diseased, infirm, and old?  What had he more to gain?  Was it not a good time to die and consummate his protests?  Only one hundred and fifty years before, one of his countrymen had accepted torture and death rather than recant his religious opinions.  Why could not Galileo have been as great in martyrdom as Savonarola?  He was a renowned philosopher and brilliant as a man of genius,—­but he was a man of the world; he loved ease and length of days.  He could ridicule and deride opponents,—­he could not suffer pain.  He had a great intellect, but not a great soul.  There were flaws in his morality; he was anything but a saint or hero.  He was great in mind, and yet he was far from being great in character.  We pity him, while we exalt him.  Nor is the world harsh to him; it forgives him for his services.  The worst that can be said, is that he was not willing to suffer and die for his opinions:  and how many philosophers are there who are willing to be martyrs?

Nevertheless, in the eyes of philosophers he has disgraced himself.  Let him then return to Florence, to his own Arceti.  He is a silenced man.  But he is silenced, not because he believed with Copernicus, but because he ridiculed his enemies and confronted the Church, and in the eyes of blinded partisans had attacked divine authority.  Why did Copernicus escape persecution?  The Church must have known that there was something in his discoveries, and in those of Galileo, worthy of attention.  About this time Pascal wrote:  “It is vain that you have procured the condemnation of Galileo.  That will never prove the earth to be at rest.  If unerring observation proves that it turns round, not all mankind together can keep it from turning, or themselves from turning with it.”

But let that persecution pass.  It is no worse than other persecutions, either in Catholic or Protestant ranks.  It was no worse than burning witches.  Not only is intolerance in human nature, but there is a repugnance among the learned to receive new opinions when these interfere with their ascendency.  The opposition to Galileo’s discoveries was no greater than that of the Protestant Church, half a century ago, to some of the inductions of geology.  How bitter the hatred, even in our times, to such men as Huxley and Darwin!  True, they have not proved their theories as Galileo did; but they gave as great a shock as he to the minds of theologians.  All science is progressive, yet there are thousands who oppose its progress.  And if learning and science should establish a different meaning to certain texts from which theological deductions are drawn, and these premises be undermined, there would be the same bitterness among the defenders of the present system of dogmatic theology.  Yet theology will live, and never lose its dignity and importance; only, some of its present assumptions may be discarded.  God will never be dethroned from the world he governs; but some of his ways may appear to be different from what was once supposed.  And all science is not only progressive, but it appears to be bold and scornful and proud,—­at least, its advocates are and ever have been contemptuous of all other departments of knowledge but its own.  So narrow and limited is the human mind in the midst of its triumphs.  So full of prejudices are even the learned and the great.