THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 399 



la vain did Galileo try to protect himself by his famous letter to 

 the duchess, in which he insisted that theological reasoning should not 

 be applied to science. The rest of the story the world knows by 

 heart ; none of the recent attempts have succeeded in mystifying it. 

 The whole world will remember forever how Galileo was subjected 

 certainly to indignity and imprisonment equivalent to physical tor- 

 ture ; * how he was at last forced to pronounce publicly, and on his 

 knees, his recantation as follows : " I, Galileo, being in my seventieth 

 year, being a prisoner and on my knees, and before your eminences, 

 having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, 

 abjure, curse, and detest, the error and heresy of the movement of 

 the earth." ' 



He was vanquished indeed, for he had been forced, in the face of 

 all coming ages, to perjure himself. His books were condemned, his 

 friends not allowed to erect a monument over his bones. To all ap- 

 peai'ance his work was overthrown. 



Do not understand me here as casting blame on the Roman Church 

 as such. It must, in fairness, be said that some of its best men tried 

 to stop this great mistake ; even the pope himself would have been 

 glad to stop it ; but the current was too strong.^ The whole of the 

 civilized world was at fault, Protestant as well as Catholic, and not 

 any particular part of it. It was not the fault of religion, it was the 

 fault of the short-sighted views which narrow-minded, loud-voiced 

 men are ever prone to mix in with religion, and to insist is re- 

 ligion.* 



Were there time, I would refer at length to some of the modern 

 mystifications of the history of Galileo. One of the latest seems to 

 Ijave for its groundwork the theory that Galileo was condemned for a 

 breacli of good taste and etiquette. But those who make this defense 

 make the matter infinitely worse for those who committed the great 



' It is not probable that torture in the ordinary sense was administered to Galileo. 

 See Th. Martin, " Vie de Galilee," for a fair summing up of the case. 



"For text of the abjuration, see "Private Life of Galileo," Appendix. As to the 

 time when the decree of condemnation was repealed, various authorities differ. Artaud, 

 p. 307, cited in an apologetic article in Dublin Review, September, 1865, says that Gali- 

 leo's famous dialogue was published in 1744, at Padua, entire, and with the usual appro- 

 bations. The same article also declares that in 1818 the ecclesiastical decrees were re- 

 pealed by Pius YII., in full Consistory. Whewell says that Galileo's writings, after some 

 opposition, were expunged from the "Index Expurgatorius," in 1818. Cantu, an au 

 thority rather favorable to the Church, says that Copernicus's work remained on the 

 "Index" as late as 1835. Cantu, " Histoire Universelle," vol., xv., p. 483. 



^ For Baronius's remark see De Morgan, p. 26. Also Whewell, vol. i., p. 394. 



For an exceedingly striking statement, by a Roman Catholic historian of genius, as 

 to popular demand for persecution, and the pressure of the lower strata, in ecclesiastical 

 organizations, for cruel measures, see Balmes, " Le Protestantisme compare au Catholi- 

 cisme," etc., 4th ed., Paris, 1855, vol. ii. Archbishop Spaulding has something of the 

 same sort in his Miscellanies. L'Epinois, " Galilee," p. 22, et seq., stretches this as far as 

 possible, to save the reputation of the Church in the Galileo matter. 



