GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 163 



for the fact in any way but by the annual motion of 

 the Earth, unless we suppose some instrumental error 

 to have occurred. There have been so many of these 

 in times past that it may seem rash to exclude such a 

 possibility, but, considering the perfection of modern 

 scientific instruments, it is in the highest degree 

 improbable ; and we may fairly reckon the parallaxes 

 of the stars as a strong confirmation of the already 

 strong evidence in favour of the Copernican theory 

 a theory which, as we have seen, was, from a purely 

 scientific point of view, very probable in the days of 

 G-alileo, overwhelmingly probable after the great 

 discovery of Newton, and at the present time, with 

 all the light that subsequent research and observa- 

 tion have thrown on it, scarcely short of a moral 

 certainty. 



I may repeat once more that it has not, indeed, 

 that absolute physical certainty, arising from direct 

 experiment, which has been obtained in other 

 scientific investigations ; but, allowing for this faint 

 element of instability, we may fairly say that no 

 truth of natural philosophy stands on a firmer basis. 



And for Galileo, who lived before the day when, 

 as Whewell says, " Astronomy passed from boyhood 

 to mature manhood/' we may fairly say that, after 

 we have censured his faults and his errors, after we 

 have ascertained that he was not a hero or a " martyr 

 of science/' we must still recognise the fact that he 

 was one of the greatest natural philosophers of his 



