doctrines false, only that they were in opposition to the Scriptures;
and it is also said that as he arose from his knees he whispered to a
friend, "It does move, nevertheless." As some excuse for him, he acted
with the certainty that he would be tortured if he did not recant; and
at the worst he had only affirmed that his scientific theory was in
opposition to the Scriptures. He had not denied his master, like Peter;
he had not recanted the faith like Cranmer; he had simply yielded for
fear of bodily torments, and therefore was not sincere in the abjuration
which he made to save his life. Nevertheless, his recantation was a
fall, and in the eyes of the scientific world perhaps greater than that
of Bacon. Galileo was false to philosophy and himself. Why did he suffer
himself to be conquered by priests he despised? Why did so bold and
witty and proud a man betray his cause? Why did he not accept the
penalty of intellectual freedom, and die, if die he must? What was life
to him, diseased, infirm, and old? What had he more to gain? Was it not
a good time to die and consummate his protests? Only one hundred and
fifty years before, one of his countrymen had accepted torture and death
rather than recant his religious opinions. Why could not Galileo have
been as great in martyrdom as Savonarola? He was a renowned philosopher
and brilliant as a man of genius,--but he was a man of the world; he
loved ease and length of days. He could ridicule and deride
opponents,--he could not suffer pain. He had a great intellect, but not
a great soul. There were flaws in his morality; he was anything but a
saint or hero. He was great in mind, and yet he was far from being great
in character. We pity him, while we exalt him. Nor is the world harsh to
him; it forgives him for his services. The worst that can be said, is
that he was not willing to suffer and die for his opinions: and how many
philosophers are there who are willing to be martyrs?
Nevertheless, in the eyes of philosophers he has disgraced himself. Let
him then return to Florence, to his own Arceti. He is a silenced man.
But he is silenced, not because he believed with Copernicus, but because
he ridiculed his enemies and confronted the Church, and in the eyes of
blinded partisans had attacked divine authority. Why did Copernicus
escape persecution? The Church must have known that there was something
in his discoveries, and in those of Galileo, worthy of attention. About
this time Pascal wrote: "It is vain that you have procured the
condemnation of Galileo. That will never prove the earth to be at rest.
If unerring observation proves that it turns round, not all mankind
together can keep it from turning, or themselves from turning with it."
But let that persecution pass. It is no worse than other persecutions,
either in Catholic or Protestant ranks. It was no worse than burning
witches. Not only is intolerance in human nature, but there is a
repugnance among the learned to receive new opinions when these
interfere with their ascendency. The opposition to Galileo's discoveries
was no greater than that of the Protestant Church, half a century ago,
to some of the inductions of geology. How bitter the hatred, even in our
times, to such men as Huxley and Darwin! True, they have not proved
their theories as Galileo did; but they gave as great a shock as he to
the minds of theologians. All science is progressive, yet there are
thousands who oppose its progress. And if learning and science should
establish a different meaning to certain texts from which theological
deductions are drawn, and these premises be undermined, there would be
the same bitterness among the defenders of the present system of
dogmatic theology. Yet theology will live, and never lose its dignity
and importance; only, some of its present assumptions may be discarded.
God will never be dethroned from the world he governs; but some of his
ways may appear to be different from what was once supposed. And all
science is not only progressive, but it appears to be bold and scornful
and proud,--at least, its advocates are and ever have been contemptuous
of all other departments of knowledge but its own. So narrow and limited
is the human mind in the midst of its triumphs. So full of prejudices
are even the learned and the great.
Let us turn then to give another glance at the fallen philosopher in his
final retreat at Arceti. He lives under restrictions. But they allow him
leisure and choice wines, of which he is fond, and gardens and friends;
and many come to do him reverence. He amuses his old age with the
studies of his youth and manhood, and writes dialogues on Motion, and
even discovers the phenomena of the moon's libration; and by means of
the pendulum he gives additional importance to astronomical science. But
he is not allowed to leave his retirement, not even to visit his friends
in Florence. The wrath of the Inquisition still pursues him, even in his
villa at Arceti in the suburbs of Florence. Then renewed afflictions
come. He loses his daughter, who was devoted to him; and her death
nearly plunges him into despair. The bulwarks of his heart break down; a
flood of grief overwhelms his stricken soul. His appetite leaves him;
his health forsakes him; his infirmities increase upon him. His right
eye loses its power,--that eye that had seen more of the heavens than
the eyes of all who had gone before him. He becomes blind and deaf, and
cannot sleep, afflicted with rheumatic pains and maladies forlorn. No
more for him is rest, or peace, or bliss; still less the glories of his
brighter days,--the sight of glittering fields, the gems of heaven,
without which
"Neither breath of Morn, when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower
Glistering with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful evening mild,... is sweet."
No more shall he gaze on features that he loves, or stars, or trees, or
hills. No more to him
"Returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But clouds, instead, and ever-during dark
Surround" [him].
It was in those dreary desolate days at Arceti,
"Unseen
In manly beauty Milton stood before him,
Gazing in reverent awe,--Milton, his guest,
Just then come forth, all life and enterprise;
While he in his old age,...
... exploring with his staff,
His eyes upturned as to the golden sun,
His eyeballs idly rolling."
This may have been the punishment of his recantation,--not Inquisitorial
torture, but the consciousness that he had lost his honor. Poor Galileo!
thine illustrious visitor, when _his_ affliction came, could cast his
sightless eyeballs inward, and see and tell "things unattempted yet in
prose or rhyme,"--not
"Rocks, caves, lakes, bogs, fens, and shades of death,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire,"
but of "eternal Providence," and "Eden with surpassing glory crowned,"
and "our first parents," and of "salvation," "goodness infinite," of
"wisdom," which when known we need no higher though all the stars we
know by name,--
"All secrets of the deep, all Nature's works,
Or works of God in heaven, or air, or sea."
And yet, thou stricken observer of the heavenly bodies! hadst thou but
known what marvels would be revealed by the power of thy wondrous
instrument after thou should'st be laid lifeless and cold beneath the
marble floor of Sante Croce, at the age of seventy-eight, without a
monument, without even the right of burial in consecrated ground, having
died a prisoner of the Inquisition, yet not without having rendered to
astronomical science services of utmost value,--even thou might have
died rejoicing, as one of the great benefactors of the world. And thy
discoveries shall be forever held in gratitude; they shall herald others
of even greater importance. Newton shall prove that the different
planets are attracted to the sun in the inverse ratio of the squares of
their distances; that the earth has a force on the moon identical with
the force of gravity, and that all celestial bodies, to the utmost
boundaries of space, mutually attract each other; that all particles of
matter are governed by the same law,--the great law of gravitation, by
which "astronomy," in the language of Whewell, "passed from boyhood to
manhood, and by which law the great discoverer added more to the realm
of science than any man before or since his day." And after Newton shall
pass away, honored and lamented, and be buried with almost royal pomp in
the vaults of Westminster, Halley and other mathematicians shall
construct lunar tables, by which longitude shall be accurately measured
on the pathless ocean. Lagrange and Laplace shall apply the Newtonian
theory to determine the secular inequalities of celestial motion; they
shall weigh absolutely the amount of matter in the planets; they shall
show how far their orbits deviate from circles; and they shall enumerate
the cycles of changes detected in the circuit of the moon. Clairaut
shall remove the perplexity occasioned by the seeming discrepancy
between the observed and computed motions of the moon's perigee. Halley
shall demonstrate the importance of observations of the transit of Venus
as the only certain way of obtaining the sun's parallax, and hence the
distance of the sun from the earth; he shall predict the return of that
mysterious body which we call a comet. Herschel shall construct a
telescope which magnifies two thousand times, and add another planet to
our system beyond the mighty orb of Saturn. Römer shall estimate the
velocity of light from the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites. Bessell
shall pass the impassable gulf of space and measure the distance of some
of the fixed stars, although such is the immeasurable space between the
earth and those distant suns that the parallax of only about thirty has
yet been discovered with our finest instruments,--so boundless is the
material universe, so vast are the distances, that light, travelling one
hundred and sixty thousand miles with every pulsation of the blood, will
not reach us from some of those remote worlds in one hundred thousand
years. So marvellous shall be the victories of science, that the
perturbations of the planets in their courses shall reveal the
existence of a new one more distant than Uranus, and Leverrier shall
tell at what part of the heavens that star shall first be seen.
So far as we have discovered, the universe which we have observed with
telescopic instruments has no limits that mortals can define, and in
comparison with its magnitude our earth is less than a grain of sand,
and is so old that no genius can calculate and no imagination can
conceive when it had a beginning. All that we know is, that suns exist
at distances we cannot define. But around what centre do they revolve?
Of what are they composed? Are they inhabited by intelligent and
immortal beings? Do we know that they are not eternal, except from the
divine declaration that there _was_ a time when the Almighty fiat went
forth for this grand creation? Creation involves a creator; and can the
order and harmony seen in Nature's laws exist without Supreme
intelligence and power? Who, then, and what, is God? "Canst thou by
searching find out Him? Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven? Canst
thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of
Orion?" What an atom is this world in the light of science! Yet what
dignity has man by the light of revelation! What majesty and power and
glory has God! What goodness, benevolence, and love, that even a sparrow
cannot fall to the ground without His notice,--that we are the special
objects of His providence and care! Is there an imagination so lofty
that will not be oppressed with the discoveries that even the
telescope has made?
Ah, to what exalted heights reason may soar when allied with faith! How
truly it should elevate us above the evils of this brief and busy
existence to the conditions of that other life,--
"When the soul,
Advancing ever to the Source of light
And all perfection, lives, adores, and reigns
In cloudless knowledge, purity, and bliss!"
AUTHORITIES.
Delambre, Histoire de l'Astronomie; Arago, Histoire de l'Astronomie;
Life of Galileo, in Cabinet Library; Life of Galileo, by Brewster; Lives
of Galileo, by Italian and Spanish Literary Men; Whewell's History of
Inductive Sciences; Plurality of Worlds; Humboldt's Cosmos; Nichols'
Architecture of the Heavens; Chalmers' Astronomical Discourses; Life of
Kepler, Library of Useful Knowledge; Brewster's Life of Tycho Brahe, of
Kepler, and of Sir Isaac Newton; Mitchell's Stellar and Planetary
Worlds; Bradley's Correspondence; Airy's Reports; Voiron's History of
Astronomy; Philosophical Transactions; Everett's Oration on Galileo;
Life of Copernicus; Bayly's Astronomy; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art.
_Astronomy_; Proctor's Lectures.