saviour, they declare, that Galileo had made
himself liable to the suspicion of heresy, by believing the doctrine,
contrary to Scripture, that the sun was the centre of the earth’s
orbit, and did not move from east to west; and by defending as probable
the opinion that the earth moved, and was not the centre of the world;
and that he had thus incurred all the censures and penalties which were
enacted by the church against such offences;—but that he should be
absolved from these penalties, provided he sincerely abjured and cursed
all the errors and heresies contained in the formula of the church,
which should be submitted to him. That so grave and pernicious a crime
should not pass altogether unpunished, that he might become more
cautious in future, and might be an example to others to abstain from
such offences, they decreed that his Dialogues should be prohibited
by a formal edict,—that he should be condemned to the prison of the
Inquisition during pleasure,—and that, during the three following
years, he should recite once a week the seven penitential psalms.
This sentence was subscribed by seven cardinals; and on the 22d
June, 1633, Galileo signed an abjuration humiliating to himself and
degrading to philosophy. At the age of seventy, on his bended knees,
and with his right hand resting on the Holy Evangelists, did this
patriarch of science avow his present and his past belief in all
the dogmas of the Romish Church, abandon as false and heretical the
doctrine of the earth’s motion and of the sun’s immobility, and pledge
himself to denounce to the Inquisition any other person who was even
suspected of heresy. He abjured, cursed, and detested those eternal
and immutable truths which the Almighty had permitted him to be the
first to establish. What a mortifying picture of moral depravity and
intellectual weakness! If the unholy zeal of the assembly of cardinals
has been branded with infamy, what must we think of the venerable
sage whose gray hairs were entwined with the chaplet of immortality,
quailing under the fear of man, and sacrificing the convictions of his
conscience and the deductions of his reason at the altar of a base
superstition? Had Galileo but added the courage of the martyr to the
wisdom of the sage,—had he carried the glance of his indignant eye
round the circle of his judges,—had he lifted his hands to heaven, and
called the living God to witness the truth and immutability of his
opinions, the bigotry of his enemies would have been disarmed, and
science would have enjoyed a memorable triumph.
The great truths of the Copernican system, instead of being considered
as heretical, had been actually adopted by many pious members of the
Catholic church, and even some of its dignitaries did not scruple
to defend it openly. Previous to the first persecution of Galileo
in 1615, a Neapolitan nobleman, Vincenzio Caraffa, a person equally
distinguished by his piety and birth, had solicited Paul Anthony
Foscarinus, a learned Carmelite monk, to illustrate and defend the
new system of the universe. With this request the ecclesiastic
speedily complied; and in the pamphlet which he completed on the 6th
January, 1615, he defends the Copernican system with much boldness and
ingenuity; he reconciles the various passages of Scripture with the new
doctrine, and he expresses the hope that such an attempt, now made for
the first time, will prove agreeable to philosophers, but particularly
to those very learned men, Galileo Galilei, John Kepler, and all the
members of the Lyncean Academy, who, he believes, entertain the same
opinion. This remarkable production, written from the convent of the
Carmelites at Naples, is dedicated to the very Reverend Sebastian
Fantoni, general of the order of Carmelites, and was published at
Florence, with the sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities, in 1630;
three years before the second persecution of Galileo.
It would be interesting to know the state of public feeling in Italy
when Galileo was doomed to the prisons of the Inquisition. No appeal
seems to have been made against so cruel a sentence; and neither
in remonstrance nor in derision does an individual voice seem to
have been raised. The master spirits of the age looked with sullen
indifference on the persecution of exalted genius; and Galileo lay in
chains, deserted and unpitied. This unrebuked triumph of his enemies
was perhaps favourable to the object of their vengeance. Resistance
might have heightened the rigour of a sentence, which submission seems
to have alleviated. The interference of some eminent individuals of
Rome, among whom we have no doubt that the Grand-duke of Tuscany was
the most influential, induced Pope Urban VIII., not only to shorten
the period, but to soften the rigour of Galileo’s imprisonment. From
the dungeon of the Inquisition, where he had remained only four days,
he was transported to the ambassador’s palace in the Garden de Medici
at Rome; and when his health had begun to suffer, he was permitted
to leave the metropolis; and would have been allowed to return to
Florence, but as the plague raged in that city, he was sent, in July,
1633, to the archiepiscopal palace of Sienna, the residence of the
Archbishop Piccolimini, where he carried on and completed his valuable
investigations respecting the resistance of solids. Here he continued
five months, when, in consequence of the disappearance of the plague at
Florence, he was allowed to retire to his villa at Bellosguardo, and
afterward to that of Arcetri in the vicinity of Florence.
Though Galileo was now, to a certain degree, liberated from the power
of man, yet the afflicting dispensations of Providence began to fall
thickly around him. No sooner had he returned to Arcetri, than his
favourite daughter, Maria, was seized with a dangerous illness, which
soon terminated in her death. He was himself attacked with hernia,
palpitation of the heart, loss of appetite, and the most oppressive
melancholy; and though he solicited permission to repair to Florence
for medical assistance, yet this deed of mercy was denied him. In 1638,
however, the pope permitted him to pay a visit to Florence, and his
friend, Father Castelli, was allowed to visit him in the company of an
officer of the Inquisition. But this indulgence was soon withdrawn, and
at the end of a few months he was remanded to Arcetri. The sight of his
right eye had begun to fail in 1636, from an opacity of the cornea. In
1637 his left eye was attacked with the same complaint; so that in a
few months he was affected with total and incurable blindness. Before
this calamity had supervened, he had noticed the curious phenomenon of
the moon’s libration, in consequence of which, parts of her visible
disk that are exposed to view at one time are withdrawn at another. He
succeeded in explaining two of the causes of this curious phenomenon,
viz. the different distances of the observer from the line joining the
centre of the earth and the moon, which produces the diurnal libration,
and the unequal motion of the moon in her orbit, which produces the
libration in longitude. It was left, however, to Hevelius to discover
the libration in latitude, which arises from the inclination of her
axis being a little less than a right angle to the ecliptic; and to
Lagrange to discover the spheroidal libration, or that which arises
from the action of the earth upon the lunar spheroid.
The sorrows with which Galileo was now beset, seemed to have disarmed
the severity of the Inquisition. He was freely permitted to enjoy the
society of his friends, who now thronged around him to express their
respect and their sympathy. The Grand-duke of Tuscany was his frequent
visiter, and Gassendi, Deodati, and our countryman Milton went to Italy
for the purpose of visiting him. He entertained his friends with the
warmest hospitality, and though simple and abstemious in his diet, yet
he was fond of good wine, and seems even in his last days to have paid
particular attention to the excellence of his cellar.
Although Galileo had nearly lost his hearing as well as his sight, yet
his intellectual faculties were unimpaired; and while his mind was
occupied in considering the force of percussion, he was seized with
fever and palpitation of the heart, which, after two months’ illness,
terminated his life on the 8th of January, 1642.
Among the predecessors of Newton in astronomical research we must not
omit the names of Bouillaud (Bullialdus), Borelli, and Dr. Hooke.
Ismael Bouillaud, a native of Laon in France, and the author of several
valuable astronomical works, has derived more reputation from a single
sentence in his _Astronomica Philolaica_, published in 1645, than from
all the rest of his labours. He was not a believer in the doctrine
of attraction, which, as we have already seen, had been broached by
Copernicus, and discovered by Kepler; but in speaking of that power as
the cause of the planetary motions, he remarks, “that if attraction
existed, it would decrease as the square of the distance.” The
influence of gravity was still more distinctly developed by Borelli,
a Neapolitan philosopher, who published in 1666 a work on Jupiter’s
satellites.[38] In this work he maintains, that all the planets perform
their motions round the sun according to a general law; that the
satellites of Jupiter and of Saturn move round their primary planets
in the same manner as the moon does round the earth, and that they all
revolve round the sun, which is the only source of any virtue, and that
this virtue attaches them, and unites them so that they cannot recede
from their centre of action.[39]
Our countryman Dr. Robert Hooke seems to have devoted much of
his attention to the cause of the planetary motions. On the 21st
March, 1666, he read to the Royal Society an account of a series of
experiments for determining if bodies experience any variation in
their weight at different distances from the centre of the earth. His
experiments, as Hooke himself saw, were by no means satisfactory,
and hence he was led to the ingenious idea of measuring the force of
gravity by observing, at different altitudes, the rate of a pendulum
clock. About two months afterward, he exhibited to the Society an
approximate representation of the forces which retain the planets
in their orbits, in the paths described by a circular pendulum
impelled with different degrees of force; but though this experiment
illustrated the production of a curvilineal motion, by combining a
tangential force with a central power of attraction, yet it was only
an illustration, and could not lead to the true cause of the planetary
motions. At a later period, however, viz. in 1674, Hooke resumed the
subject in a dissertation entitled “An Attempt to prove the Motion of
the Earth from Observation,” which contains the following remarkable
observations upon gravity:—
“I shall hereafter explain a system of the world differing in
many particulars from any yet known, answering in all things to
the common rules of mechanical motions. This depends upon three
suppositions:—first, that all celestial bodies whatsoever have an
attraction or gravitating power towards their own centres, whereby
they attract, not only their own parts, and keep them from flying
from them, as we may observe the earth to do, but that they also do
attract all the other celestial bodies that are within the sphere of
their activity, and consequently, that not only the sun and moon have
an influence upon the body and motion of the earth, and the earth upon
them, but that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, also, by
their attractive powers, have a considerable influence upon its motion,
as in the same manner the corresponding attractive power of the earth
hath a considerable influence upon every one of their motions also.
The second supposition is this, that all bodies whatsoever that are
put into a direct and simple motion will so continue to move forward
in a straight line, till they are, by some other effectual powers,
deflected, and sent into a motion describing a circle, ellipsis, or
some other more compounded curve line. The third supposition is, that
those attractive powers are so much the more powerful in operating by
how much the nearer the body wrought upon is to their own centres.
_Now, what these several degrees are I have not yet experimentally
verified_; but it is a notion which, if fully prosecuted, as it ought
to be, will mightily assist the astronomers to reduce all the celestial
motions to a certain rule, which I doubt will never be done without it.
He that understands the nature of the circular pendulum and circular
motion will easily understand the whole of this principle, and will
know where to find directions in nature for the true stating thereof.
This I only hint at present to such as have ability and opportunity of
prosecuting this inquiry, and are not wanting of industry for observing
and calculating, wishing heartily such may be found, having myself
many other things in hand, which I would first complete, and therefore
cannot so well attend it. But this I do not promise the undertaker,
that he will find all the great motions of the world to be influenced
by this principle, and that the true understanding thereof will be the
true perfection of astronomy.”
This passage, which has been considered as a remarkable one by the
philosophers of every country, has, we think, been misapprehended by M.
Delambre, when he asserts that every thing which it contains “is to be
found expressly in Kepler.”[40]