Pioneers of Science Part 11

At Rome he was not imprisoned, but he was told to keep indoors, and show himself as little as possible. He was allowed, however, to stay at the house of the Tuscan Amba.s.sador instead of in gaol.

By April he was removed to the chambers of the Inquisition, and examined several times. Here, however, the anxiety was too much, and his health began to give way seriously; so, before long, he was allowed to return to the Amba.s.sador's house; and, after application had been made, was allowed to drive in the public garden in a half-closed carriage. Thus in every way the Inquisition dealt with him as leniently as they could. He was now their prisoner, and they might have cast him into their dungeons, as many another had been cast. By whatever they were influenced--perhaps the Pope's old friendship, perhaps his advanced age and infirmities--he was not so cruelly used.

Still, they had their rules; he _must_ be made to recant and abjure his heresy; and, if necessary, torture must be applied. This he knew well enough, and his daughter knew it, and her distress may be imagined.

Moreover, it is not as if they had really been heretics, as if they hated or despised the Church of Rome. On the contrary, they loved and honoured the Church. They were sincere and devout worshippers, and only on a few scientific matters did Galileo presume to differ from his ecclesiastical superiors: his disagreement with them occasioned him real sorrow; and his dearest hope was that they could be brought to his way of thinking and embrace the truth.

Every time he was sent for by the Inquisition he was in danger of torture unless he recanted. All his friends urged him repeatedly to submit. They said resistance was hopeless and fatal. Within the memory of men still young, Giordano Bruno had been burnt alive for a similar heresy. This had happened while Galileo was at Padua. Venice was full of it. And since that, only eight years ago indeed, Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Salpetria, had been sentenced to the same fate: "to be handed over to the secular arm to be dealt with as mercifully as possible without the shedding of blood." So ran the hideous formula condemning a man to the stake. After his sentence, this unfortunate man died in the dungeons in which he had been incarcerated six years--died what is called a "natural" death; but the sentence was carried out, notwithstanding, on his lifeless body and his writings. His writings for which he had been willing to die!

These were the tender mercies of the Inquisition; and this was the kind of meaning lurking behind many of their well-sounding and merciful phrases. For instance, what they call "rigorous examination," we call "torture." Let us, however, remember in our horror at this mode of compelling a prisoner to say anything they wished, that they were a legally const.i.tuted tribunal; that they acted with well established rules, and not in pa.s.sion; and that torture was a recognized mode of extracting evidence, not only in ecclesiastical but in civil courts, at that date.

All this, however, was but poor solace to the pitiable old philosopher, thus ruthlessly haled up and down, questioned and threatened, threatened and questioned, receiving agonizing letters from his daughter week by week, and trying to keep up a little spirit to reply as happily and hopefully as he could.

This condition of things could not go on. From February to June the suspense lasted. On the 20th of June he was summoned again, and told he would be wanted all next day for a rigorous examination. Early in the morning of the 21st he repaired thither, and the doors were shut. Out of those chambers of horror he did not reappear till the 24th. What went on all those three days no one knows. He himself was bound to secrecy. No outsider was present. The records of the Inquisition are jealously guarded. That he was technically tortured is certain; that he actually underwent the torment of the rack is doubtful. Much learning has been expended upon the question, especially in Germany. Several eminent scholars have held the fact of actual torture to be indisputable (geometrically certain, one says), and they confirm it by the hernia from which he afterwards suffered, this being a well-known and frequent consequence.

Other equally learned commentators, however, deny that the last stage was reached. For there are five stages all laid down in the rules of the Inquisition, and steadily adhered to in a rigorous examination, at each stage an opportunity being given for recantation, every utterance, groan, or sigh being strictly recorded. The recantation so given has to be confirmed a day or two later, under pain of a precisely similar ordeal.

The five stages are:--1st. The official threat in the court. 2nd. The taking to the door of the torture chamber and renewing the official threat. 3rd. The taking inside and showing the instruments. 4th.

Undressing and binding upon the rack. 5th. _Territio realis._

Through how many of these ghastly acts Galileo pa.s.sed I do not know. I hope and believe not the last.

There are those who lament that he did not hold out, and accept the crown of martyrdom thus offered to him. Had he done so we know his fate--a few years' languishing in the dungeons, and then the flames.

Whatever he ought to have done, he did not hold out--he gave way. At one stage or another of the dread ordeal he said: "I am in your hands. I will say whatever you wish." Then was he removed to a cell while his special form of perjury was drawn up.

The next day, clothed as a penitent, the venerable old man was taken to the Convent of Minerva, where the Cardinals and prelates were a.s.sembled for the purpose of pa.s.sing judgment upon him.

The text of the judgment I have here, but it is too long to read. It sentences him--1st. To the abjuration. 2nd. To formal imprisonment for life. 3rd. To recite the seven penitential psalms every week.

Ten Cardinals were present; but, to their honour be it said, three refused to sign; and this blasphemous record of intolerance and bigoted folly goes down the ages with the names of seven Cardinals immortalized upon it.

This having been read, he next had to read word for word the abjuration which had been drawn up for him, and then sign it.

THE ABJURATION OF GALILEO.

"I, Galileo Galilei, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, of Florence, aged seventy years, being brought personally to judgment, and kneeling before you Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lords Cardinals, General Inquisitors of the universal Christian republic against heretical depravity, having before my eyes the Holy Gospels, which I touch with my own hands, swear that I have always believed, and now believe, and with the help of G.o.d will in future believe, every article which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome holds, teaches, and preaches. But because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office altogether to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the sun is the centre and immovable, and forbidden to hold, defend, or teach the said false doctrine in any manner, and after it hath been signified to me that the said doctrine is repugnant with the Holy Scripture, I have written and printed a book, in which I treat of the same doctrine now condemned, and adduce reasons with great force in support of the same, without giving any solution, and therefore have been judged grievously suspected of heresy; that is to say, that I held and believed that the sun is the centre of the universe and is immovable, and that the earth is not the centre and is movable; willing, therefore, to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of every Catholic Christian, this vehement suspicion rightfully entertained towards me, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect contrary to Holy Church; and I swear that I will never more in future say or a.s.sert anything verbally, or in writing, which may give rise to a similar suspicion of me; but if I shall know any heretic, or any one suspected of heresy, that I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place where I may be; I swear, moreover, and promise, that I will fulfil and observe fully, all the penances which have been or shall be laid on me by this Holy Office. But if it shall happen that I violate any of my said promises, oaths, and protestations (which G.o.d avert!), I subject myself to all the pains and punishments which have been decreed and promulgated by the sacred canons, and other general and particular const.i.tutions, against delinquents of this description. So may G.o.d help me, and his Holy Gospels which I touch with my own hands. I, the above-named Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as above, and in witness thereof with my own hand have subscribed this present writing of my abjuration, which I have recited word for word. At Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, 22nd June, 1633. I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand."

Those who believe the story about his muttering to a friend, as he rose from his knees, "e pur si muove," do not realize the scene.

1st. There was no friend in the place.

2nd. It would have been fatally dangerous to mutter anything before such an a.s.semblage.

3rd. He was by this time an utterly broken and disgraced old man; wishful, of all things, to get away and hide himself and his miseries from the public gaze; probably with his senses deadened and stupefied by the mental sufferings he had undergone, and no longer able to think or care about anything--except perhaps his daughter,--certainly not about any motion of this wretched earth.

Far and wide the news of the recantation spread. Copies of the abjuration were immediately sent to all Universities, with instructions to the professors to read it publicly.

At Florence, his home, it was read out in the Cathedral church, all his friends and adherents being specially summoned to hear it.

For a short time more he was imprisoned in Rome; but at length was permitted to depart, never more of his own will to return.

He was allowed to go to Siena. Here his daughter wrote consolingly, rejoicing at his escape, and saying how joyfully she already recited the penitential psalms for him, and so relieved him of that part of his sentence.

But the poor girl was herself, by this time, ill--thoroughly worn out with anxiety and terror; she lay, in fact, on what proved to be her death-bed. Her one wish was to see her dearest lord and father, so she calls him, once more. The wish was granted. His prison was changed, by orders from Rome, from Siena to Arcetri, and once more father and daughter embraced. Six days after this she died.

The broken-hearted old man now asks for permission to go to live in Florence, but is met with the stern answer that he is to stay at Arcetri, is not to go out of the house, is not to receive visitors, and that if he asks for more favours, or transgresses the commands laid upon him, he is liable to be haled back to Rome and cast into a dungeon.

These harsh measures were dictated, not by cruelty, but by the fear of his still spreading heresy by conversation, and so he was to be kept isolated.

Idle, however, he was not and could not be. He often complains that his head is too busy for his body. In the enforced solitude of Arcetri he was composing those dialogues on motion which are now reckoned his greatest and most solid achievement. In these the true laws of motion are set forth for the first time (see page 167). One more astronomical discovery also he was to make--that of the moon's libration.

And then there came one more crushing blow. His eyes became inflamed and painful--the sight of one of them failed, the other soon went; he became totally blind. But this, being a heaven-sent infliction, he could bear with resignation, though it must have been keenly painful to a solitary man of his activity. "Alas!" says he, in one of his letters, "your dear friend and servant is totally blind. Henceforth this heaven, this universe, which by wonderful observations I had enlarged a hundred and a thousand times beyond the conception of former ages, is shrunk for me into the narrow s.p.a.ce which I myself fill in it. So it pleases G.o.d; it shall therefore please me also."

He was now allowed an amanuensis, and the help of his pupils Torricelli, Castelli, and Viviani, all devotedly attached to him, and Torricelli very famous after him. Visitors also were permitted, after approval by a Jesuit supervisor; and under these circ.u.mstances many visited him, among them a man as immortal as himself--John Milton, then only twenty-nine, travelling in Italy. Surely a pathetic incident, this meeting of these two great men--the one already blind, the other destined to become so.

No wonder that, as in his old age he dictated his masterpiece, the thoughts of the English poet should run on the blind sage of Tuscany, and the reminiscence of their conversation should lend colour to the poem.

Well, it were tedious to follow the petty annoyances and troubles to which Galileo was still subject--how his own son was set to see that no unauthorized procedure took place, and that no heretic visitors were admitted; how it was impossible to get his new book printed till long afterwards; and how one form of illness after another took possession of him. The merciful end came at last, and at the age of seventy-eight he was released from the Inquisition.

They wanted to deny him burial--they did deny him a monument; they threatened to cart his bones away from Florence if his friends attempted one. And so they hoped that he and his work might be forgotten.

Poor schemers! Before the year was out an infant was born in Lincolnshire, whose destiny it was to round and complete and carry forward the work of their victim, so that, until man shall cease from the planet, neither the work nor its author shall have need of a monument.

Here might I end, were it not that the same kind of struggle as went on fiercely in the seventeenth century is still smouldering even now. Not in astronomy indeed, as then; nor yet in geology, as some fifty years ago; but in biology mainly--perhaps in other subjects. I myself have heard Charles Darwin spoken of as an atheist and an infidel, the theory of evolution a.s.sailed as unscriptural, and the doctrine of the ascent of man from a lower state of being, as opposed to the fall of man from some higher condition, denied as impious and un-Christian.

Men will not learn by the past; still they brandish their feeble weapons against the truths of Nature, as if a.s.sertions one way or another could alter fact, or make the thing other than it really is. As Galileo said before his spirit was broken, "In these and other positions certainly no man doubts but His Holiness the Pope hath always an absolute power of admitting or condemning them; but it is not in the power of any creature to make them to be true or false, or otherwise than of their own nature and in fact they are."

I know nothing of the views of any here present; but I have met educated persons who, while they might laugh at the men who refused to look through a telescope lest they should learn something they did not like, yet also themselves commit the very same folly. I have met persons who utterly refuse to listen to any view concerning the origin of man other than that of a perfect primaeval pair in a garden, and I am constrained to say this much: Take heed lest some prophet, after having excited your indignation at the follies and bigotry of a bygone generation, does not turn upon you with the sentence, "Thou art the man."

SUMMARY OF FACTS FOR LECTURE VI

_Science before Newton_

_Dr. Gilbert_, of Colchester, Physician to Queen Elizabeth, was an excellent experimenter, and made many discoveries in magnetism and electricity. He was contemporary with Tycho Brahe, and lived from 1540 to 1603.

_Francis Bacon_, Lord Verulam, 1561-1626, though a brilliant writer, is not specially important as regards science. He was not a scientific man, and his rules for making discoveries, or methods of induction, have never been consciously, nor often indeed unconsciously, followed by discoverers. They are not in fact practical rules at all, though they were so intended. His really strong doctrines are that phenomena must be studied direct, and that variations in the ordinary course of nature must be induced by aid of experiment; but he lacked the scientific instinct for pursuing these great truths into detail and special cases.

He sneered at the work and methods of both Gilbert and Galileo, and rejected the Copernican theory as absurd. His literary gifts have conferred on him an artificially high scientific reputation, especially in England; at the same time his writings undoubtedly helped to make popular the idea of there being new methods for investigating Nature, and, by insisting on the necessity for freedom from preconceived ideas and opinions, they did much to release men from the bondage of Aristotelian authority and scholastic tradition.

The greatest name between Galileo and Newton is that of Descartes.

_Rene Descartes_ was born at La Haye in Touraine, 1596, and died at Stockholm in 1650. He did important work in mathematics, physics, anatomy, and philosophy. Was greatest as a philosopher and mathematician. At the age of twenty-one he served as a volunteer under Prince Maurice of Na.s.sau, but spent most of his later life in Holland.

His famous _Discourse on Method_ appeared at Leyden in 1637, and his _Principia_ at Amsterdam in 1644; great pains being taken to avoid the condemnation of the Church.

Descartes's main scientific achievement was the application of algebra to geometry; his most famous speculation was the "theory of vortices,"