Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/355

Rh texts of Joshua and the Psalms were like assumptions of authority. In all that follows it must not be forgotten that Galileo had the free choice of leaving the scriptural interpretations alone and of confining himself to science and to philosophical considerations of a general nature. He chose to enter the lists, and there is every reason to believe that he felt sure of winning.

Galileo's case recalls that of Roger Bacon, nearly four centuries earlier. The science of both these men of genius was, in the main and essentially, illuminating and correct. It was, for both of them, opposed by ignorant men who feared that which they could not understand. Both of them went out of the province in which alone they had authority, to enter another in which their contemporaries and fellows were at least as well able to judge as they. Both of them overbore and offended their colleagues by harshness. When they were brought to trial those very colleagues were, in turn, accusers, jurors and judges. A like fate befell both.

The history of Jordano Bruno does not fall within the scope of this article and need be considered only so far as it affected the contemporaries of Galileo, and Galileo himself. The following paragraphs from Draper's ‘Intellectual Development of Europe’ give the views of a writer who is inclined to present Bruno's history in the most favorable light. The foot notes are my own.

Against the opposition it had to encounter, the heliocentric theory made its way slowly at first. Among those who did adopt it were some whose connection served rather to retard its progress, because of the ultraism of their views, or the doubtfulness of their social position. Such was Bruno, who contributed largely to its introduction into England, and who was the author of a work on the Plurality of Worlds, and of the conception that every star is a sun, having opaque planets revolving about it—a conception to which the Copernican system suggestively leads. Bruno was born (1550) seven years after the death of Copernicus. He became a Dominican, but, like so many other thoughful men of the times, was led into heresy on the doctrine of transubstantiation. Not concealing his opinions he was persecuted, fled, and led a vagabond life in foreign countries, testifying that wherever he went he found scepticism under the polish of hypocrisy, and that he fought not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief. For teaching the rotation of the earth he had to flee to Switzerland, and thence to England, where, at Oxford, he gave lectures on Cosmology. Driven from England, France and Germany in succession, he ventured in his extremity to return to Italy, and was arrested in Venice where he was kept in prison in the Piombi for six years without books, or paper, or friends. Meantime the Inquisition demanded him as having written heretical works. He was therefore surrendered to Rome, and,