THE PATH OF EVOLUTION 



be necessary to print the book in Rome. This Galileo 

 dared not do, since he had many enemies there who 

 would surely frustrate his plans. Taking advantage 

 of an epidemic then raging in Rome, he wrote again 

 to the Master of the Sacred College, asking permis- 

 sion to print it at Florence on condition that he 

 should have it again examined in that town. The 

 Prelate gave him the address of a new censor, but 

 required him to return the former approval to him, 

 so that he might again see the terms in which he had 

 given it. Having received the document, he would 

 make no further answer, though Galileo used every 

 possible endeavor to obtain it. Failing in this, he was 

 obliged to content himself with the approval of the 

 Censor in Florence. 



In order to make himself safe from possible conse- 

 quences, he represented his book to be an apology for 

 the judgment of Rome in condemning the Copernican 

 doctrine. The opening and closing paragraphs thereof 

 were so worded as to support this idea; but the tenor 

 of the dialogues soon disproved it. The excitement 

 and rage among the ecclesiastics at Rome, when it 

 was published, was beyond description. Galileo 

 vainly attempted to escape by alleging that he had sub- 

 mitted his book to the Holy Chair; vainly asserted 

 that he had only presented the two systems of Ptolemy 

 and of Copernicus as philosophical problems, without 



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