GIORDANO BRUNO AND GALILEO GALILEI 



111 



in a perfect orgy of self-assertion . ... it was the 

 reductio ad absurdum of democracy as an engine of 

 government," and more to the same purpose 

 '(" Order and Progress," p. 370, etc.). 



The passage which Lord Arthur Russell has 

 quoted from an article of mine was written in 

 April, 1871, about three weeks after the forma- 

 tion of the Commune, and referred to the great 

 skill with which many improvised special depart- 

 ments were being administered by workmen. 

 These men were workmen, but they were not 

 isnorant, not untrained, and not incompetent. 

 They were remarkable men, of high education 

 and of rare qualities of character. Nothing is 

 more certain than that these services were con- 

 ducted by these men with singular honesty and 

 ability. Rossel, a youug soldier of fortune, bred 

 up in the military school of the empire, knew 

 nothing of these men, and was utterly incompe- 

 tent to judge them. He " served the Revolution " 

 exactly four weeks, during which time he saw 

 nothing but the journalists, ex-officers, students, 

 and barristers, who invaded the War Office, 

 where folly and conceit reigned rampant. 



But it seems to me idle to attempt to settle a 

 political question by the dying words of a young 

 professional soldier, or the wild delirium of a 

 social revolution. Its crimes and its follies were 

 due to the fact, not that it was managed by work- 

 men, but that it was a blind battle of crude theo- 

 rists and desperate adventurers. It was ruined 

 as a mere government by soldiers of fortune, am- 

 bitious journalists, and conceited men of letters. 

 If any one is satisfied with the authority of Ros- 

 sel for the political incapacity of the people of 

 Paris, I am content to rest on the opinion of a 

 far greater authority, the greatest living states- 



man of France — M. Gambetta. He once said to 

 me, when I asked him if the workmen could pos- 

 sibly follow his far-sighted schemes of political 

 forbearance : " Yes," he said, " le pcuple de Paris 

 c'cst la finesse meme." 



All that I have contended for is that the rare 

 qualities of practical management are occasion- 

 ally found among workmen who have made poli- 

 tics the business of their lives, and there are mo- 

 ments of national crisis in which such new men 

 may do good service to the state. Political in- 

 telligence is not the birthright of any class ; po- 

 litical training is even now very largely diffused 

 among our working masses ; and even statesman- 

 like genius is occasionally found in the heart of 

 the people. Those who know the skill and sa- 

 gacity with which the great cooperative societies, 

 the great trades-unions, and the many industrial 

 organizations of our people have been founded 

 and worked, will not deny that political qualities 

 are widely diffused among them, and that the 

 genius of command is occasionally hidden under 

 the blouse or the frieze. Abraham Lincoln, bred 

 a lumberer and called a rail-splitter, proved a 

 great statesman. Sergeant Hoche was a born 

 general. And Cromwell stepped from a farm to 

 a throne. I repudiate as much as any man the 

 democratic theory, the direct government of 

 masses, the meddling in affairs by ignorance. 

 But then I repudiate the theory even when I see 

 it in a vestry, or in a learned society, or in the 

 House of Commons. I say that all government 

 must be the work of special personal capacity in 

 harmony with an enlightened public opinion. But 

 I deny that this enlightenment is at all peculiar 

 to the privileged orders, or that this capacity is 

 always a monopoly of the rich. 



— Nineteenth Century. 

 [This discussion will he continued and concluded in a folloiving number.— Editok.] 



GIORDANO BRUNO AND GALILEO GALILEI. 



~^TO two characters in history invite a Plutar- 

 -L^ chian comparison and contrast more nat- 

 urally than those of Giordano Bruno, the " knight- 

 errant of philosophy," as he was nicknamed in 

 his own time, and Galileo Galilei, the genuine 

 martyr of exact science. 



Bruno and Galileo were the first conspicuous 

 champions of the Copernican or modern astron- 

 omy, and the former first awakened toward it the 



ominous attention of the Holy Roman Inquisi- 

 tion. The Nolan philosopher-errant had unluck- 

 ily preceded the Pisan professor in the popular 

 exposition of the Copernican system, and he 

 purposely placed that system in the light neces- 

 sarily most obnoxious to ecclesiastical prejudices, 

 by including in his view of it the unhesitating 

 assumption of a plurality of inhabited worlds, 

 peopled similarly to our earth. From that as- 



