Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/137

 name of religion, or the servility of one of the greatest philosophers of all times in not scorning an unworthy subterfuge in order to disseminate a grain of supposed truth in the world without incurring personal danger.

But in spite of all precautions, in spite of "chimeras," "fictions," "fantasies," and even "the voice from heaven," the circulation of this treatise, based upon the theory of the double motion, would have been an infringement of the assumed absolute prohibition to Galileo, while, thanks to the ingenious accompaniment, it in no way clashed with the decree of 5th March. Galileo's conduct shows plainly enough that he humbly submitted to the ecclesiastical ordinance, but there is not a trace of the prohibition to discuss the doctrine "in any way."

Little, however, as Galileo desired to engage, thus hampered, in any perilous controversies, the next time it was nature herself who enticed him into the field in which his genius and his polemical ingenuity acquired for him both splendid triumphs and bitter foes.

In August, 1618, three comets appeared in the heavens, and the brilliant one in the constellation of the Scorpion strongly attracted the attention of astronomers. Although it was visible until January, 1619, Galileo had very little opportunity of observing it, as he was confined to his bed by a severe and tedious illness. But he communicated his views on comets to several of his friends, and among others to the Archduke Leopold of Austria, who had come to see the sick philosopher. He did not consider them to be real heavenly bodies, but merely atmospheric appearances, columns of vapour which rise from earth to the skies, to a very considerable height, far beyond the moon, and become temporarily visible to the inhabitants of the earth, in the well-known form of a comet, by the refraction of the sun's rays. As he judged comets to be without substance, and placed them on a par with mock suns and the aurora borealis, he