The changes and vicissitudes of war are many, but chiefly in three things: In the seats or stages of the war, in the weapons, and in the manner of conduct. Wars in ancient time seemed to move from east to west; but East and West have no certain points of heaven, and no certainty of observation. But North and South are fixed; and it hath seldom or never been seen that the far southern people have invaded the northern, but contrariwise; whereby it is manifest that the northern tract of the world is in nature the most martial region. Upon the breaking and shivering of a great state and empire, you may be sure to have wars; for the great empires, while they stand, do enervate and destroy the forces of the natives which they have subdued, resting upon their own protecting forces; and when they fail also, all goes to ruin, and they become a prey.... The great accessions and unions of kingdoms do likewise stir up wars; for when a state grows to an over-power it is like a great flood that will be sure to overflow; as it hath been seen in the states of Rome, Turkey, Spain, and others. When a warlike state grows soft and effeminate, they may be sure of a war; for commonly such states are grown rich in the time of their degenerating; and so the prey inviteth, and their decay in valor encourageth a war. In the youth of a state, arms do flourish; in the middle age, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a state mechanical arts and merchandise. Learning hath its infancy, when it is but beginning, and almost childish; then its youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then its strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly its old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust. But it is not good to look too long upon these turning wheels of vicissitude, lest we become giddy. -LORD BACON. THE history of scientific discovery Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa on the 18th of February, 1564. He early developed a taste for classical literature, music, drawing and painting. At the desire of his father, a Florentine nobleman of small fortune, but an excellent mathematician and musician, he entered the University of Pisa, November 5, 1581, to study medicine; but his passion for geometry overbore everything, so that finally he was allowed full scope to his genius for mathematics. In 1583 his observation of the oscillations of the great bronze lamp in the cathedral of Pisa led to the discovery that the pendulum in a small arc moves over equal spaces in equal times, and therefore can be used as a measurer of time. Next followed his essay on the hydrostatic balance, and then his investigation of the centre of gravity in solids. When he began his career as a teacher, the philosophy of Aristotle controlled and impeded the progress of science, but Galileo, by experiments from the leaning tower of Pisa, demonstrated its inaccuracy. Thereupon such a host of enemies arose, that he was glad to accept the vacant chair of mathematics in the University of Padua (1592). His reputa tion soon extended far beyond the university which he adorned. Princes attended his lectures; frequently a thousand persons came to hear him. In 1609 Galileo, in order to have more leisure for experiments, accepted the position of mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and while on a visit to Venice learned that Prince Maurice had been presented with an instrument which made distant objects appear nearer the observer. A Dutchman, John Lippershey, had invented this rude instrument about October, 1608. Galileo, discovering the principle of its action, constructed a telescope that magnified three times. Crowds of the principal citizens flocked to his house to see it. The Doge of Venice obtained the toy for the Senate, and they conferred on Galileo the professorial chair at Padua for life. Soon he completed a telescope which magnified thirty times, and he lost no time applying it to the heavens. He discovered the mountains of the moon, the discs of the planets, and by the 13th of January, 1610, he had discovered the four satellites of Jupiter, which he called the Medicean stars. These discoveries, though opposed by the prejudices of the age, excited great interest in the scientific world. The Grand Duke of Tuscany observed the new planets along with Galileo at Pisa, and induced him to resign his chair at Padua and remove to Florence, with a yearly salary of a thousand florins. In July, 1610, he discovered the spots on the sun, by the observation of which he found that the sun revolves uniformly upon its axis in about twenty-eight days. Next he discovered the rings and satellites of Saturn, and, in December, the crescent form of Venus. Early in 1611 he went to Rome with his best telescope, and in the gardens of the Quirinal he showed the spots of the sun and his other discoveries to the numerous cardinals and prelates, who hastened to do him honor. A work of Galileo's, published in 1612, on Floating Bodies, involved him in harassing disputes with the Aristotelian philosophers. Scientists of the day took part with him against the monks, and a contest arose in which he wielded against them the weapons of sarcasın and ridicule. Galileo may be regarded as having begun the combat by a letter to the Abbé Castelli, in which he maintains that the Scriptures were not meant to teach natural philosophy. Another letter, addressed to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, contained an unanswerable argument, but an appeal was made to the Inquisition. There is reason to believe that Galileo was cited to appear at Rome about the end of 1614. He went, and was lodged in the house of the Tuscan ambassador, and soon after was summoned before the inquisitors to answer for the passage maintaining the motion of the earth and the stability of the sun; which he had taught to his pupils, and tried to reconcile with Scripture. These charges were easily substantiated, and on the 25th of February, 1616, he was forced, under the threat of imprisonment, to renounce his opinions, and pledge himself not again to maintain them. The Inquisition placed the great work of Copernicus, and Kepler's abridgment of it, in the list of prohibited books. Pope Paul V., however, received Galileo graciously, and assured him that the calumnies of his enemies would be unheeded. At In 1623 Cardinal Barberini, who had opposed the sentence against Galileo, was elevated to the pontificate under the title of Urban VIII. The new pope, who had been the friend both of Galileo and Prince Cesi, the founder of the Lyncean Academy, was expected to inaugurate a more enlightened policy. the suggestion of Prince Cesi, Galileo, though an invalid, went to Rome, in 1624, to congratulate Urban on his elevation, and also with the view of obtaining the revocation of the sentence condemning the doctrine of Copernicus. During two months' residence at Rome Galileo had six long audiences with the pope, who loaded him with presents and appointed the Abbé Castelli to be his mathematician. main object of the mission was a failure. Galileo obtained no concession of the astronomical principles denounced by the Inquisition. The In 1632, after a quiet interval of eight years, the storm burst out afresh. Galileo in that year published his great work, The System of the World, in which he discusses the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems in four dialogues, carried on by three persons: Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicius-the last of whom, a follower of Ptolemy and Aristotle, was errone ously supposed to be intended for the pope. Poor Simplicius sinks under the wit of his adversaries; and the former decree of the Inquisition is treated with severe irony. The theologians felt the blow and did not delay to assert the supreme authority of the Church and defend its decisions on questions of science. Galileo, now near his seventieth year, was summoned by the Inquisition, and arrived in Rome February 13, 1633. Until the trial he remained under the roof of the Tuscan ambassador. His examination occupied four different hearings, during the interval from April 12th to June 21st. It is commonly believed that Galileo was actually put to the torture, but it is more probable that, according to the custom, he was only threatened with it, and, thus menaced, he replied, "I do not hold, and I have not held, the opinions of Copernicus since I was ordered to abandon them. I find myself in your hands; do with me what you please. I am here to make my submission; and I have not held this opinion since it was condemned." The next day he was sent in a penitential dress to the convent of Minerva, where the inquisitors were assembled to give judgment. An elaborate sentence was pronounced upon him, detailing his offences, demanding a retraction of his heresies, prohibiting the sale of his System of the World, and committing him to the charge of the Inquisition during pleasure, and to the weekly recitation of the seven penitential psalms during the next three years. In conformity with his sentence, Galileo invoked the divine aid in abjuring the teaching that the earth moved and the sun stood still. There is no truth in the story that he muttered as he rose from his knees, "And yet it moves." He signed the abjuration and was committed to his prison cell. Thus were scientific truths abjured by the timid astronomer, who had not the courage of his convictions. The sentence was publicly read at the universities. The inquisitor at Florence, who had heedlessly licensed the printing of the Dialogues, was reprimanded; and Riccardi, the master of the palace, and Campoli, the secretary of the pope, were dismissed from their offices for having allowed the license to be obtained. |