PART VI. 



THREE years have now elapsed since I finished the 

 Treatise containing all these matters; and I was 

 beginning to revise it, with the view to put it into 

 the hands of a printer, when I learned that persons 

 to whom I greatly defer, and whose authority over 

 my actions is hardly less influential than is my own 

 Reason over my thoughts, had condemned a certain 

 doctrine in Physics, published a short time previ- 

 ously by another individual,* to which I will not say 

 that I adhered, but only that, previously to their 

 censure, I had observed in it nothing which I could 

 imagine to be prejudicial either to religion or 

 to the state, and nothing therefore which would 

 have prevented me from giving expression to it 

 in writing, if Reason had persuaded me of its 

 truth; and this led me to fear lest among my 

 own doctrines likewise some one might be found 

 in which I had departed from the truth, notwith- 

 standing the great care I have always taken not to 

 accord belief to new opinions of which I had not the 

 most certain demonstrations, and not to give 

 expression to aught that might tend to the hurt of 

 any one. This has been sufficient to make me alter 

 my purpose of publishing them ; for although the 

 reasons by which I had been induced to take this 



* Galileo. Tr. 



64 



