d, and I was thrown into such agitation at seeing an old
dispute between us decided in this way, that between his joy, my
colouring, and the laughter of both, confounded as we were by such a
novelty, we were hardly capable, he of speaking, or I of listening.... I
am so far from disbelieving in the existence of the four circumjovial
planets, that I long for a telescope to anticipate you, if possible, in
discovering two round Mars (as the proportion seems to me to require),
six or eight round Saturn, and perhaps one each round Mercury and
Venus.' The intelligence of Galileo's discoveries was received by his
opponents in a spirit entirely different from that manifested by Kepler.
The principal professor of philosophy at Padua, when requested to look
at the Moon and planets through Galileo's glass, persistently declined,
and did his utmost to persuade the Grand Duke that the four satellites
of Jupiter could not possibly exist. Francesco Sizzi, a Florentine
astronomer, argued that, as there are seven apertures in the head,
seven known metals, and seven days in the week, so there could only be
seven planets. To these absurd remarks Galileo replied by saying that,
'whatever their force might be as a reason for believing beforehand that
no more than seven planets would be discovered, they hardly seemed of
sufficient weight to destroy the new ones when actually seen.' Another
individual, named Christmann, writes: 'We are not to think that Jupiter
has four satellites given him by Nature in order, by revolving round
him, to immortalize the name of the Medici, who first had notice of the
observation. These are the dreams of idle men, who love ludicrous ideas
better than our laborious and industrious correction of the heavens.
Nature abhors so horrible a chaos, and to the truly wise such vanity is
detestable.' Martin Horky, a _protege_ of Kepler's, issued a pamphlet in
which he made a violent attack on Galileo. He says: 'I will never
concede his four new planets to that Italian from Padua though I die for
it.' He then asks the following questions, and replies to them himself:
(1) Whether they exist? (2) What they are? (3) What they are like? (4)
Why they are? 'The first question is soon disposed of by Horky's
declaring positively that he has examined the heavens with Galileo's own
glass, and that no such thing as a satellite about Jupiter exists. To
the second, he declared solemnly that he does not more surely know that
he has a soul