intellectual capacity, and with moral ability | Aristotelianism was the sole saving faith, still weaker. Having read one of Bruno's in the eyes alike of dogmatic orthodoxy mysterious treatises on his occult science, and alarmed sacerdotalism. "A Platonist this idle young nobleman could not be content without luring to his palace in Venice the possessor of all those boasted secrets of the Lullian art of memory, which formed the charlatan part of poor Bruno's philosophical stock in trade. Teacher and pupil soon got tired of each other: the former failed to teach, and the latter to learn, an universal science which had little else than a merely chimerical existence. Bruno, besides, while he made a great mystery of his occult science, made no mystery at all of his open and scoffing heterodoxy. Mocenigo's conscience became alarmed by his confessor, when he exhorted his penitent - who was ready enough to obey the injunction to denounce the teacher, of whom he was tired, to the Inquisition. in an Aristotelian atmosphere." as Mr. Leslie Stephen says of William Law, “can no more flourish than an Alpine plant transplanted to the lowlands."* The rampant Aristotelians of Bruno's days would have no Platonic plants in their lowlands; or, if any such came there, were presently minded to make firewood of them. "It will be remembered," says M. Bartolmèss, "under what circumstances Bruno's death took place. It was in the midst of an epoch of reaction against Plato and Copernicus - an epoch when Cardinal Bellarmine supplicated Clement VIII. not to tolerate the teaching of Platonic philosophy in the church." "That philosophy," said the learned cardinal, "has too much analogy with Christianity, not to excite fear lest some minds may be alienated from our religion, and attach themselves to Platonism." Even independently of his heresy of inhabited worlds innumerable [observes M. Berti] sentence of death would have been passed The sixteenth century in Italy may be upon Giordano Bruno. He came before the divided pretty equally into two halves; the Holy Office charged with far graver crimes first of which preserved the Platonic trathan Paleario, who was strangled and burned ditions of the Florentine Academy, and for denying the doctrine of Purgatory, disap- the second stiffened into exclusive Aristoproving burial in churches, satirizing his fel- telianism and intolerant orthodoxy. In low-monks, and attributing justification to faith alone. Giordano Bruno was condemned the latter there was an ecclesiastical retroas an apostate, having deserted the order in gression into medieval scholasticism, unwhich he had been consecrated priest-as re-der the double influence of the new zeal for lapsed, having been the subject of repeated internal reform in the Church of Rome, procedures, without having been thereby re- and of the external pressure of Spanish claimed to a religious life. The relapsed, preponderance over the Italian governeven when they had shown signs of repent- ments, which, as in Spain itself, worked ance, were nevertheless delivered over to the mainly through the established ecclesiassecular arm, and were almost always sen- tical machinery. At the opening of the tenced to perpetual imprisonment: even such century, the cultivated mind of Italy, in of them as had performed acts of penitence the highest places of Church and State, were sometimes condemned capitally. Bruno besides was chargeable with the heaviest of all had become all philosophic, and more than crimes that of impenitence - almost always half heathen. Cardinals wrote plays, and punished with fire. The obstinate heretic, patronized pictorial and poetic art on any whom no office of Christian charity has rather than sacred subjects. Nay, Clemavailed to lead to conversion, shall not only ent VII. and his court sat out the perform[say the text-books on the subject] be given ance of Machiavelli's "Mandragola," the over to the secular arm, but burnt alive. It last scene of which (the midnight soliloquy was added, Quando isti pertinaces vivo igne of a priestly pander) is the keenest and cremantur, eorum lingua alliganda est, ne, si bitterest satire ever penned by the wit of libere loqui possint, astantes impiis blasphemiis man on sacerdotal hypocrisy, or self-deluoffendant." sion, at its highest and most comic pitch. All that was changed, however, as far, at least, as appearances went, when the Church had to set her house in order against Luther and Calvin. Everything conspired with Bruno's audacity of temper and recklessness of that conduct in life, which could alone have enabled him to steer safely through the seas of religious discord, to prepare for him the fate which he had voluntarily returned to his country to meet. He was an enthusiastic Platonist, at a period when * Arsenale o Pratica del Sant' Offizio. Greek philosophers was even exceeded [says English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol i., p. 158. new censors against free thought. The degree of independence, which had been enjoyed by Cusa and Pomponatio, was refused to Campanella and Vanini. Cosmo III. of Florence prohibited the printing of the fine translation of Lucretius by Alexander Marchetti, as an impure manual of Epicureanism. What science demanded was to march unshackled, to live and speak unconstrained. The Church, on the other hand, dreading lest dogma should be sapped by science, naturally strove to suppress it. Thus arose a combat à outrance between two interests alike dear to man, but equally exasperated against each other. But for that fatal conflict, to what an elevation might not Italian philosophy have attained! Accordingly, these two half-centuries exhibit a complete contrast. In the career of Bruno that contrast manifests itself from the most various sides. That impudent speaker and writer carried on to the close of the century those traditions of free utterance, which had enjoyed tolerance, and even protection, at its commencement. It must be admitted that Bruno used and abused to the utmost a "liberty of prophesying," the most moderate exercise of which had ceased to be safe in Italy. What Voltaire wrote of Vanini was equally true of Bruno: "Il voyagea pour faire fortune et pour disputer; mais malheureusement la dispute est le chemin opposé à la fortune; on se fait autant d'ennemis irréconciliables qu'on trouve de savans ou de pédants contre lesquels on argumente." But Bruno's crowning imprudence was his habit of satire and invective on the Church to which he still considered himself as in some shape belonging, and which, unfortunately, still considered him as belonging to it, at least for penal animadversion. Bruno had not only been baptized a Catholic, but ordained a priest; and he was thus doubly amenable to Church discipline, when, in his comedy, "Il Candelaio," he indulged his ribald humor on the most cherished objects of Italian popular veneration: "Chi vuole agnus Dei, chi vuol granelli benedetti?" etc., etc., together with a burlesque catalogue of Catholic relics of saints, which our Protestant decorum forbids our reprinting. Bruno [says M. Bartolmèss] at Wittemberg could not but make his obeisance to the statue of Luther. But did he forget that Catholic Ingolstadt was but a few miles distant? His panegyric on Luther was meant for publication, and, without reflecting on the consequences, he seems to have striven to surpass, in expressions of contempt and hatred for the papacy, the most passionate and the most unmeasured utterances of Luther himself. “Who is he,” demanded Bruno, "whose name I have hitherto passed in silence? The vicar of the tyrant of hell, at once fox and lion, armed with keys and sword, with fraud and force, hypocrisy and ferocity-infecting the universe with a superstitious worship, and an ignorance worse than brutal. None dared oppose themselves to that devouring beast, when a new Alcides arose to restore this fallen age, this degraded Europe, to a purer and happier state." And it was this same Bruno who, in the last years of his life which he spent at liberty, proposed to lay his revised and corrected works at the feet of his Holiness Clement the Eighth, who, as he says, he has heard loves li virtuosi: to lay before him his case, and seek to obtain absolution at his hands for his past excesses, and permission to resume his clerical habits, without returning under regular relig ious discipline! It would be unjust to the memory of the unfortunate Nolan precursor of Galileo to leave the impression on those who have not read his writings (and who in England has ?) of a mere itinerant, esurient, and irreverent, not to say scurrilous and blasphemous sophist. Such injustice (since Bayle) Giordano Bruno has not suffered from Continental critics. Germany has given him no undistinguished place in her voluminous histories of philosophy, and German philosophy itself has owed some of its rapidly and incessantly dissolving views to his writings. Bruno's distinguishing faculty, as a child of the southern Italian sun, was imagination. That faculty, in the sixteenth century, in Italy, had matter to work upon unequalled in after times; but which, in Bruno's time, proved perilous stuff for philosophic handling. And Bruno's imagination was rather that of a poet than of a philosopher. He carried all sail and no ballast: little wonder if he made shipwreck. His sympathetic but discriminating biographer, M. Bartolmèss, draws his character in very impartial traits as follows: Endowed with a talent essentially sponta-, neous, Bruno seems to lose his power and be thrown off his balance, on all occasions where patient and silent meditation is indispensable; where the main point is to ascertain, to verify, to demonstrate-not merely to affirm confidently, and conclude precipitately. Though highly instructed, he was audacious rather than studious, speculative rather than observ. ant; prone rather to draw on his own ideal stock and deal in a priori reasonings, than to collect data for well-grounded conclusions from experience, and from these, with due cir cumspection, deduce rules and principles. He truth. plied indiscretions of the Nolan knighterrant of philosophy. Of the treatment of Galileo Rome herself has become ashamed. For more than two centuries "the starry Galileo, with his woes," has engaged the world's sympathies; yet it is only within the last few years that proper pains have been taken to place before general readers the plain tale of his trials. also their practical application to the highest efforts of invention and discovery."" Galileo's great glory was his resolute rebellion from time-honored tradition, and his signal inauguration of the spirit and methods of modern science. The most impartial review of the rela tions of Galileo with Rome is found in the pages of his thoroughly conscientious and liberal Roman Catholic biographer, Henri Martin, to whom we are also indebted for It is a noticeable coincidence, that the the fullest estimate of the scientific labors same doge of Venice, Pasquale Cicogna, of his life. "If Bacon," says Sir David who signed the decree, on the part of the Brewster,* "had never lived, the student Venetian government, for the extradition of nature would have found in the writings of Giordano Bruno to that of Rome, had and labors of Galileo, not only the boasted signed, a few months before, the appoint-principles of the inductive philosophy, but ment of Galileo Galilei as professor of mathematics in the University of Padua. Neither signature, at the time it was affixed, might seem of much moment; but the proceedings which were taken against Bruno by the Roman Inquisition paved the way for those afterwards taken by the same tribunal against Galileo. One and the same principle was involved in both cases: that principle was the assumed right of the Church to control the march of science. And certainly never was science laid more open to censure by its imperfectly qualified representative than in the case of Bruno. So far as burning Bruno went, the Church proved its power. Rome proved her power a second time by condemning the Copernican doctrine in the unexceptionable shape in which that doctrine was presented by Galileo. But by so doing, she discredited forever her authority in the domain of intellect by the despotic abuse of that authority at the dawn of an era which would no longer confound articles of faith with laws of science. Giordano Bruno had been burnt at Rome in the sight of the multitude flocking to the Eternal City from all parts of Europe to celebrate the jubilee year 1600. Thirty-two years afterwards Galileo was forced from under the feeble protection of the young grand duke Ferdinand of Tuscany before the Roman Holy Office, to answer for his stubborn adherence to the discoveries of modern astronomy, by which that tribunal told him he had made himself vehemently suspected of heresy. The treatment of Bruno, as we have already seen, had been, in a manner, provoked (if that could have justified it) by the multi Galileo [says M. Henri Martin] laid it down as a principle always to ascend from exact and mathematically precise observation of effects to positive knowledge of causes and laws. Long before 1637 [the date of Descartes' " Discours de la Méthode"], long before 1620 [the date of Bacon's "Novum Organon Scientiarum"], Galileo had introduced by precept and example this complete and definitive method of the physical sciences. He had, peripatetics, against the a priori method, in so doing, to struggle against the modern handed down from Aristotle, in the study of nature. In his "Saggiatore" [assayer], in his "Dialogues on the Two Principal Systems of the World," and more especially in his "Dialogues on the New Sciences" his last and most finished work- Galileo, in demonstrating the legitimacy and efficacy of his method, lays special stress on that part of it which Bacon had neglected, and without which that method study of physical science. This indispensable would have been impotent to regenerate the part of the experimental observation of physi cal facts is the measure of quantities. Galileo knew that all physical objects are extended, and consequently by their nature and essence measurable, though they may not always be measurable by the methods and instruments we possess; that all physical phenomena take place in periods susceptible of measurethat physical phenomena must be reducible to ciable by our senses. movements, some perceptible, others inappreAs regarded all these phenomena, he held that the right method was to measure all that was measurable, and • Martyrs of Science. to endeavor to render measurable all that was not already directly so. All who have proceeded a priori, from Aristotle to Descartes downward, have arrived at results the falsity of which suffices to condemn their method. Neither ancients, indeed, nor moderns made any mistake about the first principles of pure mathematics, since those first principles, being necessary and evident of themselves, have nothing to fear from any correction in application. But those who have sought to arrive at the first truths of mechanics by the à priori, instead of the inductive method, have always deceived themselves with regard to many of those truths. In a letter addressed, but not sent, to the peripatetic professor, Fortunio Liceti, dictated by Galileo, at the age of seventyseven, the year before his death, he observed (and the observation comprises the whole substance of his own scientific teaching): If the true philosophy were that which is contained in the books of Aristotle, you would, in my mind, be the first philosopher in the world, since you seem to have every passage of that author at your fingers' ends. But I the book of nature, a book which always lies verily think that the book of philosophy is open before our eyes. It has often been asked - it was asked, indeed, by Galileo himself - how it happened that a storm of imputations of constructive heresy burst on his head, after having left unvisited that of the first great founder of modern astronomy, Copernicus. Galileo could not, as he said, anticipate that it would be believed at Rome - as it seemed to be believed by Monsignor Gherardini, Bishop of Fiesole - that the doctrine of the earth's motion had been first started by a living Florentine, not by a Polish canon who had been dead seventy years, whose book had been published by special desire of Cardinal Schomberg, and dedicated by express permission to Pope Paul III. But it is not difficult to discern the causes of the different reception, by the reigning philosophical and ecclesiasti cal authorities at successive epochs, of identically the same scientific truths. Copernicus lay already paralyzed on his death bed when his work was intrusted to Osiander for publication, and he was therefore in The real cause of quarrel between Gali- no condition to overrule the timid precauleo and the authorities of his age was, that tions which his above-named pupil thought the latter sought their philosophy in requisite in order to avert the wrath of the books, while he sought his in facts. A orthodox theologians and peripatetic phiblind faith in Aristotle deprived men of losophers of the day. Osiander's anonythe use of their own eyes. Certain ultra- mous preface in no manner expressed the Aristotelians went the length of affirming mind of his master, who was convinced as that Galileo's telescopes were SO con- firmly, as was afterwards his illustrious structed as to show things which in reality Florentine successor, of the solid foundahad no existence. He offered a reward of tion of his system in the facts of the natten thousand scudi to any one who could ural universe, and who would probably make such clever glasses as those. Some have been no more disposed than Galileo stubbornly refused to look through his was to handle it as a mere working hytelescopes at all, assured as they were be- pothesis, which need not be received as. forehand that they never, by their aid, true, or even probable, but as framed should see anything that Aristotle had said solely to facilitate the calculation of astroa word about. And it was not only a few nomical phenomena. The subterfuge was peripatetic philosophers, unversed in as- a childish one, but it passed muster with tronomy, who talked in this way. Such those childish minds of mature growth, language was repeated by the able astron- then Occupying papal or professorial omer Magini, professor at Bologna, and at chairs and pulpits. Had Copernicus lived first, also, by the learned Father Clavio, to wield the powers of Gallieo's telescope, who died at Rome in 1610, but died con- he, instead of Gallieo, might have stood verted to the faith (by sight) of Jupiter's forth the protagonist, and have suffered satellites, the phases of Venus, and the as the protomartyr, of modern astronomy. inequalities of the moon's surface. Cre- The conflict with the spiritual power, monini at Padua, and Libri at Pisa, refused which Galileo did not court, but found all credence to Galileo's discoveries, dem- forced on him, was the "unshunned cononstrated as those discoveries were by sequence " of the scientific revolution his telescopes. Libri died at Pisa with-effected by aid of his telescopic discovout having ceased to protest against eries. The question between the two Galileo's absurdities, or deigned to look world-systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, as Herr von Gebler justly remarks, had hitherto been exclusively one for the schools. Neither the less-known precursors of Copernicus nor Copernicus himself had ever adventured openly to declare war against the Aristotelian philosophy, or to overthrow, by the unanswerable evidence of observed facts, the hollow fabric of physical science founded on that philosophy. that he could engage the Roman hierarchy in the pure interest of scientific truth. It was ecclesiastical rather than philosophical favor that Galileo felt he had most need to conciliate. It was the opinion which might be formed at Rome of his views of the Copernican system, about which he was most solicitous; for, should Rome prove hostile, he knew too well that it would be difficult or impossible for him to exercise with freedom the function of an expounder of those views in Italy. They had fought with the same weapons as the Ptolemaic doctors; those of the school logic. They did not possess direct evidence of astronomical facts, as they did not yet pos- Belisario Vinta, secretary of the grand duke sess the telescope. But Galileo, with his sys-[of Tuscany] [says M. Berti], wrote to Galileo, tem of demonstration founded on ocular evi- that so soon as the truth of his speculations dence of the actual facts of nature, was too on the Medicean planets [the satellites of formidable an antagonist to obtain tolerance Jupiter, which Galileo had so named in comfrom the schoolmen. The peripatetic philos-pliment to his Tuscan patrons] should be conophers had no armor of proof to parry the firmed at Rome, the new constitution of the blows of arguments addressed to the under-universe might be said to be established for standing on the direct evidence of the senses; and their adherents accordingly, if they would not give up their cause as lost, must call in aid other allies than those of the schools. They caught accordingly at the readiest means within reach. To reinforce the tottering authority of Aristotle, they invoked the unassailable authority of Scripture. We must not ascribe this mainly to mere party spirit, or mere personal malevolence. The bulk of the learned class, which still adhered to the old world-system, and had hitherto carelessly regarded Copernicus, with his new theory apparently unsupported by visible proofs, as a mere dreaming speculator, now stood aghast at Galileo's telescopic discoveries, which apparently threatened to overthrow all that had hitherto been believed. The learned, and still more the half-learned, all the world, and would be assured of obtaining the concurrence of all mathematicians and all astrologers. This assent of Rome Galileo felt to be of such moment, that he was prepared to make every effort to obtain it. He assiduously cultivated friendly relations with the cardinals, the monsignori, the prelates. But the quarter where he chiefly aimed to conquer opinion was the Collegio Romano, as well because there were amongst its members not a few men well versed in science, as because it constituted a sort of theologico-philosophical tribunal. The prospects of success for the new science at the metropolis of Latin Christendom seemed at first promising. Would we form an idea [says M. Berti] world of Italy felt the solid ground shaking how Galileo was appreciated and courted at beneath their feet, and the threatened down Rome, we must figure him to ourselves in the fall of Aristotle's authority of three thousand vigor of life, at the age of forty-seven, with years must, it seemed to them, draw after it ample forehead, grave countenance, expresthe overthrow from the very foundation of all sive of profound thought, fine figure and very that had hitherto been held as truth in phys-pleasing, and at times imaginative and vivid in distinguished manners, clear, elegant, and ics, mathematics, philosophy, and religion. discourse. The letters of the time super abound in his praise. Cardinals, patricians, other for the honor of having him in their and other persons in authority, vied with each houses, and hearing him discourse. A choice society of men, eminent for learning or high public office, were in the habit of assembling round Cardinal Bandini in the palace of the Quirinal. In the gardens of that palace, which commanded a great part of the city of Rome, and the view from which extends over a vast horizon, Galileo, in the fine evenings of April, exhibited through his telescope the satellites of Jupiter, and discoursed on the sub If Galileo had been content with making a mere raree-show of his telescopes, or a mere lucrative trade in them, he might have been petted and patronized to the end of the chapter at Rome, as he had been at Venice and Florence. He need have incurred no risk of persecution for truths he might have foreborne to enuniate. But he would have missed the main scope of his life, which was simply to demonstrate those truths. What Galileo's critics really make matter of reproach is his manly frankness and sin-ject of his discoveries. It seems that some of cerity. Having a plain tale to tell, he saw no reason why he should not plainly tell it. Having no "heretical pravity to conceal, he too sanguinely anticipated the fathers of the Collegio Romano came also to these meetings; and by day Galileo, in these and other places, directed observation to the spots in the sun. Federico Cesi, the young president of the Academy of the Lincei [lynx |