Scientific Lectures. 209 



Duclicss, in wliicli he insisted tliat theological reasoning should not 

 be applied to science. The rest of the stoiy the world knows by 

 heart. None of the recent attempts have succeeded in mystifying it. 

 The whole world will remember forever how Galileo was subjected 

 certainly to indignit}^ and to imprisonment, possibly to physical tor- 

 ture ; how he was at last forced to pronounce publicly and on his 

 knees his recantation as follows : " I, Galileo, being in my 70th year, 

 being a prisoner and, on my knees and before your eminences, hav- 

 ing before my eyes the Holy Gospels, which I touch with my hands, • 

 abjure, curse, and detest the error and heresy of the movement of the 

 earth," He was vanquished indeed, for he had been forced, in the 

 fjice of all coming ages, to perjure himself. Plis books were con- 

 demned ;* his friends not allowed to erect a monument over his 

 bones ; to all appearance his work was overthrown. 



Position of the Ciiuecii — Descartes and Kepler. 



Do not understand me here as casting blame on the Roman 

 church as such. It must in fairness be said that some of its best 

 men tried to stop this great mistake, but the current was too strong. 

 The whole of the civilized world was at fault, Protestant as well as 

 Catholic, and not any particular part of it. Were there time, I 

 would refer at length to some of the modern mystifications of the 

 history of Galileo. One of the latest seems to have for its ground- 

 work the theory that Galileo was condemned for a breach of good 

 taste and etiquette. But those who make this defense make the 

 matter infinitely worse for those who committed this great wrong. 

 Tliey deprive it of its only palliation ; mistaken conscientiousness. 



And then Kepler comes. He leads science on to greater victories. 

 He throws out the minor errors of Kopernik. He thinks and speaks, 

 as one inspired. His battle is severe ; Protestants in Styria and 

 at Tubingen, Catholics at Rome press upon him, but Newton, Huy- 

 gliens and the other great leaders follow, and to science remains the 

 victory. And yet the war did not wholly end. Toward the end of 

 the seventeenth century even Bossuet, the Eagle of the Means?, 

 most sublime of religious thinkers, declared for the Ptolemaic theory 

 as the Scriptural theory ; and, in 1746, Boscovitch, the great mathcr 

 matician of the Jesuits, used these words : " As for me, full of 

 respect for the Holy Scriptures and the decree of the Holy Inquisi- 

 tion, I regard the earth as immovable. Nevertheless, for simplicity 



*Lctronne. 



[Inst.] 14 



