130 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



discovery of the real nature of the planetary move- 

 ments.* Small blame, then, must be meted out to 

 those who held on for a time to the system ex- 

 cogitated by so enlightened a man. I do not mean 

 to deny what I have already stated that the 

 Cardinals who put on the Index of forbidden books 

 the works of Copernicus and others, and those who 

 condemned Galileo, were unable, astronomically 

 speaking, to read the signs of the times. All 

 I am asserting is that there was much, even 

 from a scientific point of view, to excuse their 

 inability. 



They put forward as their main objection that 

 the new theory contradicted Holy Scripture, and 

 adhered to that rigidly literal interpretation of it, 

 which has since then been necessarily given up, and 

 which seems somewhat strange to us, accustomed as 

 we now are to a far greater latitude of interpretation 

 than they even dreamed of. We who have learned 

 that the six days of Creation are not to be taken in 

 their strict sense ;t who have sound reason for holding 

 that the Deluge was only universal in the sense of 

 covering that part of the earth then inhabited by the 



* Tycho Brahe discovered two out of the principal inequalities 

 in the Moon's motion known to astronomers as the Variation and 

 the Annual Equation ; the third, which is the most ohvious of all 

 and is called the Evection, was discovered by Ptolemy. 



f The figurative interpretation, however, in this instance is as 

 old as St. Augustine, though his speculations lead him to a 

 different conclusion from that of modern scientific men; namely, 

 that of supposing the actual creation to be the work of one moment. 



