Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/141

us, by God's grace I attained my object, for I brought him into a full sense of his error. . . . The affair is being brought to such a point that it may soon be settled without difficulty. The court will maintain its reputation; it will be possible to deal leniently with the culprit. . . .”

Who can say what the arguments of the commissary of the inquisitor were? They were effective. Galileo's attitude was utterly and instantly changed. On the thirtieth of April he again appeared before the Holy Office and read the following confession:

In the course of some days continuous and attentive reflection. . . it occurred to me to reperuse my printed dialogue, which for three years I had not seen, in order carefully to note whether, contrary to my most sincere intention, there had, by inadvertence, fallen from my pen anything from which a reader or the authorities might infer not only some taint of disobedience on my part but also. . . that I had contravened the orders of the Holy Church. . . . I freely confess that in several places it seemed to me set forth in such a form that a reader ignorant of my real purpose might have had reason to suppose that the arguments adduced on the false side, which it was my intention to confute, were so expressed as to be calculated rather to compel conviction by their cogency than to be easy of solution.

Two arguments there are in particular—one taken from the solar spots, the other from the ebb and flow of the tide—which in truth, come to the ear of the reader with far greater show of force and power than ought to have been imparted to them by one who regarded them as inconclusive, and who intended to refute them, as I truly and sincerely held and do hold them to be inconclusive and admitting of refutation.

And, as excuse to myself for having fallen into an error so foreign to my intention, not contenting myself entirely with saying that when a man recites the arguments of the opposite side with the object of refuting them, he should, especially if writing in the form of dialogue, state these in their strictest form, and should not cloak them to the disadvantage of his opponents—not contenting myself, I say, with this excuse—I resorted to that of the natural complacency which every man feels with regard to his own subtleties and in showing himself more skilful than the generality of men, in devising them, even in favor of false propositions, ingenious and plausible arguments. With all this, although with Cicero's ‘avidior gloriæ quam satis est’ if I had now to set forth the same reasonings, without doubt I should so weaken them that they should not be able to make an apparent show of that force of which they are really and essentially devoid. My error, then, has been—and I confess it—one of vainglorious ambition, and of pure ignorance and inadvertence.

This is what it occurs to me to say with reference to this particular, and which suggested itself to me during the reperusal of my book.

This confused and almost incoherent confession is totally unlike the precise and elegant phrases of Galileo's writings. It is a complete reversal of his former position. Parts of it are evidently mere reminiscences of his conversation with the commissary-general (‘vainglorious ambition,’ for instance, is a phrase that he must have accepted, not one originating with himself). The whole is a weak abandonment of a position proudly held and is as different as possible from the