THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



itory stars which occasionally burst into brilliance 

 and then faded out of sight were explained to be 

 luminous exhalations from the earth or mocking 

 bodies created by devils. 



Galileo gathered together all his evidence and pub- 

 lished his great treatise, the Dialoghi delle due mas- 

 sime syste?ne, in which he contrasted the Ptolemaic 

 and Copernican systems and proved with irresistible 

 arguments that the latter is an actual representation 

 of the solar system. But the work was much more 

 than an impersonal presentation of scientific facts. 

 It was a passionate plea for the recognition that truth 

 was to be obtained from observation and reason and 

 not from the authority of either the Bible or Aristotle. 

 In order to drive home his argument he attacked bit- 

 terly and personally the Aristotelian philosophers 

 and the Jesuits. The Church finally saw clearly the 

 danger to its authority and, after a long controversy, 

 Galileo was brought before the Inquisition; when, 

 upon his formal recantation, a light sentence for the 

 time was imposed upon him, his book was suppressed, 

 and the doctrine that the earth possessed two real 

 motions was declared to be a damnable heresy. The 

 effect of his trial and condemnation, which struck at 

 the scientific work then beginning to show great 

 vigour, was widespread. In Holland, Descartes had 

 just completed his mechanical theory of the universe. 

 When the news reached him, he contemplated the de- 

 struction of his work, but he finally published it with 



C loo 3 



