206 CHILDHOOD OF SCIENCE. 



around the sun." Then came the sentence of the tribunal, 

 banning and anathematizing the doctrine that the sun is the 

 center of the system " as a tenet philosophically false and formally 

 heretical." And then they sentenced that old and infirm philos- 

 opher this band of infallibles ! They bade him abjure and 

 detest the said errors and heresies. They decreed his book to the 

 flames, and they condemned him for life to the dungeons of the 

 Inquisition. 



And did Galileo yield at last? Broken down by age and 

 infirmity, importuned by friends more alarmed than himself at 

 the terrors of that merciless tribunal, he signed his abjuration, 

 yielded all his judges demanded, echoed their curse or ban as 

 their superstition or their hate required. He is not the martyr 

 of science. But as he arose from the floor on which while kneel- 

 ing he had pronounced his great perjury, a spark of the old fire 

 of his manhood came back to him, and he stamped his foot and 

 exclaimed to those about him, " e pur si muove " " and yet it 

 does move." Yes, thou wronged and persecuted philosopher, it 

 moves it will move till the eternal day. And each rotation 

 that lifts the bright sun in the east, each revo)ution that brings 

 again the glad spring, shall attest thy sturdy but over-tried faith, 

 and bring honor to thy venerable name. It was the last of the 

 old man's teachings. Thenceforth he made haste to the bourne 

 which divides us from care. 



