Fig. 37.—Tower of Pisa.
Yet they had received a shock: as by a breath of fresh salt breeze and a dash of spray in their faces, they had been awakened out of their comfortable lethargy. They felt the approach of a new era.
Yes, it was a shock; and they hated the young Galileo for giving it them—hated him with the sullen hatred of men who fight for a lost and dying cause.
We need scarcely blame these men; at least we need not blame them overmuch. To say that they acted as they did is to say that they were human, were narrow-minded, and were the apostles of a lost cause. But they could not know this; they had no experience of the past to guide them; the conditions under which they found themselves were novel, and had to be met for the first time. Conduct which was excusable then would be unpardonable now, in the light of all this experience to guide us. Are there any now who practically repeat their error, and resist new truth? who cling to any old anchorage of dogma, and refuse to rise with the tide of advancing knowledge? There may be some even now.
Well, the unpopularity of Galileo smouldered for a time, until, by another noble imprudence, he managed to offend a semi-royal personage, Giovanni de Medici, by giving his real opinion, when consulted, about a machine which de Medici had invented for cleaning out the harbour of Leghorn. He said it was as useless as it in fact turned out to be. Through the influence of the mortified inventor he lost favour at Court; and his enemies took advantage of the fact to render his chair untenable. He resigned before his three years were up, and retired to Florence.
His father at this time died, and the family were left in narrow circumstances. He had a brother and three sisters to provide for.