FIG. 46. GALILEO, 



CHAPTER V. 



GALILEO. 



/^ALILEO GALILEI was born at Pisa in 1564, and was the eldest 

 vJ of a family of three sons and three daughters. His father was a 

 man of considerable talent and varied attainments, and published 

 several treatises on music, in one of which a passage occurs showing 

 that he had a conception of true philosophy which was rare in those 

 days, but was fully realized in the career of his illustrious son. " It 

 appears to me," he says, " that they who, in proof of any assertion, rely 

 simply on the weight of authority, without adducing any argument in 

 support of it, act very absurdly : I, on the contrary, wish to be allowed 

 freely to question and freely to answer you without any sort of adula- 

 tion, as well becomes those who are truly in search of truth." Galileo 

 in his boyhood was fond of constructing models of machinery and in- 



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