The Sleepwalkers (204 page)

He
arrived
in
Ratisbon
on
2
November.
Three
days
later
he
took
to
bed
with
a
fever.
An
eye-witness
reported
that
"he
did
not
talk,
but
pointed
his
index
finger
now
at
his
head,
now
at
the
sky
above
him."
¹⁹
Another
witness,
the
Lutheran
preacher,
Jacob
Fischer,
wrote
in
a
letter
to
a
friend:
²⁰

"During
the
recent
session
of
the
Diet,
our
Kepler
arrived
in
this
town
on
an
old
jade
(which
he
subsequently
sold
for
two
florins).
He
was
only
three
days
here
when
he
was
taken
ill
with
a
feverish
ailment.
At
first
he
thought
that
he
was
suffering
from
sacer
ignis
,
or
fever
pustules,
and
paid
no
attention
to
it.
When
his
feverish
condition
worsened,
they
bled
him,
without
any
result.
Soon
his
mind
became
clouded
with
ever-rising
fever.
He
did
not
talk
like
one
in
possession
of
his
faculties.
Several
preachers
visited
him
and
comforted
him
with
the
living
waters
of
their
sympathy.
²¹
In
his
last
agony,
as
he
gave
up
his
ghost
to
God,
a
Protestant
clergyman
of
Ratisbon,
Sigismund
Christopher
Donavarus,
a
relative
of
mine,
consoled
him
in
a
manly
way,
as
behoves
a
servant
of
God.
This
happened
on
November
15,
1630.
On
the
19th
he
was
buried
in
the
cemetery
of
St.
Peter,
outside
the
town."

The
cemetery
was
destroyed
during
the
Thirty
Years
War,
and
Kepler's
bones
were
scattered;
but
the
epitaph
which
he
wrote
for
himself
is
preserved:

Mensus
eram
coelos,
nunc
terrae
metior
umbras
Mens
coelestis
erat,
corporis
umbra
iacet
.

I
measured the skies, now the shadows I measure Skybound was the mind,
earthbound the body rests.

There
is
also
a
paragraph
in
one
of
his
late
letters
which
lingers
on
in
memory;
it
is
dated:

"Sagan in Silesia, in my
own printing press, November 6, 1629:

"When
the
storm
rages
and
the
state
is
threatened
by
shipwreck,
we
can
do
nothing
more
noble
than
to
lower
the
anchor
of
our
peaceful
studies
into
the
ground
of
eternity."
²²

PART
FIVE
THE
PARTING
OF
THE
WAYS

I THE
BURDEN
OF
PROOF

1.
Galileo's Triumph

ONCE
again
the
climate
and
character
of
this
narrative
must
change.
Personalities,
intrigues,
points
of
legal
procedure
will
dominate
the
scene
as
we
turn
to
the
tragic
conflict
between
the
new
cosmology
and
the
Church.

Few
episodes
in
history
have
given
rise
to
a
literature
as
voluminous
as
the
trial
of
Galileo.
Most
of
it
has,
unavoidably,
a
partisan
character,
ranging
from
crude
distortion,
through
gentle
innuendo,
to
attempts
at
impartiality
thwarted
by
unconscious
bias.
Objectivity
is
an
abstract
ideal
in
an
age
which
has
become
"a
divided
house
of
faith
and
reason";
and
more
especially
so
when
the
episode
to
be
treated
is
one
of
the
historic
causes
of
that
division.
Since
it
would
be
foolish
to
claim
exemption
from
this
rule,
it
may
be
as
well
to
state
my
own
bias
before
asking
the
reader
to
take
on
trust
my
brand
of
objectivity.
Among
my
earliest
and
most
vivid
impressions
of
History
was
the
wholesale
roasting
alive
of
heretics
by
the
Spanish
inquisition,
which
could
hardly
inspire
tender
feelings
towards
that
establishment.
On
the
other
hand,
I
find
the
personality
of
Galileo
equally
unattractive,
mainly
on
the
grounds
of
his
behaviour
towards
Kepler.
His
dealings
with
Urban
VIII
and
the
Holy
Office
can
be
judged
in
various
ways,
because
the
evidence
on
some
vital
points
is
based
on
hearsay
and
conjecture;
but
of
his
relationship
with
his
German
colleague,
confined
to
a
few
letters,
we
have
an
unequivocal
record.
As
a
result,
most
of
the
biographers
of
Kepler
show
the
same
aversion
towards
Galileo,
whereas
the
admirers
of
Galileo
display
towards
Kepler
a
kind
of
guilty
tenderness,
which
betrays
their
embarrassment.

It
seems
to
me,
then,
that
insofar
as
bias
enters
into
this
narrative,
it
is
not
based
on
affection
for
either
party
in
the
conflict,
but
on
resentment
that
the
conflict
did
occur
at
all.
One
of
the
points
that
I
have
laboured
in
this
book
is
the
unitary
source
of
the
mystical
and
scientific
modes
of
experience;
and
the
disastrous
results
of
their
separation.
It
is
my
conviction
that
the
conflict
between
Church
and
Galileo
(or
Copernicus)
was
not
inevitable;
that
it
was
not
in
the
nature
of
a
fatal
collision
between
opposite
philosophies
of
existence,
which
was
bound
to
occur
sooner
or
later,
but
rather
a
clash
of
individual
temperaments
aggravated
by
unlucky
coincidences.
In
other
words.
I
believe
the
idea
that
Galileo's
trial
was
a
kind
of
Greek
tragedy,
a
showdown
between
"blind
faith"
and
"enlightened
reason",
to
be
naively
erroneous.
It
is
this
conviction
–
or
bias
–
that
informs
the
following
narrative.