would wish to oppose
reason with violence was clearly to be read in Galileo's story, and
the scandal of his condemnation was learned without any profound
sorrow to Galileo himself; and his long life, considered as a whole,
was the most serene and enviable in the history of science." Somehow,
notwithstanding the directness of this declaration, there is still
left in the minds of many an impression rather difficult to eradicate
that there was definite, persistent opposition to everything
associated with scientific progress among the churchmen of the time of
Galileo.

Perhaps no better answer to this unfortunate, because absolutely
untrue, impression could be in {112} formulated than is to be found in
a sketch of the career of Father Athanasius Kircher, the distinguished
Jesuit who for so many years occupied himself with nearly every branch
of science in Rome, under the fostering care of the Church. He had
been Professor of Physics, Mathematics, and Oriental Languages at
Wuerzburg, but was driven from there by the disturbances incident to
the Thirty Years' War, in 1631. He continued his scientific
investigation at Avignon. From here, within two years after Galileo's
trial in 1635, he was, through the influence of Cardinal Barberini,
summoned to Rome, where he devoted himself to mathematics at first,
and then to every branch of science, as well as the Oriental
languages, not only with the approval, but also with the most liberal
pecuniary aid from the ecclesiastical authorities of the papal court
and city.

Some idea of the breadth of Father Kircher's scientific sympathy and
his genius for scientific observation and discovery, which amounted
almost to intuition, may be gathered from the fact that to him we owe
the first definite statement of the germ theory of disease; and he
seems to have been the first to recognize the presence of what are now
called microbes. At the same time his works on magnetism contained not
only all the knowledge of his own time, but also some wonderful
suggestions as to the possibilities of the development of this
science. His studies with regard to light are almost as epochal as
those with regard to magnetism. Besides these, he {113} was the first
to find any clue to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and yet found time to
write a geographical work on Latium, the country surrounding Rome, and
to make collections for his museum which rendered it in its time the
best scientific collection in the world.