ii6 HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 



were heard that counsellors totally inexperienced in astronomical ob- 

 servations ought not, by hasty prohibitions, to clip the wings of specu- 

 lative minds. My zeal could not keep silence when I heard these rash 

 lamentations, and I thought it proper, as being fully informed with 

 regard to that most prudent determination, to appear publicly on the 

 theatre of the world as a witness of the actual truth. I happened at 

 that time to be in Rome. I was admitted to the audiences and enjoyed 

 the approbation of the most eminent prelates of that Court, nor did the 

 publication of that decree occur without my receiving some prior in- 

 timation of it. Wherefore, it is my intention in this present work to 

 show to foreign nations that as much is known of this matter in Italy, 

 and particularly in Rome, as ultramontane diligence can ever have 

 formed any notion of, and collecting together all my own speculations 

 on the Copernican system, to give them to understand that the know- 

 ledge of all these preceded the Roman censures, and that from this 

 country proceed, not only dogmas for the salvation of the soul, but also 

 ingenious discoveries for the gratification of the understanding. With 

 this object I have taken up in the dialogue the Copernican side of the 

 question, treating it as a pure mathematical hypothesis, and endeavour- 

 ing in every artificial manner to represent it as having the advantage, 

 not over the opinion of the stability of the earth absolutely, but ac- 

 cording -to the manner in which that opinion is defended by some, 

 who, indeed, profess to be Peripatetics, but retain only the name, and 

 are contented, without improvement, to worship shadows, not philo- 

 sophizing with their own reason, but only from the recollection of four 

 principles imperfectly understood." 



The persons of the dialogue in Galileo's work are three in number : 

 the principal interlocutor being the expounder of the Copernican doc- 

 trines, who answers the ordinary and absurd objections brought for- 

 ward by a philosopher of the Aristotelean and Ptolemaic school ; while 

 the third personage, who proposes the real difficulties, also enlivens the 

 debate with amusing illustrations. No sooner had the work been pub- 

 lished than the Inquisition resolved to proceed against the author, and 

 Galileo was summoned to Rome to answer in person before that odious 

 tribunal, though the Duke of Tuscany expostulated through his am- 

 bassador at the Pontifical Court, and urged that the advanced years 

 and feeble health of the illustrious philosopher rendered him unfit for 

 such a journey. But the ecclesiastical authorities were inexorable, and 

 the venerable sage was compelled to appear for the fourth time in 

 Rome, where he arrived on the i4th of February, 1633, worn out by 

 age, fatigue, and infirmities, to answer before the tribunals of the Church 

 the charge of scandalous contempt of her authority. And this was at 

 a period when, in Italy at least, the Church appeared to retain, her 

 ancient power, and was invested with undiminished pomp and splen- 

 dour. The vast and magnificent structure that for more than a cen- 

 tury had been rising upon the Vatican Hill, and upon which had been 



