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In 1615, Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition at Rome, and forced to promise that he would "relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun is the center of the world, and immovable, and that the earth moves, nor henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever verbally or in writing."
The ill health to which Galileo was occasionally subject, and the belief that the air of Florence was prejudicial to his complaints, induced him to spend much of his time at Selve, the villa of his friend Salviati. This eminent individual had ever been the warmest friend of Galileo, and seems to have delighted in drawing round him the scientific genius of the age.
The assertion of the motion of the earth was a defiance to all three, and Physical Science threw down her glove by the hand of Galileo. It is not pleasant to think of the immediate result of the combat; to see the champion of science, old, worn, and on his knees before the Cardinal Inquisitor, signing his name to what he knew to be a lie.
The author commences with the Astronomical History of the Satellites. This history contains an almost complete analysis of the discoveries by Maraldi, by Bradley, by Wargentin. The labours of Galileo and his contemporaries are given with less detail and exactness.
Giants, however, are for the most part unintelligent, not to say downright stupid people, and seldom have the sense to know how to use their power wisely think of the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, think of Polyphemus and Ulysses, think of the Inquisition and Galileo.
Opere di Galileo. Milano, 1810, vol. iv. p. 248-257. Through the Cardinal del Monte, the brother-in-law of Ubaldi, the reigning Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de Medici was made acquainted with the merits of our young philosopher; and, in 1589, he was appointed lecturer on mathematics at Pisa.
Even the persecutors of Galileo would never have had the audacity to deny that that train moved. And one felt, comfortably, that the whole Company, with all the Company's resources, was watching over its flying pet, giving it the supreme right of way and urging it forward by hearty good-will. One felt also that the moment had come for testing the amenities of the hotel and the club.
This work was completed in 1630, but, owing to some difficulties in obtaining a license to print it, it was not published till 1632. In obtaining this license, Galileo exhibited considerable address, and his memory has not escaped from the imputation of having acted unfairly, and of having involved his personal friends in the consequences of his imprudence.
If Karl Pearson's notions of the universe were sound, men like Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Newton should have stopped the progress of science before 1700, supposing them to have been honest in the religious convictions they expressed. In 1900 they were plainly forced back; on faith in a unity unproved and an order they had themselves disproved.
The right man can make anything interesting, just as Dean Swift could write an entrancing essay with the broomstick as a central theme. The man's the thing, Hamlet to the contrary, notwithstanding. Galileo knew the Florentine heart, and so he gave lectures on a Florentine: one Dante, who loved a girl named Beatrice. The young Pisan drew diagrams of Dante's Inferno and surely it was nobody's else.
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