dash of spray in their faces, they had been awakened out of their
comfortable lethargy. They felt the approach of a new era. Yes, it was a
shock, and they hated the young Galileo for giving it them--hated him
with the sullen hatred of men who fight for a lost and dying cause.
We need scarcely blame these men; at least we need not blame them
overmuch. To say that they acted as they did is to say that they were
human, were narrow-minded, and were the apostles of a lost cause. But
_they_ could not know this; _they_ had no experience of the past to
guide them; the conditions under which they found themselves were novel,
and had to be met for the first time. Conduct which was excusable then
would be unpardonable now, in the light of all this experience to guide
us. Are there any now who practically repeat their error, and resist new
truth? who cling to any old anchorage of dogma, and refuse to rise with
the tide of advancing knowledge? There may be some even now.
Well, the unpopularity of Galileo smouldered for a time, until, by
another noble imprudence, he managed to offend a semiroyal personage,
Giovanni de' Medici, by giving his real opinion, when consulted, about a
machine which De' Medici had invented for cleaning out the harbor of
Leghorn. He said it was as useless as it in fact turned out to be.
Through the influence of the mortified inventor he lost favor at court;
and his enemies took advantage of the fact to render his chair
untenable. He resigned before his three years were up, and retired to
Florence.
His father at this time died, and the family were left in narrow
circumstances. He had a brother and three sisters to provide for. He was
offered a professorship at Padua for six years by the Senate of Venice,
and willingly accepted it. Now began a very successful career. His
introductory address was marked by brilliant eloquence, and his lectures
soon acquired fame. He wrote for his pupils on the laws of motion, on
fortifications, on sun-dials, on mechanics, and on the celestial globe:
some of these papers are now lost, others have been printed during the
present century.
Kepler sent him a copy of his new book, _Mysterium Cosmographicum_, and
Galileo, in thanking him for it, writes him the following letter:
"I count myself happy, in the search after truth, to have so great an
ally as yourself, and one who is so great a friend of the truth itself.
It is really pitiful that there are so few who seek truth, and who do
not pursue a perverse method of philosophizing. But this is not the
place to mourn over the miseries of our times, but to congratulate you
on your splendid discoveries in confirmation of truth. I shall read your
book to the end, sure of finding much that is excellent in it. I shall
do so with the more pleasure, because _I have been for many years an
adherent of the Copernican system_, and it explains to me the causes of
many of the appearances of nature which are quite unintelligible on the
commonly accepted hypothesis. _I have collected many arguments for the
purpose of refuting the latter_; but I do not venture to bring them to
the light of publicity, for fear of sharing the fate of our master,
Copernicus, who, although he has earned immortal fame with some, yet
with very many (so great is the number of fools) has become an object of
ridicule and scorn. I should certainly venture to publish my
speculations if there were more people like you. But this not being the
case, I refrain from such an undertaking."
Kepler urged him to publish his arguments in favor of the Copernican
theory, but he hesitated for the present, knowing that his declaration
would be received with ridicule and opposition, and thinking it wiser to
get rather more firmly seated in his chair before encountering the storm
of controversy. The six years passed away, and the Venetian Senate,
anxious not to lose so bright an ornament, renewed his appointment for
another six years at a largely increased salary.
Soon after this appeared a new star--the _stella nova_ of 1604--not the
one Tycho had seen--that was in 1572--but the same that Kepler was so
much interested in. Galileo gave a course of three lectures upon it to a
great audience. At the first the theatre was overcrowded, so he had to
adjourn to a hall holding one thousand persons. At the next he had to
lecture in the open air. He took occasion to rebuke his hearers for
thronging to hear about an ephemeral novelty, while for the much more
wonderful and important truths about the permanent stars and facts of
nature they had but deaf ears.
But the main point he brought out concerning the new star was that it
upset the received Aristotelian doctrine of the immutability of the
heavens. According to that doctrine the heavens were unchangeable,
perfect, subject neither to growth nor to decay. Here was a body, not a
meteor but a real distant star, which had not been visible and which
would shortly fade away again, but which meanwhile was brighter than
Jupiter.
The staff of petrified professorial wisdom were annoyed at the
appearance of the star, still more at Galileo's calling public attention
to it; and controversy began at Padua. However, he accepted it, and now
boldly threw down the gauntlet in favor of the Copernican theory,
utterly repudiating the old Ptolemaic system, which up to that time he
had taught in the schools according to established custom.
The earth no longer the only world to which all else in the firmament
were obsequious attendants, but a mere insignificant speck among the
host of heaven! Man no longer the centre and cynosure of creation, but,
as it were, an insect crawling on the surface of this little speck! All
this not set down in crabbed Latin in dry folios for a few learned
monks, as in Copernicus' time, but promulgated and argued in rich
Italian, illustrated by analogy, by experiment, and with cultured wit;
taught not to a few scholars here and there in musty libraries, but
proclaimed in the vernacular to the whole populace with all the energy
and enthusiasm of a recent convert and a master of language! Had a
bombshell been exploded among the fossilized professors it had been less
disturbing.
But there was worse in store for them. A Dutch optician, Hans Lippershey
by name, of Middleburg, had in his shop a curious toy, rigged up, it is
said, by an apprentice, and made out of a couple of spectacle lenses,
whereby, if one looked through it, the weather-cock of a neighboring
church spire was seen nearer and upside down. The tale goes that the
Marquis Spinola, happening to call at the shop, was struck with the toy
and bought it. He showed it to Prince Maurice of Nassau, who thought of
using it for military reconnoitring. All this is trivial. What is
important is that some faint and inaccurate echo of this news found its
way to Padua and into the ears of Galileo.
The seed fell on good soil. All that night he sat up and pondered. He
knew about lenses and magnifying-glasses. He had read Kepler's theory of
the eye, and had himself lectured on optics. Could he not hit on the
device and make an instrument capable of bringing the heavenly bodies
nearer? Who knew what marvels he might not so perceive! By morning he
had some schemes ready to try, and one of them was successful.
Singularly enough it was not the same plan as the Dutch optician's: it
was another mode of achieving the same end. He took an old small
organ-pipe, jammed a suitably chosen spectacle glass into either end,
one convex, the other concave, and, behold! he had the half of a
wretchedly bad opera-glass capable of magnifying three times. It was
better than the Dutchman's, however: it did not invert.
Such a thing as Galileo made may now be bought at a toy-shop for I
suppose half a crown, and yet what a potentiality lay in that "glazed
optic tube," as Milton called it. Away he went with it to Venice and
showed it to the Seigniory, to their great astonishment. "Many noblemen
and senators," says Galileo, "though of advanced age, mounted to the
top of one of the highest towers to watch the ships, which were visible
through my glass two hours before they were seen entering the harbor,
for it makes a thing fifty miles off as near and clear as if it were
only five." Among the people, too, the instrument excited the greatest
astonishment and interest, so that he was nearly mobbed. The Senate
hinted to him that a present of the instrument would not be
unacceptable, so Galileo took the hint and made another for them. They
immediately doubled his salary at Padua, making it one thousand florins,
and confirmed him in the enjoyment of it for life.
He now eagerly began the construction of a larger and better instrument.
Grinding the lenses with his own hands with consummate skill, he
succeeded in making a telescope magnifying thirty times. Thus equipped
he was ready to begin a survey of the heavens. The first object he
carefully examined was naturally the moon. He found there everything at
first sight very like the earth, mountains and valleys, craters and
plains, rocks, and apparently seas. You may imagine the hostility
excited among the Aristotelian philosophers, especially, no doubt, those
he had left behind at Pisa, on the ground of his spoiling the pure,
smooth, crystalline, celestial face of the moon as they had thought it,
and making it harsh and rugged, and like so vile and ignoble a body as
the earth.
He went further, however, into heterodoxy than this: he not only made
the moon like the earth, but he made the earth shine like the moon. The
visibility of "the old moon in the new moon's arms" he explained by
earth-shine. Leonardo had given the same explanation a century before.
Now, one of the many stock arguments against Copernican theory of the
earth being a planet like the rest was that the earth was dull and dark
and did not shine. Galileo argued that it shone just as much as the moon
does, and in fact rather more--especially if it be covered with clouds.
One reason of the peculiar brilliancy of Venus is that she is a very
cloudy planet.[29] Seen from the moon the earth would look exactly as
the moon does to us, only a little brighter and sixteen times as
big--four times the diameter.
Wherever Galileo turned his telescope new stars appeared. The Milky Way,
which had so puzzled the ancients, was found to be composed of stars.
Stars that appeared single to the eye were some of them found to be
double; and at intervals were found hazy nebulous wisps, some of which
seemed to be star clusters, while others seemed only a fleecy cloud.
Now we come to his most brilliant, at least his most sensational,
discovery. Examining Jupiter minutely on January 7, 1610, he noticed
three little stars near it, which he noted down as fixing its then
position. On the following night Jupiter had moved to the other side of
the three stars. This was natural enough, but was it moving the right
way? On examination it appeared not. Was it possible the tables were
wrong? The next evening was cloudy, and he had to curb his feverish
impatience. On the 10th there were only two, and those on the other
side. On the 11th two again, but one bigger than the other. On the 12th
the three reappeared, and on the 13th there were four. No more appeared.
Jupiter, then, had moons like the earth--four of them in fact!--and they
revolved round him in periods which were soon determined.
The news of the discovery soon spread and excited the greatest interest
and astonishment. Many of course refused to believe it. Some there were
who, having been shown them, refused to believe their eyes, and asserted
that although the telescope acted well enough for terrestrial objects,
it was altogether false and illusory when applied to the heavens. Others
took the safer ground of refusing to look through the glass. One of
these who would not look at the satellites happened to die soon
afterward. "I hope," says Galileo, "that he saw them on his way to
heaven."
The way in which Kepler received the news is characteristic, though by
adding four to the supposed number of planets it might have seemed to
upset his notions about the five regular solids.
He says: "I was sitting idle at home thinking of you, most excellent
Galileo, and your letters, when the news was brought me of the discovery
of four planets by the help of the double eye-glass. Wachenfels stopped
his carriage at my door to tell me, when such a fit of wonder seized me
at a report which seemed so very absurd, and I was thrown into such
agitation at seeing an old dispute between us decided in this way, that
between his joy, my coloring, and the laughter of us both, confounded as
we were by such a novelty, we were hardly capable, he of speaking, or I
of listening.
"On our separating, I immediately fell to thinking how there could be
any addition to the number of planets without overturning my _Mysterium
Cosmographicon_, published thirteen years ago, according to which
Euclid's five regular solids do not allow more than six planets round
the sun. But I am so far from disbelieving the existence of the four
circumjovial planets that I long for a telescope to anticipate you if
possible in discovering two round Mars--as the proportion seems to me to
require--six or eight round Saturn, and one each round Mercury and
Venus."
As an illustration of the opposite school I will take the following
extract from Francesco Sizzi, a Florentine astronomer, who argues
against the discovery thus:
"There are seven windows in the head--two nostrils, two eyes, two ears,
and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two
unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and
indifferent. From which and many other similar phenomena of nature, such
as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather
that the number of planets is necessarily seven.
"Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye, and therefore
can have no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and
therefore do not exist.
"Besides, the Jews and other ancient nations as well as modern Europeans
have adopted the division of the week into seven days, and have named
them from the seven planets: now if we increase the number of the
planets this whole system falls to the ground."
To these arguments Galileo replied that whatever their force might be as
a reason for believing beforehand that no more than seven planets would
be discovered, they hardly seemed of sufficient weight to destroy the
new ones when actually seen. Writing to Kepler at this time, Galileo
ejaculates:
"Oh, my dear Kepler, how I wish that we could have one hearty laugh
together! Here, at Padua, is the principal professor of philosophy whom
I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets
through my glass, which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not
here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! And
to hear the professor of philosophy at Pisa laboring before the Grand
Duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations, to charm
the new planets out of the sky."
A young German _protégé_ of Kepler, Martin Horkey, was travelling in
Italy, and meeting Galileo at Bologna was favored with a view through
his telescope. But supposing that Kepler must necessarily be jealous of
such great discoveries, and thinking to please him, he writes: "I cannot
tell what to think about these observations. They are stupendous, they
are wonderful, but whether they are true or false I cannot tell." He
concludes, "I will never concede his four new planets to that Italian
from Padua, though I die for it." So he published a pamphlet asserting
that reflected rays and optical illusions were the sole cause of the
appearance, and that the only use of the imaginary planets was to
gratify Galileo's thirst for gold and notoriety.
When after this performance he paid a visit to his old instructor Kepler
he got a reception which astonished him. However, he pleaded so hard to
be forgiven that Kepler restored him to partial favor, on this
condition, that he was to look again at the satellites, and this time to
see them and own that they were there.
By degrees the enemies of Galileo were compelled to confess to the truth
of the discovery, and the next step was to outdo him. Scheiner counted
five, Rheiter nine, and others went as high as twelve. Some of these
were imaginary, some were fixed stars, and four satellites only are
known to this day.[30]
Here, close to the summit of his greatness, we must leave him for a
time. A few steps more and he will be on the brow of the hill; a short
piece of table-land, and then the descent begins.
In dealing with these historic events will you allow me to repudiate
once for all the slightest sectarian bias or meaning? I have nothing to
do with Catholic or Protestant as such. I have nothing to do with the
Church of Rome as such. I am dealing with the history of science. But
historically at one period science and the Church came into conflict. It
was not specially one church rather than another--it was the Church in
general, the only one that then existed in those countries.
Historically, I say, they came into conflict, and historically the
Church was the conqueror. It got its way; and science, in the persons of
Bruno, Galileo, and several others, was vanquished. Such being the
facts, there is no help but to mention them in dealing with the history
of science. Doubtless _now_ the Church regards it as an unhappy victory,
and gladly would ignore this painful struggle. This, however, is
impossible. With their creed the churchmen of that day could act in no
other way. They were bound to prosecute heresy, and they were bound to
conquer in the struggle or be themselves shattered.
But let me insist on the fact that no one accuses the ecclesiastical
courts of crime or evil motives. They attacked heresy after their
manner, as the civil courts attacked witchcraft after _their_ manner.
Both erred grievously, but both acted with the best intentions.
We must remember, moreover, that his doctrines were scientifically
heterodox, and the university professors of that day were probably quite
as ready to condemn them as the Church was. To realize the position we
must think of some subjects which _to-day_ are scientifically heterodox,
and of the customary attitude adopted toward them by persons of widely
differing creeds.
If it be contended now, as it is, that the ecclesiastics treated Galileo
well, I admit it freely: they treated him as well as they possibly
could. They overcame him, and he recanted; but if he had not recanted,
if he had persisted in his heresy, they would--well, they would still
have treated his soul well, but they would have set fire to his body.
Their mistake consisted not in cruelty, but in supposing themselves the
arbiters of eternal truth; and by no amount of slurring and glossing
over facts can they evade the responsibility assumed by them on account
of this mistaken attitude.
We left Galileo standing at his telescope and beginning his survey of
the heavens. We followed him indeed through a few of his first great
discoveries--the discovery of the mountains and other variety of
surface in the moon, of the nebulæ and a multitude of faint stars, and
lastly of the four satellites of Jupiter.
This latter discovery made an immense sensation, and contributed its
share to his removal from Padua, which quickly followed it. Before the
end of the year 1610 Galileo had made another discovery--this time on
Saturn. But to guard against the host of plagiarists and impostors he
published it in the form of an anagram, which, at the request of the
Emperor Rudolph--a request probably inspired by Kepler--he interpreted;
it ran thus: The farthest planet is triple.
Very soon after he found that Venus was changing from a full-moon to a
half-moon appearance. He announced this also by an anagram, and waited
till it should become a crescent, which it did. This was a dreadful blow
to the anti-Copernicans, for it removed the last lingering difficulty to
the reception of the Copernican doctrine. Copernicus had predicted,
indeed, a hundred years before, that, if ever our powers of sight were
sufficiently enhanced, Venus and Mercury would be seen to have phases
like the moon. And now Galileo with his telescope verifies the
prediction to the letter.
Here was a triumph for the grand old monk, and a bitter morsel for his
opponents.
Castelli writes, "This must now convince the most obstinate." But
Galileo, with more experience, replies: "You almost make me laugh by
saying that these clear observations are sufficient to convince the most
obstinate; it seems you have yet to learn that long ago the observations
were enough to convince those who are capable of reasoning and those who
wish to learn the truth; but that to convince the obstinate and those
who care for nothing beyond the vain applause of the senseless vulgar,
not even the testimony of the stars would suffice, were they to descend
on earth to speak for themselves. Let us, then, endeavor to procure some
knowledge for ourselves, and rest contented with this sole satisfaction;
but of advancing in popular opinion, or of gaining the assent of the
book-philosophers, let us abandon both the hope and the desire."
What a year's work it had been! In twelve months observational astronomy
had made such a bound as it has never made before or since.[31] Why did
not others make any of these observations? Because no one could make
telescopes like Galileo. He gathered pupils round him, however, and
taught them how to work the lenses, so that gradually these instruments
penetrated Europe, and astronomers everywhere verified his splendid
discoveries.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] It is of course the "silver lining" of clouds that outside
observers see.
[30] A fifth satellite of Jupiter has been recently discovered; and
Kepler's guess at two moons for Mars has also been justified.
[31] The next year Galileo discovered also the spots upon the sun
and estimated roughly its time of rotation.
BEGINNING OF BRITISH POWER IN INDIA
A.D. 1612
BECKLES WILLSON
By chartering the original English East India Company, Queen
Elizabeth took the first step toward establishing that empire
in the Orient which has since become such an important appanage
of the British crown. This oldest English company in India is
also called the "Mother Company" and the "John Company." It
began English trade with India, and its operations prepared the
way for British government in that vast country.
After the Portuguese discovery of the passage round Africa,
toward the end of the fifteenth century, other European nations
for some time appeared to recognize Portugal's exclusive claim
to the navigation of that route. In 1510 the Portuguese made a
permanent settlement in India at Goa. But during this century
the Dutch obtained a foothold in the country, and in 1580
Portugal was conquered by Spain.
Dutch enterprise and the Spanish absorption of Portugal's
Indian establishments aroused the commercial spirit of England.
In 1599 an English association was formed, with a large fund,
"for trade to the East Indies." In December, 1600, Queen
Elizabeth granted this association a charter, incorporating the
"Adventurers" under the title of "the Governor and Company of
Merchants of London trading into the East Indies." The company
was allowed unlimited rights of purchasing lands, and a fifteen
years' monopoly of trade. In 1609 the charter was renewed and
made perpetual by James I; but at first the company appears to
have done no very extensive business. The beginning of its more
active career, in the midst of grave difficulties and
conflicts, is well described by Willson, whose history thus
covers an important period in the development of India and in
the expansion of British power.
When the East India Company had been in existence eleven years it
possessed hardly more than the rudiments of factories in the Indies,
while the Dutch boasted fully a dozen regularly established
trading-settlements, from most of which they had ejected the Spaniards
and Portuguese.