The professors at Pisa, with a single exception, Jacopo Mazzoni, in the chair of philosophy, were opposed to the new-comer. They were all disciples of Aristotle, and had not Galileo, when a boy among them, dared to oppose the great Grecian? And now, to make matters worse, he had taken some friends to the top of the Leaning Tower, and had put to the test the belief of two thousand years,--that the rate at which a body falls depends upon its weight. When the different weights fell to the pavement at the foot of the Leaning Tower, at the same time, the learned were astonished. If Aristotle could be wrong in one thing, he might in others, and this young man would revolutionize the teaching of the times!
The feeling became so strong against the investigator that after three years at Pisa he resigned. When will the world learn toleration for those whose opinions are different from the popular thought? From Galileo to Darwin we have persecuted the men and women whose views were unlike our own in theology, in science, or in social matters.
Through his friend, the Marquis Guidubaldo, the mathematical professorship at Padua was obtained for Galileo. He was now twenty-nine, and becoming widely known throughout Italy. His father had just died, leaving the whole family, a wife and four children, dependent upon him for support; not a small matter for an ambitious and hard-working professor.
Padua gave the young man cordial welcome. Vincenzo Pinelli, a learned nobleman, who possessed eighty thousand volumes, mentioned him to Tycho Brahe, the great Danish astronomer, as a man whom it would be well to cultivate; but the Dane was too cautious about his own reputation, and did not write Galileo till eight years later, and died the following year.
An associate of Tycho Brahe was wiser than his master, and sent Galileo his new book, "Prodromus Dissertationum Cosmographicum." A warm letter of thanks went back to the immortal John Kepler, saying: "Many years ago I became a convert to the opinions of Copernicus, and by that theory have succeeded in fully explaining many phenomena which on the contrary hypothesis are altogether inexplicable. I have drawn up many arguments and compilations of the opposite opinions, which, however, I have not hitherto dared to publish, fearful of meeting the same fate as our master Copernicus, who, although he has earned for himself immortal fame amongst the few, yet amongst the greater number appears as only worthy of hooting and derision; so great is the number of fools."