Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/50

14 can cause could not be served by mere partisanship, but only by independent fresh researches to prove its correctness, indeed its irrefragability. Nothing but the fulfilment of these conditions formed a justification, either in a scientific or moral point of view, for taking part in overturning the previous views of the universe.

Before the powerful mind of Copernicus ventured to question it, our earth was held to be the centre of the universe, and about it all the rest of the heavenly bodies revolved. There was but one "world," and that was our earth; the whole firmament, infinity, was the fitting frame to the picture, upon which man, as the most perfect being, held a position which was truly sublime. It was an elevating thought that you were on the centre, the only fixed point amidst countless revolving orbs! The narrations in the Bible, and the character of the Christian religion as a whole, fitted this conception exceedingly well; or, more properly speaking, were made to fit it. The creation of man, his fall, the flood, and our second venerable ancestor, Noah, with his ark in which the continuation of races was provided for, the foundation of the Christian religion, the work of redemption;—all this could only lay claim to universal importance so long as the earth was the centre of the universe, the only world. Then all at once a learned man makes the annihilating assertion that our world was not the centre of the universe, but revolved itself, was but an insignificant part of the vast, immeasurable system of worlds. What had become of the favoured status of the earth? And this indefinite number of bodies, equally favoured by nature, were they also the abodes of men? The bare possibility of a number of inhabited worlds could but imperil the first principles of Christian philosophy.

The system of the great Copernicus, however, thanks to the anonymous preface to his famous work, "De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium," had not, up to this time, assumed to be a correct theory, but only a hypothesis, which need not be considered even probable, as it was only intended to facilitate