THE NEW COSMOLOGY 



the presence of his persecutors. The tale is one of 

 those fictions which the dramatic sense of humanity 

 is wont to impose upon history, but, like most such 

 fictions, it expresses the spirit if not the letter of 

 truth; for just as no one believes that Galileo's lips 

 uttered the phrase, so no one doubts that the rebellious 

 words were in his mind. 



After his formal renunciation, Galileo was allowed 

 to depart, but with the injunction that he abstain in 

 future from heretical teaching. The remaining ten 

 years of his life were devoted chiefly to mechanics, 

 where his experiments fortunately opposed the Aris- 

 totelian rather than the Hebrew teachings. Galileo's 

 death occurred in 1642, a hundred years after the 

 death of Copernicus. Kepler had died thirteen years 

 before, and there remained no astronomer in the field 

 who is conspicuous in the history of science as a 

 champion of the Copemican doctrine. But in truth 

 it might be said that the theory no longer needed a 

 champion. The researches of Kepler and Galileo had 

 produced a mass of evidence for the Copemican theory 

 which amounted to demonstration. A generation or 

 two might be required for this evidence to make itself 

 everywhere known among men of science, and of 

 course the ecclesiastical authorities must be expected 

 to stand by their guns for a somewhat longer period. 

 In point of fact, the ecclesiastical ban was not tech- 

 nically removed by the striking of the Copemican 

 books from the list of the Index Expurgatorius until 

 the year 1822, almost two hundred years after the date 

 of Galileo's dialogue. But this, of course, is in no 

 sense a guide to the state of general opinion regarding 



