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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



" Endowod with a talent essentially spontane- 

 ous, Bruno seems to lose Ms power and be thrown 

 off his balance, on all occasions where patient and 

 silent meditation is indispensable ; where the main 

 point is to ascertain, to verity, to demonstrate — not 

 merely to affirm confidently, and conclude precipi- 

 tately. Though highly instructed, he was auda- 

 cious rather than studious, speculative rather than 

 observant; prone rather to draw on his own ideal 

 stock and deal in a jiriori reasonings, than to col- 

 lect data for well-grounded conclusions from ex- 

 perience, and from these, with due circumspection, 

 deduce rules and principles. He did not always 

 care to confront the results of his speculations with 

 the observable phenomena which compose the his- 

 tory of Nature and society. He dreaded, or rather 

 disdained, to apply to his own speculations that 

 severe criticism, that unsparing revision, without 

 which the most prolific brains produce in philoso- 

 phy only ephemeral opinions. Science profits by 

 the lights struck out — the sallies hazarded — by 

 geniuses of that kind, but cannot be said to owe to 

 them its substantial and permanent acquisitions. 

 The most solid and real service such a genius as 

 Bruno can render, is to inflame the soul with a 

 generous ardor for ideal truth." 



It is a noticeable coincidence that the same 

 Doge of Venice, Pasquale Cicogna, who signed 

 the decree, on the part of the Venetian Govern- 

 ment, for the extradition of Giordano Bruno to 

 that of Rome, had signed, a few months before, 

 the appointment of Galileo Galilei as Professor 

 of Mathematics in the University of Padua. 

 Neither signature, at the time it was affixed, 

 might seem of much moment ; but the proceed- 

 ings which were taken against Bruno by the 

 Roman Inquisition paved the way for those after- 

 ward taken by the same tribunal against Galileo. 

 One and the same principle was involved in both 

 cases : that principle was the assumed right of 

 the Church to control the march of Science. And 

 certainly never was science laid more open to 

 censure by its imperfectly qualified representa- 

 tive than in the case of Bruno. So far as burning 

 . Bruno went, the Church proved its power. Rome 

 proved her power a second time by condemning 

 the Copernican doctrine in the unexceptionable 

 shape in which that doctrine was presented by 

 Galileo. But by so doing, she discredited forever 

 her authority in the domain of intellect by the 

 despotic abuse of that authority at the dawn of 

 an era which would no longer confound articles 

 of faith with laws of science. 



Giordano Bruno had been burned at Rome in 

 the sight of the multitude flocking to the Eternal 

 City from all parts of Europe to celebrate the 

 jubilee year 1C00. Thirty-two years afterward 



Galileo was forced from under the feeble protec- 

 tion of the young Grand-duke Ferdinand of Tus- 

 cany before the Roman Holy Office, to answer for 

 bis stubborn adherence to the discoveries of 

 modern astronomy, by which that tribunal told 

 him he had made himself vehemently suspected 

 of heresy. The treatment of Bruno, as we have 

 already seen, had been, in a manner, provoked 

 (if that could have justified it) by the multiplied 

 indiscretions of the Nolan knight-errant of phi- 

 losophy. Of the treatment of Galileo Rome her- 

 self has become ashamed. 



For more than two centuries " the starry Ga- 

 lileo, with his woes," has engaged the world's 

 sympathies ; yet it is only within the last few 

 years that proper pains have been taken to place 

 before general readers the plain tale of his trials. 



The most impartial review of the relations of 

 Galileo with Rome is found in the pages of his 

 thoroughly conscientious and liberal Roman Cath- 

 olic biographer, Henri Martin, to whom we are 

 also indebted for the fullest estimate of the scien- 

 tific labors of his life. " If Bacon," says Sir Da- 

 vid Brewster, 1 " had never lived, the student of 

 Nature would have found in the writings and la- 

 bors of Galileo, not only the boasted principles 

 of the inductive philosophy, but also their prac- 

 tical application to the highest efforts of inven- 

 tion and discovery." 



Galileo's great glory was his resolute rebellion 

 from time-honored tradition, and his signal inau- 

 guration of the spirit and methods of modern 

 science. 



" Galileo," says M. Henri Martin, " laid it down 

 as a principle always to ascend from exact and math- 

 ematically precise observation of effects to positive 

 knowledge of causes and laws. Long before 1637 

 [the date of Descartes's'Discours delaMethode'], 

 long before 1020 [the date of Bacon's ' Novum Or- 

 ganon Scientiarum'], Galileo had introduced by 

 precept and example this complete and definitive 

 method of the physical sciences. He had, in so 

 doing, to struggle against the modern Peripatetics, 

 against the a priori method, handed down from 

 Aristotle, in the study of Nature. In his ' Saggia- 

 tore' [Assayer], in his 'Dialogues on the Two 

 Principal Systems of the World,' and more espe- 

 cially in his 'Dialogues on the New Sciences' — 

 his last and most finished work — Galileo, in demon- 

 strating the legitimacy and efficacy of his meth- 

 od, lays special stress on that part of it which Ba- 

 con had neglected, and without which that method 

 would have been impotent to regenerate the study 

 of physical science. This indispensable part of the 

 experimental observation of physical facts is the 

 measure of quantities. 



» " Martyrs of Science." 



