740 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was kept on the Index ; and although the papal hull still bound 

 the " Index ^' and the condemnations in it on the consciences of 

 the faithful ; and although colleges and universities under Church 

 control were compelled to teach the old doctrine ; — it was seen hy 

 clear-sighted men everywhere that this victory of the Church 

 was a disaster to the victors. 



New champions pressed on. Campanella, full of vagaries as 

 he was, wrote his Apology for Galileo, though for that and 

 other heresies, religious and political, he seven times underwent 

 torture. 



And Kepler comes : he leads science on to greater victories. 

 Copernicus, great as he was, could not disentangle scientific rea- 

 soning entirely from the theological bias. The doctrines of Aris- 

 totle and Thomas Aquinas as to the necessary superiority of the 

 circle had vitiated the minor features of his system, and left 

 breaches in it through which the enemy was not slow to enter ; 

 but Kepler sees these errors, and by wonderful genius and vigor 

 he gives to the world the three laws which bear his name, and 

 this fortress of science is complete. He thinks and speaks as one 

 inspired. His battle is severe. He is solemnly warned by the 

 Protestant Consistory of Stuttgart " not to throw Christ's king- 

 dom into confusion with his silly fancies," and as solemnly or- 

 dered to " bring his theory of the world into harmony with 

 Scripture '' : he is sometimes abused, sometimes ridiculed, some- 

 times imprisoned. Protestants in Styria and Wiirtemberg, Cath- 

 olics in Austria and Bohemia j^ress ujjon him ; but Newton, Hal- 

 ley, Bradley, and other great astronomers follow, and to science 

 remains the victory.* 



Yet this did not end the war. During the seventeenth cent- 

 ury, in all France, after all the splendid proofs added by Kepler, 

 no one dared openly teach the Copernican theory, and Cassini, 

 the great astronomer, never declared it. In 1672 the Jesuit, Fa- 

 ther Riccioli. declared that there were precisely forty-nine argu- 

 ments for the Copernican theory and seventy-seven against it. 

 Toward the end of the seventeenth century, after the demon- 

 strations of Sir Isaac Newton, even Bossuet, the great Bishop of 



*ror Campanella, see Amabile, Fra Tommaso Campanella, Napoli, 1882, especially 

 vol. ill ; also, Libri, vol. iv, pp. 149 et scq. Fromimdus, speaking of Kepler's explana- 

 tion, says, " Vix teneo ebnllientem risum." This is almost equal to the New lork Church 

 Journal, speaking of John Stuart Mill as "that small sciolist," and of the preface to Dr. 

 Draper's great work as " chippcring." How a journal, generally so fair in its treatment of 

 such subjects, can condescend to such weapons, is one of the wonders of modern journal- 

 ism. For the persecution of Kepler, see vol. i, p. 392 ; also Heller, Geschichte der Physik, 

 vol. i, pp. 281 et spq. ; also Eeuschle, Kepler und die Astronomic, Frankfurt a. M., 1871, 

 pp. 87 efseq.; also Professor Pigwart, Klcine Schriften pp. 211 pf seq. There is poetic 

 justice in the fact that these two last-named books come from Wiirtemberg professors. 

 See also the Xcw Englander for March, 1884, p. 1*78. 



