Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/42

6 independent, and not based on religious notions, afforded them satisfaction. Under these circumstances recurrence to the past was real progress.

Unconditional surrender to the ideas of others, entire adoption of opinions, some of which were not too well verified, might suit mediocrity, but it could not suffice for the powerful mind of Galileo, who was striving to find out the truth for himself. The genius of the young student rebelled fiercely against rigid adherence to an antiquated standpoint. To the horror of the followers of Aristotle, who were quite taken aback at such unheard-of audacity, he resolutely attacked in public disputations many oracular dicta of their great master hitherto unquestioned, and this even then made him many enemies, and acquired for him the epithet of "the Wrangler."

Two circumstances occur during Galileo's student years, which, in their main features, are not without historical foundation, although in detail they bear an anecdotal impress. One, which is characteristic of Galileo's observant eye, shows us the student of nineteen devoutly praying in the Cathedral at Pisa; but he seems to have soon wearied of this occupation, for he dreamily fixed his eye on the Maestro Possenti's beautiful lamp, hanging from an arch, which, in order to light it more readily, had been moved out of its vertical position and then left to itself. The oscillations were at first considerable, became gradually less and less, but notwithstanding the varying distances, they were all performed in the same time, as the young medical student discovered to a nicety by feeling his pulse. The isochronism of the vibrations of the pendulum was discovered!

The other story refers to Galileo's first mathematical studies. Gherardini relates that he was scarcely acquainted with the elements of mathematics up to his twentieth year, which, by the by, seems almost incredible. But while he was