However, be this as it may, in the year 1757 therelaxation of the censures took place; in 1820, on the 16th August, a distinct permission was given for teaching the movement of the Earth; and again on the 17th September, 1822, a re-examination of the whole subject having taken place, a decree appeared, sanctioned by the Pope, Leo XII., in which the Inquisitors General, in conformity with the decrees of 1757 and 1820, declared that the printing and publishing at Rome of works treating of the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, according to the opinion of modern astronomers, was henceforth permitted. Thus the decree of 1616 was practically abrogated.
Mr. Mivart, among other remarks on the proceedings in Galileo’s case, says that no amends were ever made by the authorities of the Church for the injustice done to the philosopher, but he does not state what kind of amends or what sort of apology he expected. If he means that no personal reparation was made to Galileo, that is doubtless true; nor was any sacrifice ever offered to his Manes. Indeed, it must be allowed that the ecclesiastical authorities hindered the erection, after his decease, of a monument in his honour. Nor is this a matter for surprise; it may be taken for granted that the object of those who desired to erect the monument was to pay an especial tribute of respect to the deceased astronomer as one who had suffered unjustly; and that was precisely what the Popeand Cardinals of that age would not for a moment admit.
No personal amends, then, were made to Galileo in life or in death; but I think this was not the point to which Mr. Mivart intended to allude. I believe he had in his mind a different sort of reparation—that, namely, supposed to be owing to the injured cause of Science. If that be so, then I can only say that he must have been unaware of the facts above mentioned, of the proceedings taken in Rome in 1757, in 1820, and in 1822.
The adjustment of the relations of revealed Religion with physical Science is often perplexing, owing partly to mistaken zeal in insisting on particular interpretations of certain passages in Holy Scripture, and partly to the prevalence, at different times, of doubtful scientific theories, which flourish for a time, and then fade away because they fail to stand the test of continued and rigorous investigation.
Instances of both these will readily occur to the mind, and the Copernican theory in the seventeenth century will be a prominent one, as coming under the first of the two heads. But it is not fair, as I have already argued, to be too severe upon the men who clung with tenacity to the old traditional interpretation of Scripture. It is, in fact, only right so to cling until some just reason is shown for introducing a fresh interpretation. In this case there were somegood reasons, no doubt; but there were also bad reasons alleged, and, as we have seen, Galileo, with all his great ability and mechanical knowledge so far beyond his age, could yet damage his cause with unsound arguments.
Such being the case, amidst the whirlpool of good and bad arguments—that drawn from the tides being by no means the only one of the latter class—it is not astonishing that even able and intelligent men were misled.
The antipathy to adopting a new system of the universe—a system which demolished many cherished ideas and traditional opinions—was overwhelmingly strong; the reasons uncertain, or, at least, inconclusive. The discoveries of Galileo had, no doubt, overthrown the system of Ptolemy, but they had not established that of Copernicus, so long as there remained what may be called the tentative theory of Tycho Brahé, who was one of the greatest observers of his day. Though he did not unravel the true cause of the motions of the heavenly bodies, and went, in fact, in a wrong direction, we must never forget the important services he rendered to science. He was the first to employ refraction as a correction to the apparent positions of the celestial bodies; his collection of instruments, on which he had expended the whole of his private fortune, was the finest that had ever yet been seen; and, in fact, his observations, utilised by others, had a great share in leading to thediscovery of the real nature of the planetary movements.20Small blame, then, must be meted out to those who held on for a time to the system excogitated by so enlightened a man. I do not mean to deny what I have already stated—that the Cardinals who put on the Index of forbidden books the works of Copernicus and others, and those who condemned Galileo, were unable, astronomically speaking, to read the signs of the times. All I am asserting is that there was much, even from a scientific point of view, to excuse their inability.
They put forward as their main objection that the new theory contradicted Holy Scripture, and adhered to that rigidly literal interpretation of it, which has since then been necessarily given up, and which seems somewhat strange to us, accustomed as we now are to a far greater latitude of interpretation than they even dreamed of. We who have learned that the six days of Creation are not to be taken in their strict sense;21who have sound reason for holding that the Deluge was only universal in the sense of covering that part of the earth then inhabited by thehuman race; and who are told by some people, including learned ecclesiastics, that it was more restricted in its operation even than this; and who finally hear it said by men of undoubted orthodoxy that the evolution of man from some lower animal, so far as hisbodyis concerned and so long as you do not include his soul and his rational faculties, is consistent with the Christian faith—we, I say, who are familiar with these non-literal interpretations of Scripture, find it difficult to comprehend the standpoint adopted and maintained with such tenacity by the Cardinals of the seventeenth century.
There were, moreover, other very cogent reasons which, though not put prominently forward, may well have worked upon their minds; reasons, indeed, which must strike the really thoughtful man. Let us consider this one point. In old times, when the Earth was believed to be the actual centre of the physical universe, it was easy to suppose that it was the sole abode of life. But if you believe that the Earth, far from being such a centre, is only one amongst many planets revolving round the Sun; and, further, that the Sun himself is only one of a mighty host of stars, some of which may have planets revolving round them, you naturally ask yourself immediately, are none of these worlds inhabited except our Earth? Truly Scripture says nothing to contradict the opinion that there are inhabitants and rational creatures to be found elsewhere; but, nevertheless, the history of the Creation and Redemption of the human race reads asif such creatures, intelligent beings like ourselves, lived upon this Earth, and nowhere besides.
I know not how far thoughts and speculations of this nature passed through the minds of the ecclesiastics, and other men of religious feeling, in the age of Galileo. They have since then been sifted more or less by scientific men, and various opinions have been suggested. Some went so far as to think it possible that the Sun was inhabited. So able an astronomer as Arago, to say nothing of others, thought such might be the fact. No one thinks so now. The tendency of modern thought, strictly speakingmodern(that is, the most recent), is rather to discredit such imaginations. The various observations made upon the Sun, including those made by the use of the spectroscope, have shown that the supposition of his being inhabited is simply incredible. For other reasons the same result has been reached with regard to the Moon. Then as to the planets, although there are no such cogent reasons, we may fairly say that the probability is against any one of them being at the present moment fitted for the habitation of such a creature as man. Some persons would make an exception in favour of Mars, where a recent French observer imagines he has detected signs of work as if by human hands—a stretch indeed of imagination.
But the planets are probably not all in the same stage of what may be termed geological history. Some may very possibly be in the same state in which the Earth was a few millions of years ago, longbefore it was fitted for the reception of man on its surface, or, indeed, for that of any of the higher mammalia. The Earth had had a long history, and had undergone vast changes, ranging perhaps over many millions of years, before man appeared on the scene; and the period that has elapsed since that event, whatever the date of it may be, is simply nothing in comparison of the ages that had previously rolled by since the first moment when the darkness gave way, and the light appeared. It is, then, far from unlikely that our own Earth is the only planet in the solar system which at the present time is suitable for the habitation of man, or creatures resembling him.22
Passing then from our own system, we come to the myriads of suns, some, we may well believe, far greater than our Sun, which are spread through the realms of space.23Many of these we may reasonably suppose are surrounded by planets, and in one or two cases there are special reasons for thinking that some opaque body intervenes occasionally between the star and ourselves. But the conditions under which several of the stars (we know not how many) exist, is very different from that to which we are accustomed here with our own Sun. There are double stars whichappear to revolve round a common centre of gravity, a system of two suns. Have each of them, or have both of them in common, a set of planets moving round them? Who can tell? And where there are stars with planets accompanying them, does any one know in what state those planets are? The whole subject, however interesting as a speculation, is shrouded in impenetrable mystery.
From all this it follows that although there certainly may be rational and intellectual inhabitants on some or other of these distant worlds, yet, on the other hand, theremay notbe. And it is perfectly possible that our Earth, minute little object as it is, comparatively speaking, may still be the great and favoured life-house of the universe, themoral, though notmaterial, centre. That the Earth is not the physical centre of the universe we now are well aware; nor is the Sun the centre; nor, indeed, do we know whether there is any such centre at all. There is good reason for thinking that the Sun, with his attendant planets, is in motion in a certain direction in space; and I may observe that this direction is not in the plane of the Earth’s orbit, or anything near it; so that though the Earth describes an elliptical orbit with regard to the Sun, its path in space is some kind of spiral curve, that is as it would appear to a being poised for a time in some point of space far away outside our orbit, having the necessary powers of vision, and having a plane of reference from which he could take his observations.
What else this gifted being might see—whether hewould observe some great central body round which the whole of the heavenly bodies revolve, or, as seems more probable, would detect, instead of one, many centres, each with its own group—all this we do not and cannot know, and we must be content, at least so long as our life here below continues, to remain in profound ignorance.
Seeing, then, how wide in extent and how difficult of solution are some of the speculative problems, originating in the Copernican theory, it can be no matter of surprise that the ecclesiastics of the seventeenth century recoiled from it with more than common aversion.