For, once more, relatively to the
end which he has in view, there is a moment when each
manufacturer represents in his own person society itself, sees
better and farther than all other men combined, and frequently
without being able to explain himself or make himself
understood. When Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, Newton's
predecessors, came to the point of saying to Christian society,
then represented by the Church: "The Bible is mistaken; the
earth revolves, and the sun is stationary," they were right
against society, which, on the strength of its senses and
traditions, contradicted them. Could society then have accepted
solidarity with the Copernican system? So little could it do it
that this system openly denied its faith, and that, pending the
accord of reason and revelation, Galileo, one of the responsible
inventors, underwent torture in proof of the new idea. We are
more tolerant, I presume; but this very toleration proves that,
while according greater liberty to genius, we do not mean to be
less discreet than our ancestors.
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