346 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their way as Galileo demonstrated them triumphantly to friends and 

 enemies. Arguments of all sorts were brought against them and 

 against the heliocentric theory which they supported. 



Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles; the earth has no limbs 

 and muscles, therefore it does not move. It is angels who make Saturn, 

 Jupiter, the sun, etc., turn round. If the earth revolved, it must, also, have 

 an angel in the center to set it in motion; but only devils live there; it would 

 therefore be a devil who would impart motion to the earth. . . . (Scipio 

 Chiaramonti. ) 



Since it can be certainly gathered from Scripture that the heavens move 

 above the earth, and since a circular motion requires something fixed around 

 which to move . . . the earth is at the center of the universe. (Polocco, 1644.) 



If the earth is a planet, and only one among several planets, it can not 

 be that any such great things have been done especially for it as the Christian 

 doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, 

 they must be inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from 

 Adam? How can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can 

 they have been redeemed by the Savior? 



The last paragraph is probably an answer to Galileo's opinion (Decem- 

 ber, 1612) that the moon and planets may be inhabited, though by 

 creatures different from ourselves. Galileo writes to Kepler (August, 

 1610): 



You are the first and almost the only person who . . . has given entire 

 credence to my statements. . . . We will not trouble ourselves about the 

 abuse of the multitude. ... In Pisa, Florence, Bologna, Venice and Padua 

 many have seen the planets; but all are silent on the subject and undecided. 

 . . . What is to be done? ... I think, my Kepler, we will laugh at the 

 extraordinary stupidity of the multitude. What do you say to the leading 

 philosophers of the faculty here, to whom I have offered a thousand times to 

 show my studies, but who . . . have never consented to look at planets, nor 

 Moon, nor telescope? Verily, just as serpents close their ears, so do these men 

 close their eyes to the light of truth. . . . People of this sort think that 

 philosophy is a kind of book like the Aeneid or the Odyssey and that the 

 truth is to be sought, not in the universe, not in nature, but (I use their own 

 words) by comparing texts! How you would laugh, he goes on, if you heard 

 the first philosopher of Pisa trying to ' argue the new planets out of heaven.' 



While Galileo was teaching the elements of Euclid at Padua his 

 colleague, Cremonini, was expounding Aristotle's de Ccelo. It was 

 Cremonini who refused to look at the newly discovered satellites of 

 Jupiter through the telescope, alleging as a reason that their existence 

 was quite contrary to Aristotle's philosophy. It was the same Cremo- 

 nini who, in 1619, with a dignity and firmness that must be sincerely 

 admired, flatly refused to change the substance of his university lec- 

 tures at the demand of the Grand Inquisitor of Padua. His duty was 

 to expound the words of Aristotle as he found them, he said; he de- 

 clined to teach as Aristotle's any doctrine that he did not sincerely 

 believe to be the master's. Let this manly stand be counted off against 

 his refusal to be convinced against authority. He is reputed to have 



