[Footnote 155: Macaulay should have said, "theory of Copernicus," instead of "theory of Galileo." Bacon never credited Galileo with a system, and did not hold his scientific merits in much esteem.]
Even in 1705, the Hon. E. Howard published in London a work entitled Copernicans of all Sorts Convicted.
In 1806, Mercier, a Frenchman, wrote to prove "l'impossibilité des systèmes de Copernic et de Newton;" and even so recently as 1829 an individual was found so retrograde as to publish a work entitled The Universe as it is; wherein the Hypothesis of the Earth's Motion is Refuted, etc., by W. Woodley.
The Undemonstrated Problem.
And now, having spied out the nakedness of the astronomic land throughout Europe, let us return for a moment to the scientific position of the tribunal that tried Galileo.
What solid proof was presented to it? None whatever. And those familiar with the history of astronomy will readily recognize the fact that, so far from seeing in the new opinion a scientific novelty, they recognized in it substantially the old hypothesis of Pythagoras, which, after obtaining credit for more than five hundred years, was triumphantly displaced by the Ptolemaic theory; which was that the earth is a solid globe at rest in the centre of the universe, with the various planetary bodies revolving in larger and larger circles, according to the order of their distances.
The new doctrine had not even the form of a system:
"'Twas neither shape nor feature."
Indeed, as has been truly said, it was nothing more than a paradox for the support of which its authors had to draw upon their own resources.