THE MEDIAEVAL ATTITUDE 



danger, not, however, to the author who had died be- 

 fore his treatise was printed. Amongst the ardent be- 

 lievers in the new system was Galileo, and in his 

 hands the veil was rudely torn away and the system 

 brought forth boldly as a fact. Armed with the new 

 telescope which he had invented, he discovered the 

 libration of Venus and the moons of Jupiter. By the 

 first discovery he proved that the planet was not made 

 of celestial substance, as was firmly believed by the 

 Aristotelians, since it shone only by light reflected 

 from the sun and, also, that it revolved about the 

 sun. By the second discovery he brought out the 

 astounding fact that there existed celestial bodies in- 

 visible to the human eye.^ In the opinion of the day 

 the existence of invisible stars was flat heresy and con- 

 trary to Holy Scripture. The stars were made for 

 man, that the glory of the firmament might be a con- 

 stant sign of the power of God; and would it not be 

 accusing God of folly or deceit to suppose He had 

 made stars which we could not see*? Glowing with 

 the pure, celestial fire which was also symbolical of 

 the soul, and being made by God, they could neither 

 be added to, nor destroyed. Comets and other trans- 



9 Galileo also discovered sun-spots which were an impossibility ac- 

 cording to the Aristotelian conception of the purity of the celestial 

 substance. The Jesuit Father Christopher Scheiner was rash enough 

 to claim priority to Galileo. When he communicated his discovery 

 to the Provincial of his Order, the latter replied : "I have read 

 Aristotle's writings from end to end many times, and I can assure 

 you I have nowhere found anything similar to what you describe. 

 Go, my son, and tranquillize yourself ; be assured that what you 

 take for spots on the sun are the fault of your glasses, or of your 

 eyes." 



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