GALILEO GALILEI 37 



ship is in motion or at rest. Also the peculiar effects which 

 are noticed when the ship starts or stops, and the law of 

 inertia comes into action, are dealt with; for example, water 

 in a vessel upon a ship. All this is clearly put forward. 



The dialogue received the papal imprimatur, although 

 certain alterations had to be made, particularly at the begin- 

 ning and end, and Galileo agreed to these. The publication 

 aroused great enthusiasm on one side but fierce hatred on the 

 other. The further Galileo progressed in knowledge, the 

 sharper became the opposition between the spirits of light 

 and the spirits of darkness; but the first were, as always, in the 

 minority, and the power was in the hands of the latter. 

 Power of this kind desires unlimited rule for force, for it feels 

 that it is opposed to the progress of reality, and hence that the 

 smallest advance in the ordinary sense of reality can become 

 fatal to it. But power of this kind easily spreads by means of 

 intrigue, and finds the means to build up great majorities for 

 itself out of weak minds. 



The Jesuits managed this with great skill in their opposi- 

 tion to Galileo; with suppressed fury they saw themselves 

 made ridiculous, since the complete defeats suffered by Sim- 

 plicio in the Dialogues were also their defeats. They did not 

 rest until they had convinced the Pope that Simplicio could 

 be meant for none other than themselves. On the i st October, 

 1632, the sixty-nine year old Galileo was again cited before 

 the Inquisition in Rome. After a journey which itself was a 

 severe trial to him, the hearing took place, which ended in the 

 formal rejection by Galileo of the doctrine of the moving 

 earth, according to the predetermined plan of the Pope 1 

 It is no longer possible to obtain the truth concerning Galileo's 

 statements, since the documents of the hearing, which were 

 only open to public inspection 250 years later, appear to give 

 rise to the suspicion of interpolations and erasures.^ There is 

 nowhere any question of testing the proofs of Galileo's 

 1 See the work of Wohlwill already referred to on p. 27, footnote. 



