GALILEO. 



More potent, however, was the theological enmity which now openly 

 displayed itself against the man who had proclaimed so many great 

 truths confirming the objectionable Copernican theory of the earth's 

 motion about the sun. The first decided demonstration on the part 

 of the ecclesiastics against our philosopher was a sermon preached by 

 a Dominican friar, in which Galileo and his followers were abused in 

 the most violent terms. The text was made an unbecoming play upon 

 words, and unmeasured personalities formed the subject of the dis- 

 course. It was, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into 

 heaven ? " The preacher impressed upon his audience that "geometry 

 is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished as the 

 authors of all heresies." 



FIG. 48. VIEW OF FLORENCE. 



Galileo, in a letter to the Abbe Castelli, his former pupil, and again 

 in another longer communication nominally addressed to the Grand 

 Duchess of Tuscany, discussed in moderate and sensible language the 

 question then at issue between theology and science. Since Galileo's 

 time, labourers after truth in other fields of science than astronomy 

 have found some of their conclusions impugned on the very same 

 grounds that Galileo controverts in relation to astronomy. 



"In the discussion of natural problems we ought not to begin at 

 the authority of texts of Scripture, but at sensible experiments and 

 necessary demonstrations ; for from the divine word the sacred Scrip- 

 ture and nature did both alike proceed, and I conceive that, concern- 

 ing natural effects, that which either sensible experience sets before 

 our eyes, as necessary demonstrations do prove to us, ought not upon 

 any account to be called into question, much less condemned, upon 



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