CAVENDISH 43 



If the Church punishes in one age, it condones in 

 another. Pope Leo XIII. removed from the Index Librorum 

 Prohibitorum the two works of Galileo De Revolutionism 

 and The Dialogues on Motion, one of which asserted that 

 "the earth was not the centre of the universe, nor im- 

 movable, but that it moves even with diurnal motion," 

 this being considered " a proposition absurd and false in 

 philosophy and erroneous in faith." Sentence was pro- 

 nounced on 22nd June 1633, so that the master's great 

 works have been forbidden to the faithful two hundred 

 and sixty-eight years ! The whole proceeding was strange 

 and irregular. Pope Urban VIII. did not sign the con- 

 demnation. Copernicus (1473-1543), a priest, taught the 

 same doctrine; and Kepler (1571-1630), by his planetary 

 laws, had founded the new astronomy. Galileo (1564- 

 1642) only confirmed what they had taught. The year 

 that he died Newton was born, in a land where no 

 Inquisition could stay inquiry. Moreover, in England 

 the Copernican theory created no religious alarm ! . . . 

 More imperishable than the marble monument in Santa 

 Croce are the two books liberated from the Index. . . . 

 Cavendish performed a monumental feat in weighing the 

 earth, although one which would have brought him before 

 the members of the Inquisition had he lived in Italy or 

 Spain in the sixteenth century ! 



