124 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



Catholic is to lessen the effect of mistaken decisions by prudent 

 silence or respectful remonstrance in the proper quarter, and not to 

 make scandal worse by inept generalisations and unnecessary 

 bitterness. 



Further on, the Bishop says : 



I do not decline to face the difficulty of Galileo's compulsory 

 retractation. It seems to me that either Galileo had sufficiently 

 strong reasons to prevent his mind from making the retractation or 

 not. I think it possible he had not. It does not seem that he 

 had anything like evidence that the earth moved. If he had not, 

 there was no reason why he should not assent to a strong expres- 

 sion of authority, that authority being one to which he owed filial 

 obedience. . . . Still, if Galileo had present to his mind strong 

 proof of the correctness of his own teachings, I do not hesitate to 

 say that he was wrong, and, indeed, committed sin, in making the 

 retractation demanded. 



On the purely astronomical question whether 

 Galileo had evidence that the Earth moved, I 

 presume that the Bishop means conclusive evidence ; 

 for evidence of some kind he surely had ; not 

 conclusive, it is true, but good as far as it went. 

 Long before Galileo was tried by the tribunal of the 

 Inquisition, his contemporary, Kepler, had published 

 those important astronomical laws which still bear 

 his name, and which tended powerfully to corrobo- 

 rate the theory of the Earth's motion. Apart, how- 

 ever, from this, as I have already intimated, I think 

 there was good ground for the opinion in question. 



This, however, is to some extent a digression. I 

 have quoted the Bishop principally in order to 

 strengthen, by his high authority, the line of argu- 

 ment I have ventured to pursue, which, in effect, is 



