Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867

A century before Galileo, Copernicus had designed the astronomical system that bears his name.^[1] Galileo, using the telescope he had invented, adding direct observation to the theory, completed Copernicus' ideas and demonstrated their truth by calculation. With his instrument, he was able to study the nature of the planets, and their similarity with earth: he concluded that they were habitable. He also recognized that the stars are so many suns scattered in boundless space and believed that each should be the center of motion of a planetary system. He had just discovered the four satellites of Jupiter, and this event stirred the educated world and the religious world. In his drama, the poet endeavors to paint the diversity of the feelings that he aroused, according to the character and the prejudices of the individuals.

Two university students discuss Galileo's discovery, and as they disagree, they seek the advice of a renowned professor.

ALBERT: On a certain point, doctor, we are arguing,

and we would like to know what you think about it.

Pompeo: It is appropriate to seek advice from sensible people. What is it?

Vivian: It is about four satellites, describing their orbits around Jupiter.

Pompeo: They do not exist.

Vivian: But…

Pompeo: They could not exist.

Vivian: Nonetheless, they can be seen and counted.

Pompeo: Since they do not exist, they cannot be numbered.

Albert: Vivian, do you hear?

Vivian: And why is that professor?

Pompeo: Because the idea that God may have

Created four globes in addition to the seven

We know, is a bad talk, a chimerical

Theme, antireligious, anti-philosophical.

(Seeing Galileo escorted by a many students)

Silly fly catchers! And infamous charlatan!

Albert to Vivian: As you can see, Dr. Pompeo is against you.

Vivian: So much the better for the doctrine I have faith.

The natural march of all truth

Is first to arouse all dogmatists

against it.



This is indeed the force of reasoning of certain deniers of new ideas: it is not, because it cannot be. We asked a scientist: What would you say if you saw a table lifting off without a support? - I wouldn't believe it, he replied, because I know it can't be.



A monk speaking to the crowd:



Hear what the Apostle says: In heavens,

Why, Galileans, are you wandering your eyes?

This is how the anathema was launched, in advance,

Against you, Galileo, and against your system.

We ourselves today see clearly,

How heaven sees this teaching, horribly,

And the Arno overflowed, the hail on our vines,

Regrettable signs of wrath, divine.



My brothers despise these gross lies.

For the earth to move, does it have feet?

If the moon moves, it is because an angel is guiding it.

Over each planet, a conductor presides.

But the earth, where would its angel be? - On the mountains?

We would see him there. - In the center? It houses demons.



Livia, wife of Galileo, is the kind of narrow-minded person, more concerned with material life than with glory and truth.



Livia (to Galileo)

. . . Why, overheating the brains,

By spouting a bunch of new maxims!

All these novelties are, to put it mildly,

Devilish inventions that smell badly.

By the way everyone is looking at you,

It will not be good, if you are not careful.

Oh! why don't you imitate these worthy teachers

Who say the same as their predecessors?

These are good people, or order and commonsensical.

They quietly teach what they want them to teach,

And, without working to debate in public

If we must believe Aristotle or Copernicus.

The true opinion, they wisely hold,

Must be the one paid, to do as they are told.

And that, if Aristotle opens the safe,

Aristotle is right, Copernicus in a mistake.

So, with nobody a disagreement.

They receive, in peace, the florins they are given.

They thrive; they are well fed and well housed,

Their daughters have dowries and find spouses.

Their audience is gentle and exalts never.

They return home in time for supper.

But you, you rage, you are applauded,

And, meanwhile, dinner is getting cold.



Fragments of Galileo's monologue at the beginning of the second act:



No, the times are gone for the queen alone,

The earth was seated on her motionless throne.

No, the swift chariot, carrying the star of the day,

From dawn to sunset, no longer rotates.

The firmament is no longer the crystalline dome,

Which, like a blue ceiling, of chandeliers illuminates.

It is no longer for us alone that God made the universe.

But far from holding down, let us proud ourselves!

For if we abdicate a false royalty,

Science elevates us to the kingdom of veracity.

The more the body shrinks, the taller the Spirit stands.

Our nobility grows or our rank lessens.

It is more beautiful for man, tiny creature,

To seize the secrets veiled by nature,

And dare to embrace in its conception

The universal law of creation,

Than to be, as in the days of lying vanities,

King of an illusion and owner of a reverie,

Ignorant center of a whole, his work, a misbelief he conveys,

And that by thought he conquers today.

Sun, globe of fire, gigantic furnace,

Incandescent chaos where a genesis terminates,

Furious ocean where frantic float

Granite liquids and molten metals,

Smashing, shattering, mingling their flaming waves

Laden with smoke, under black hurricanes,

Ardent swell, where sometimes swims a ruddy islet,

Spot today, tomorrow solar crust.

Around you, o fruitful brazier,

The earth moves, barely cooled, our mother,

And, as cold as her, and, as she inhabited,

Bloody Mars, and Venus, of white clarities.

Near your splendor, Mercury bathing,

And Saturn in exile at the edge of your reign,

And by God, then by me, crowned in the ether

From a quadruple diadem of moons, Jupiter.

But, sovereign star, center of all these globes,

Beyond your empire with deep boundaries,

Millions of suns, so many, so profuse,

That they cannot be counted in their groups, confused,

Extend, like you, their immense craters,

Move around, like you, planetary centers,

That revolve around them, courting,

And taking heat and day from their king.

Oh! yes you are better than night lighters,

That would light for us, taciturn watchers,

Countless shines, stars hazing

The azure paths, in gold sanding.

Universal life also pulsates in you, large

foci where our eye only sees a spark.

…………..

And everywhere action, movement, and soul!

Everywhere, around their flaming centers, roll

Inhabited globes, thinking beings still,

Live as I live, feel what I feel,

Some below, others maybe

Higher than us, life has so many degrees!

How big! how beautiful! In what deep adoration

The Spirit, full of amazement, breaks down in amalgamation!

Inexhaustible author, may your omnipotence

Show itself in its glory and magnificence!

That life, poured out in waves in infinity,

Proclaim your blessed name everywhere, widely!

Go, persecutors! launch your blasphemies!

I am much more religious than yourselves.

God, whom you invoke, better than you I serve.

This little heap of mud, for you, is the universe.

For me, in all points, the divine work elates.

You shrink it, and I make it dilate.

As we put kings in the chariot of the victor,

I put universes at the feet of the Creator.



Fragments of the dialogue between the Inquisitor and Galileo.



The Inquisitor

There is no truth, except in the Scriptures.

All the rest is error, visions, impostures.

What is believed to be contrary to their teaching

Is not clarity, it is loss of sighting!



Galileo

Yes, faith is governed by the rule of Christianity.

Their sole authority reigns in theology,

And worship must bow all minds

To the divine dogmas that it prescribes.

But the physical world escapes their domain.

God delivers it entirely to human argument.

As these are objects that are apparent,

The senses and reason show themselves to be omnipotent.

The authority is silent; no order can aspire

Unequal rays in the center of the sphere,

No one can accuse the compass of blasphemy,

Nor that a rotating body does not revolve, by decree.

The eye is the judge, in a word, of the universe, visible.

If the unchanging dogma is fixed by the Bible,

Science rejects immortality,

And, dying in chains, lives for liberty.



The Inquisitor

Now, don't you see that your new system,

Troubles astronomy, shaking faith itself?

The material error, admitted on one point,

Throughout the Testament, makes the witness suspect.

Whoever may have failed is, therefore, no longer infallible.

Doubt is allowed, examination is possible,

And we soon conclude, if judge we venture,

From false physics to false dogma.

……………………….

Galileo

Me, destroy the faith, when I aggrandize worshiping!

Showing God in his work, is it insulting him?

Ah! to understand it better, it is to adore him better,

And by disfiguring it, one does a dishonor.

The heavens, according to the Bible in which

We must trust, tell us the glory of its authorship!

Well I, better than anyone, listened to their story,

And I repeated it, as I learned from what heavens said.

……………………

Can the course of a new truth be stopped?

By stopping a drop, can the river be blocked?

Believe me, respect these aspirations,

They have many impulses and many expansions

To allow a jailer to hold them prisoners.

Leave the field open to them, or woe to the barriers!

- Ah! Rome, in the early days of your proscribed worship,

You said to oppose to the sword, only the spirit!

Did you only succeeded to change roles?

And you, yourself, oppose the sword to the word?

Antonia, daughter of Galileo, seeing her father proscribed, said to him:

Here is your Antigone. Yes, my pious love

Lead the outcast, conqueror of the sphinx of heaven.

Leading your staff from valley to valley,

I will say: "Give me bread for Galileo,

The one deprived of a home by the Christians,

Would have altars among pagan peoples."



Galileo probed the depths of heavens and revealed the plurality of material worlds. It was, as we have said, quite a revolution in ideas; a new field of exploration was opened to science. Spiritism comes to operate an equally great one, by revealing the existence of the spiritual world that surrounds us; thanks to that, man knows his past and his true destiny. Galileo overturned the barriers that circumscribed the universe; Spiritism inhabits and fills the void of infinite spaces. Although more than two centuries separate us from the discoveries of Galileo, many prejudices are still alive; the new emancipating doctrine encounters the same obstacles; it is attacked with the same weapons, opposed with the same arguments. By reading Mr. Ponsard's drama, we could give modern names to each of his characters. However, ill-will and persecution did not prevent Galileo's doctrine from succeeding, because it was the truth; it will be the same with Spiritism, because it is also a truth. Its detractors will be regarded, by the next generation, with the same eyes that we regard those of Galileo.

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[1] Copernicus, Polish astronomer, born in Thorn (Prussian State) in 1473, died in 1543. Galileo, born in Florence in 1564, condemned in 1633, died blind in 1644. The system of Copernicus was already condemned by the Church.