DISCOVERY 



CH. 



Fabre, the incomparable naturalist, patiently waiting 

 to discover what is instinct and what is reason in insect- 

 life is, to these vintagers, an object of supreme com- 

 miseration, an imbecile in God's keeping, wherefore they 

 crossed themselves. 



Members of the University of Pisa, and other onlookers, 

 are assembled in the space at the foot of the wonderful 

 leaning tower of white marble in that city one morning 

 in the year 1591. A young professor climbs the spiral 

 staircase until he reaches the gallery surmounting the 

 seventh tier of arches. The people below watch him as 

 he balances two balls on the edge of the gallery, one 

 weighing a hundred times more than the other. The 

 balls are released at the same instant and are seen to 

 keep together as they fall through the air until they are 

 heard to strike the ground at the same moment. Nature 

 has spoken with no uncertain sound, and has given an 

 immediate answer to a question debated for two thousand 

 years. 



' This meddlesome man Galileo must be suppressed," 

 murmured the University fathers as they left the square. 

 " Does he think that by showing us that a heavy and 

 a light ball fall to the ground together he can shake 

 our belief in the philosophy which teaches that a ball 

 weighing one hundred pounds would fall one hundred 

 times faster than one weighing a single pound ? Such 

 disregard of authority is dangerous, and we will see 

 that it goes no further." So they returned to their 

 books to explain away the evidence of their senses ; 

 and they hated the man who had disturbed their philo- 

 sophic serenity. For putting belief to the test of experi- 

 ment, and founding conclusions upon observation, 

 Galileo's reward in his old age was imprisonment by 

 the Inquisition, and a broken heart. That is how a 



