s a science or a philosophy, than
as a religion. Had they regarded Aristotle as a verbally inspired
writer, they could not have received his statements with more
unhesitating conviction. In any dispute as to a question of fact, such
as the one before us concerning the laws of falling bodies, their method
was not to make an experiment, but to turn over the pages of Aristotle;
and he who could quote chapter and verse of this great writer was held
to settle the question and raise it above the reach of controversy.

It is very necessary for us to realize this state of things clearly,
because otherwise the attitude of the learned of those days towards
every new discovery seems stupid and almost insane. They had a
crystallized system of truth, perfect, symmetrical--it wanted no
novelty, no additions; every addition or growth was an imperfection, an
excrescence, a deformity. Progress was unnecessary and undesired. The
Church had a rigid system of dogma, which must be accepted in its
entirety on pain of being treated as a heretic. Philosophers had a
cast-iron system of truth to match--a system founded upon Aristotle--and
so interwoven with the great theological dogmas that to question one was
almost equivalent to casting doubt upon the other.

In such an atmosphere true science was impossible. The life-blood of
science is growth, expansion, freedom, development. Before it could
appear it must throw off these old shackles of centuries. It must burst
its old skin, and emerge, worn with the struggle, weakly and
unprotected, but free and able to grow and to expand. The conflict was
inevitable, and it was severe. Is it over yet? I fear not quite, though
so nearly as to disturb science hardly at all. Then it was different; it
was terrible. Honour to the men who bore the first shock of the battle!

Now Aristotle had said that bodies fell at rates depending on their
weight.

A 5 lb. weight would fall five times as quick as a 1 lb. weight; a 50
lb. weight fifty times as quick, and so on.

Why he said so nobody knows. He cannot have tried. He was not above
trying experiments, like his smaller disciples; but probably it never
occurred to him to doubt the fact. It seems so natural that a heavy body
should fall quicker than a light one; and perhaps he thought of a stone
and a feather, and was satisfied.

Galileo, however, asserted that the weight did not matter a bit, that
everything fell at the same rate (even a stone and a feather,