led to the noblest discoveries of modern times, is this strictly
true? Galileo made his discoveries in the heavens before Bacon
died. Physical improvements must need follow such inventions as
gunpowder and the mariners' compass, and printing and the pictures
of Italy, and the discovery of mines and the revived arts of the
Romans and Greeks, and the glorious emancipation which the
Reformation produced. Why should not the modern races follow in
the track of Carthage and Alexandria and Rome, with the progress of
wealth, and carry out inventions as those cities did, and all other
civilized peoples since Babel towered above the plains of Babylon?
Physical developments arise from the developments of man, whatever
method may be recommended by philosophers. What philosophical
teachings led to the machinery of the mines of California, or to
that of the mills of Lowell? Some think that our modern
improvements would have come whether Bacon had lived or not. But I
would not disparage the labors of Bacon in pointing out the method
which leads to scientific discoveries. Granting that he sought
merely utility, an improvement in the outward condition of society,
which is the view that Macaulay takes, I would not underrate his
legacy. And even supposing that the blessings of material life--
"the acre of Middlesex"--are as much to be desired as Macaulay,
with the complacency of an eminently practical and prosperous man,
seems to argue, I would not sneer at them. Who does not value
them? Who will not value them so long as our mortal bodies are to
be cared for? It is a pleasant thing to ride in "cars without
horses," to feel in winter the genial warmth of grates and
furnaces, to receive messages from distant friends in a moment of
time, to cross the ocean without discomfort, with the "almost
certainty" of safety, and save our wives and daughters from the
ancient drudgeries of the loom and the knitting-needle. Who ever
tires in gazing at a locomotive as it whirls along with the power
of destiny? Who is not astonished at the triumphs of the engineer,
the wonders of an ocean-steamer, the marvellous tunnels under lofty
mountains? We feel that Titans have been sent to ease us of our
burdens.
But great and beneficent as are these blessings, they are not the
only certitudes, nor are they the greatest. An outward life of
ease and comfort is not the chief end of man. The interests of the
soul are more important than any comforts of the body. The higher
life is only reached by lofty contemplation on the true, the
beautiful, and the good. Subjective wisdom is worth more than
objective knowledge. What are the great realities,--machinery, new
breeds of horses, carpets, diamonds, mirrors, gas? or are they
affections, friendships, generous impulses, inspiring thoughts?
Look to Socrates: what raised that barefooted, ugly-looking,
impecunious, persecuted, cross-questioning, self-constituted
teacher, without pay, to the loftiest pedestal of Athenian fame?
What was the spirit of the truths HE taught? Was it objective or
subjective truth; the way to become rich and comfortable, or the
search for the indefinite, the infinite, the eternal,--Utopia, not
Middlesex,--that which fed the wants of the immaterial soul, and
enabled it to rise above temptation and vulgar rewards? What
raised Plato to the highest pinnacle of intellectual life? Was it
definite and practical knowledge of outward phenomena; or was it "a
longing after love, in the contemplation of which the mortal soul
sustains itself, and becomes participant in the glories of
immortality"? What were realities to Anselm, Bernard, and
Bonaventura? What gave beauty and placidity to Descartes and
Leibnitz and Kant? It may be very dignified for a modern savant to
sit serenely on his tower of observation, indifferent to all the
lofty speculations of the great men of bygone ages; yet those
profound questions pertaining to the [Greek text omitted] and the
[Greek text omitted], which had such attractions for Augustine and
Pascal and Calvin, did have as real bearing on human life and on
what is best worth knowing, as the scales of a leuciscus cephalus
or the limbs of a magnified animalculus, or any of the facts of
which physical science can boast. The wonders of science are
great, but so also are the secrets of the soul, the mysteries of
the spiritual life, the truths which come from divine revelation.
Whatever most dignifies humanity, and makes our labors sweet,
and causes us to forget our pains, and kindles us to lofty
contemplations, and prompts us to heroic sacrifice, is the most
real and the most useful. Even the leaves of a barren and
neglected philosophy may be in some important respects of more
value than all the boasted fruit of utilitarian science. Is that
which is most useful always the most valuable,--that, I mean, which
gives the highest pleasure? Do we not plant our grounds with the
acacia, the oak, the cedar, the elm, as well as with the apple, the
pear, and the cherry? Are not flowers and shrubs which beautify
the lawn as desirable as beans and turnips and cabbages? Is not
the rose or tulip as great an addition to even a poor man's cottage
as his bed of onions or patch of potatoes? What is the scale to
measure even mortal happiness? What is the marketable value of
friendship or of love? What makes the dinner of herbs sometimes
more refreshing than the stalled ox? What is the material profit
of a first love? What is the value in tangible dollars and cents
of a beautiful landscape, or a speaking picture, or a marble
statue, or a living book, or the voice of eloquence, or the charm
of earliest bird, or the smile of a friend, or the promise of
immortality? In what consisted the real glory of the country we
are never weary of quoting,--the land of Phidias and Pericles and
Demosthenes? Was it not in immaterial ideas, in patriotism, in
heroism, in conceptions of ideal beauty, in speculations on the
infinite and unattainable, in the songs which still inspire the
minds of youth, in the expression which made marble live, in those
conceptions of beauty and harmony which still give shape to the
temples of Christendom? Was Rome more glorious with her fine roads
and tables of thuja-root, and Falernian wines, and oysters from the
Lucrine Lake, and chariots of silver, and robes of purple and rings
of gold,--these useful blessings which are the pride of an
Epicurean civilization? And who gave the last support, who raised
the last barrier, against that inundation of destructive pleasures
in which some see the most valued fruits of human invention, but
which proved a canker that prepared the way to ruin? It was that
pious Emperor who learned his wisdom from a slave, and who set a
haughty defiance to all the grandeur and all the comforts of the
highest position which earth could give, and spent his leisure
hours in the quiet study of those truths which elevate the soul,--
truths not taught by science or nature, but by communication with
invisible powers.
Ah, what indeed is reality; what is the higher good; what is that
which perishes never; what is that which assimilates man to Deity?
Is it houses, is it lands, is it gold and silver, is it luxurious
couches, is it the practical utilitarian comforts that pamper this
mortal body in its brief existence? or is it women's loves and
patriots' struggles, and sages' pious thoughts, affections, noble
aspirations, Bethanies, the serenities of virtuous old age, the
harmonies of unpolluted homes, the existence of art, of truth, of
love; the hopes which last when sun and stars decay? Tell us, ye
women, what are realities to you,--your carpets, your plate, your
jewels, your luxurious banquets; or your husbands' love, your
friends' esteem, your children's reverence? And ye, toiling men of
business, what is really your highest joy,--your piles of gold,
your marble palaces; or the pleasures of your homes, the
approbation of your consciences, your hopes of future bliss? Yes,
you are dreamers, like poets and philosophers, when you call
yourselves pack-horses. Even you are only sustained in labor by
intangible rewards that you can neither see nor feel. The most
practical of men and women can really only live in those ideas
which are deemed indefinite and unreal. For what do the busiest of
you run away from money-making, and ride in cold or heat, in
dreariness or discomfort,--dinners, or greetings of love and
sympathy? On what are such festivals as Christmas and Thanksgiving
Day based?--on consecrated sentiments that have more force than any
material gains or ends. These, after all, are realities to you as
much as ideas were to Plato, or music to Beethoven, or patriotism
to Washington. Deny these as the higher certitudes, and you rob
the soul of its dignity, and life of its consolations.
AUTHORITIES.
Bacon's Works, edited by Basil Montagu; Bacon's Life, by Basil
Montagu; Bacon's Life, by James Spedding; Bacon's Life, by Thomas
Fowler; Dr. Abbott's Introduction to Bacon's Essays, in
Contemporary Review, 1876; Macaulay's famous essay in Edinburgh
Review, 1839; Archbishop Whately's annotations of the Essays of
Bacon; the general Histories of England.
GALILEO.
A. D. 1564-1642.
ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.
Among the wonders of the sixteenth century was the appearance of a
new star in the northern horizon, which, shining at first with a
feeble light, gradually surpassed the brightness of the planet
Jupiter; and then changing its color from white to yellow and from
yellow to red, after seventeen months, faded away from the sight,
and has not since appeared. This celebrated star, first seen by
Tycho Brahe in the constellation Cassiopeia, never changed its
position, or presented the slightest perceptible parallax. It
could not therefore have been a meteor, nor a planet regularly
revolving round the sun, nor a comet blazing with fiery nebulous
light, nor a satellite of one of the planets, but a fixed star, far
beyond our solar system. Such a phenomenon created an immense
sensation, and has never since been satisfactorily explained by
philosophers. In the infancy of astronomical science it was
regarded by astrologers as a sign to portend the birth of an
extraordinary individual.
Though the birth of some great political character was supposed to
be heralded by this mysterious star, its prophetic meaning might
with more propriety apply to the extraordinary man who astonished
his contemporaries by discoveries in the heavens, and who forms the
subject of this lecture; or it poetically might apply to the
brilliancy of the century itself in which it appeared. The
sixteenth century cannot be compared with the nineteenth century in
the variety and scope of scientific discoveries; but, compared with
the ages which had preceded it, it was a memorable epoch, marked by
the simultaneous breaking up of the darkness of mediaeval Europe,
and the bursting forth of new energies in all departments of human
thought and action. In that century arose great artists, poets,
philosophers, theologians, reformers, navigators, jurists,
statesmen, whose genius has scarcely since been surpassed. In
Italy it was marked by the triumphs of scholars and artists; in
Germany and France, by reformers and warriors; in England, by that
splendid constellation that shed glory on the reign of Elizabeth.
Close upon the artists who followed Da Vinci, to Salvator Rosa,
were those scholars of whom Emanuel Chrysoloras, Erasmus, and
Scaliger were the representatives,--going back to the classic
fountains of Greece and Rome, reviving a study for antiquity,
breathing a new spirit into universities, enriching vernacular
tongues, collecting and collating manuscripts, translating the
Scriptures, and stimulating the learned to emancipate themselves
from the trammels of the scholastic philosophers.
Then rose up the reformers, headed by Luther, consigning to
destruction the emblems and ceremonies of mediaeval superstition,
defying popes, burning bulls, ridiculing monks, exposing frauds,
unravelling sophistries, attacking vices and traditions with the
new arms of reason, and asserting before councils and dignitaries
the right of private judgment and the supreme authority of the
Bible in all matters of religious faith.
And then appeared the defenders of their cause, by force of arms
maintaining the great rights of religious liberty in France,
Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and England, until Protestantism was
established in half of the countries that had for more than a
thousand years servilely bowed down to the authority of the popes.
Genius stimulates and enterprise multiplies all the energies and
aims of emancipated millions. Before the close of the sixteenth
century new continents are colonized, new modes of warfare are
introduced, manuscripts are changed into printed books, the
comforts of life are increased, governments are more firmly
established, and learned men are enriched and honored. Feudalism
has succumbed to central power, and barons revolve around their
sovereign at court rather than compose an independent authority.
Before that century had been numbered with the ages past, the
Portuguese had sailed to the East Indies, Sir Francis Drake had
circumnavigated the globe, Pizarro had conquered Peru, Sir Walter
Raleigh had colonized Virginia, Ricci had penetrated to China,
Lescot had planned the palace of the Louvre, Raphael had painted
the Transfiguration, Michael Angelo had raised the dome of St.
Peter's, Giacomo della Porta had ornamented the Vatican with
mosaics, Copernicus had taught the true centre of planetary motion,
Dumoulin had introduced into French jurisprudence the principles of
the Justinian code, Ariosto had published the "Orlando Furioso,"
Cervantes had written "Don Quixote," Spenser had dedicated his
"Fairy Queen," Shakspeare had composed his immortal dramas, Hooker
had devised his "Ecclesiastical Polity," Cranmer had published his
Forty-two Articles, John Calvin had dedicated to Francis I. his
celebrated "Institutes," Luther had translated the Bible, Bacon had
begun the "Instauration of Philosophy," Bellarmine had systematized
the Roman Catholic theology, Henry IV. had signed the Edict of
Nantes, Queen Elizabeth had defeated the Invincible Armada, and
William the Silent had achieved the independence of Holland.
Such were some of the lights and some of the enterprises of that
great age, when the profoundest questions pertaining to philosophy,
religion, law, and government were discussed with the enthusiasm
and freshness of a revolutionary age; when men felt the inspiration
of a new life, and looked back on the Middle Ages with disgust and
hatred, as a period which enslaved the human soul. But what
peculiarly marked that period was the commencement of those
marvellous discoveries in science which have enriched our times and
added to the material blessings of the new civilization. Tycho
Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Bacon inaugurated the era
which led to progressive improvements in the physical condition of
society, and to those scientific marvels which have followed in
such quick succession and produced such astonishing changes that we
are fain to boast that we have entered upon the most fortunate and
triumphant epoch in our world's history.
Many men might be taken as the representatives of this new era of
science and material inventions, but I select Galileo Galilei as
one of the most interesting in his life, opinions, and conflicts.
Galileo was born at Pisa, in the year 1564, the year that Calvin
and Michael Angelo died, four years after the birth of Bacon, in
the sixth year of the reign of Elizabeth, and the fourth of Charles
IX., about the time when the Huguenot persecution was at its
height, and the Spanish monarchy was in its most prosperous state,
under Philip II. His parents were of a noble but impoverished
Florentine family; and his father, who was a man of some learning,--
a writer on the science of music,--gave him the best education he
could afford. Like so many of the most illustrious men, he early
gave promise of rare abilities. It was while he was a student in
the university of his native city that his attention was arrested
by the vibrations of a lamp suspended from the ceiling of the
cathedral; and before he had quitted the church, while the choir
was chanting mediaeval anthems, he had compared those vibrations
with his own pulse, which after repeated experiments, ended in the
construction of the first pendulum,--applied not as it was by
Huygens to the measurement of time, but to medical science, to
enable physicians to ascertain the rate of the pulse. But the
pendulum was soon brought into the service of the clockmakers, and
ultimately to the determination of the form of the earth, by its
minute irregularities in diverse latitudes, and finally to the
measurement of differences of longitude by its connection with
electricity and the recording of astronomical observations. Thus
it was that the swinging of a cathedral lamp, before the eye of a
man of genius, has done nearly as much as the telescope itself to
advance science, to say nothing of its practical uses in common
life.
Galileo had been destined by his father to the profession of
medicine, and was ignorant of mathematics. He amused his leisure
hours with painting and music, and in order to study the principles
of drawing he found it necessary to acquire some knowledge of
geometry, much to the annoyance of his father, who did not like to
see his mind diverted from the prescriptions of Hippocrates and
Galen. The certain truths of geometry burst upon him like a
revelation, and after mastering Euclid he turned to Archimedes with
equal enthusiasm. Mathematics now absorbed his mind, and the
father was obliged to yield to the bent of his genius, which seemed
to disdain the regular professions by which social position was
most surely effected. He wrote about this time an essay on the
Hydrostatic Balance, which introduced him to Guido Ubaldo, a famous
mathematician, who induced him to investigate the subject of the
centre of gravity in solid bodies. His treatise on this subject
secured an introduction to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who perceived
his merits, and by whom he was appointed a lecturer on mathematics
at Pisa, but on the small salary of sixty crowns a year.
This was in 1589, when he was twenty-five, an enthusiastic young
man, full of hope and animal spirits, the charm of every circle for
his intelligence, vivacity, and wit; but bold and sarcastic,
contemptuous of ancient dogmas, defiant of authority, and therefore
no favorite with Jesuit priests and Dominican professors. It is
said that he was a handsome man, with bright golden locks, such as
painters in that age loved to perpetuate upon the canvas; hilarious
and cheerful, fond of good cheer, yet a close student, obnoxious
only to learned dunces and narrow pedants and treadmill professors
and zealous priests,--all of whom sought to molest him, yet to whom
he was either indifferent or sarcastic, holding them and their
formulas up to ridicule. He now directed his inquiries to the
mechanical doctrines of Aristotle, to whose authority the schools
had long bowed down, and whom he too regarded as one of the great
intellectual giants of the world, yet not to be credited without
sufficient reasons. Before the "Novum Organum" was written, he
sought, as Bacon himself pointed out, the way to arrive at truth,--
a foundation to stand upon, a principle tested by experience,
which, when established by experiment, would serve for sure
deductions.
Now one of the principles assumed by Aristotle, and which had never
been disputed, was, that if different weights of the same material
were let fall from the same height, the heavier would reach the
ground sooner than the lighter, and in proportion to the difference
of weight. This assumption Galileo denied, and asserted that, with
the exception of a small difference owing to the resistance of the
air, both would fall to the ground in the same space of time. To
prove his position by actual experiment, he repaired to the leaning
tower of Pisa, and demonstrated that he was right and Aristotle was
wrong. The Aristotelians would not believe the evidence of their
own senses, and ascribed the effect to some unknown cause. To such
a degree were men enslaved by authority. This provoked Galileo,
and led him to attack authority with still greater vehemence,
adding mockery to sarcasm; which again exasperated his opponents,
and doubtless laid the foundation of that personal hostility which
afterwards pursued him to the prison of the Inquisition. This
blended arrogance and asperity in a young man was offensive to the
whole university, yet natural to one who had overturned one of the
favorite axioms of the greatest master of thought the world had
seen for nearly two thousand years; and the scorn and opposition
with which his discovery was received increased his rancor, so that
he, in his turn, did not render justice to the learned men arrayed
against him, who were not necessarily dull or obstinate because
they would not at once give up the opinions in which they were
educated, and which the learned world still accepted. Nor did they
oppose and hate him for his new opinions, so much as from dislike
of his personal arrogance and bitter sarcasms.
At last his enemies made it too hot for him at Pisa. He resigned
his chair (1591), but only to accept a higher position at Padua, on
a salary of one hundred and eighty florins,--not, however, adequate
to his support, so that he was obliged to take pupils in
mathematics. To show the comparative estimate of that age of
science, the fact may be mentioned that the professor of scholastic
philosophy in the same university was paid fourteen hundred
florins. This was in 1592; and the next year Galileo invented the
thermometer, still an imperfect instrument, since air was not
perfectly excluded. At this period his reputation seems to have
been established as a brilliant lecturer rather than as a great
discoverer, or even as a great mathematician; for he was
immeasurably behind Kepler, his contemporary, in the power of
making abstruse calculations and numerical combinations. In this
respect Kepler was inferior only to Copernicus, Newton, and Laplace
in our times, or Hipparchus and Ptolemy among the ancients; and it
is to him that we owe the discovery of those great laws of
planetary motion from which there is no appeal, and which have
never been rivalled in importance except those made by Newton
himself,--laws which connect the mean distance of the planets from
the sun with the times of their revolutions; laws which show that
the orbits of planets are elliptical, not circular; and that the
areas described by lines drawn from the moving planet to the sun
are proportionable to the times employed in the motion. What an
infinity of calculation, in the infancy of science--before the
invention of logarithms,--was necessary to arrive at these truths!
What fertility of invention was displayed in all his hypotheses;
what patience in working them out; what magnanimity in discarding
those which were not true! What power of guessing, even to
hit upon theories which could be established by elaborate
calculations,--all from the primary thought, the grand axiom, which
Kepler was the first to propose, that there must be some numerical
or geometrical relations among the times, distances, and velocities
of the revolving bodies of the solar system! It would seem that
although his science was deductive, he invoked the aid of induction
also: a great original genius, yet modest like Newton; a man who
avoided hostilities, yet given to the most boundless enthusiasm on
the subjects to which he devoted his life. How intense his
raptures! "Nothing holds me," he writes, on discovering his great
laws; "I will indulge in my sacred fury. I will boast of the
golden vessels I have stolen from the Egyptians. If you forgive
me, I rejoice. If you are angry, it is all the same to me. The
die is cast; the book is written,--to be read either now, or by
posterity, I care not which. It may well wait a century for a
reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."
We do not see this sublime repose in the attitude of Galileo,--this
falling back on his own conscious greatness, willing to let things
take their natural course; but rather, on the other hand, an
impatience under contradiction, a vehement scorn of adversaries,
and an intellectual arrogance that gave offence, and impeded his
career, and injured his fame. No matter how great a man may be,
his intellectual pride is always offensive; and when united with
sarcasm and mockery it will make bitter enemies, who will pull him
down.