THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 401 



one inspired. His battle is severe. He is sometimes abused, some- 

 times ridiculed, sometimes imprisoned. Protestants in Styria and at 

 Tubingen, Catholics at Rome press upon him,' but Newton, Huyghens 

 and the other great leaders follow, and to science remains the victory. 



And yet the war did not wholly end. During the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, in all France, no one dared openly teach the Copernican theory, 

 and Cassini, the great astronomer, never declared it.^ In 1672, Father 

 Riccioli, a Jesuit, declared that there were precisely forty-nine argu- 

 ments for the Copernican theory and seventy-seven against it ; so that 

 there remained twenty-eight reasons for preferring the orthodox 

 theory.^ Toward the end of the seventeenth century also, even Bos- 

 suet, the " eagle of Meaux," among the loftiest of religious thinkers, 

 declared for the Ptolemaic theory as the Scriptural theory,* and in 

 1746 Boscovich, the great mathematician of the Jesuits, used these 

 words : " As for me, full of respect for the Holy Scriptures and the 

 decree of the Holy Inquisition, I regard the earth as immovable ; 

 nevertheless, for simplicity in explanation, I will argue as if the earth 

 moves, for it is proved that of the two hypotheses the appearances 

 favor that idea." ^ 



The Protestantism of England was no better. In 1772 sailed the 

 famous English expedition for scientific discovery under Cook. The 

 greatest by far of all the scientific authorities chosen to accompany it 

 was Dr. Priestley. Sir Joseph Banks had especially invited him ; but 

 the clergy of Oxford and. Cambridge intervened. Priestley was con- 

 sidered unsound in his views of the Trinity ; it was declared that this 

 would vitiate his astronomical observations ; he was rejected and the 

 expedition cripple d. 



iSJor has the opposition failed even in our own time. On the 5th 

 of May, 1826, a great multitude assembled at Thorn to celebrate the 

 three hundredth anniversary of Kopernik, and to unveil Thorwaldsen's 

 statue of him. 



Kopernik had lived a pious. Christian life. He was well known 



' Fromundus, speaking of Kepler's explanation, says: " Vix teneo ebullientem risum." 

 It is almost equal to the New York Church Journal, speaking of John Stuart Mill as 

 " that small sciolist," and of the preface to Dr. Draper's recent work as " chippering." 

 How a journal generally so fair in its treatment of such subjects can condescend to use 

 such weapons is one of the wonders of modern journalism. For Protestant persecution of 

 Keplor, see vol. i., p. 392. 



^ For Cassmi's position, see Henri Martin, " Hist, de France," vol. xiii., p. 175. 



^ Daunou, " Etudes Historiques," vol. ii., p. 439. 



* Bossuet, see Bertrand., p. 41. 



* Boscovich. This was in 1746, but in 1785 Boscovich seemed to feel his position in 

 view of history, and apologized abjectly. Bertrand, pp. 60, 61. See also Whewell's 

 noticfe of Le Sueur and Jacquier's introduction to their edition of Newton's " Principia." 

 For the most recent proofs of the Copernican theory, by discoveries of Bunsen, Bischoff, 

 Benzenburg, and others, see Jevons, "Principles of Science." 



See Weld, " History of the Royal Society," vol. ii., p. 56, for the facts and the ad- 

 mirable letter of Priestley upon this rejection. 

 VOL. vni. 26 



