No More Learning

ANDREA (screams at Galileo) Wine barrel! Snail eater! Have you saved your
precious skin? (Sits down) I feel sick. GALILEO (calmly) Get him a glass of water.
(The little monk goes out to get Andrea a glass of water. The others pay no attention to Galileo who sits on his footstool, listening. From far off the announcer's voice is heard again)
ANDREA I can walk now if you'll help me.
(They lead him to the door. When they reach it, Galileo begins to speak)
GALILEO No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
A reading in front of the curtain: (by Andrea as a child)
Is it not obvious that a horse falling from a height of three or four ells will break its legs, whereas a dog would not suffer any damage, nor would a cat from a height of eight or nine ells, or a cricket from a tower, or an ant even if it were to fall from the moon? And just as smaller animals are comparatively stronger than larger ones, so small plants too stand up better: an oak tree two hundred ells high cannot sustain its branches in the same proportion as a small oak tree, nor can nature let a horse grow as large as twenty horses or produce a giant ten times the size of man unless it changes all the proportions of the limbs and especially of
the bones, which would have to be strengthened far beyond the size demanded by mere proportion. --The common assumption that large and small machines are equally durable is apparently erroneous.
Galileo, Discorsi
58
? 14
1633-1642. Galileo Galilei spends the rest of his life in a villa near Florence, as a prisoner of the Inquisition. The Discorsi.
Sixteen hundred thirty-three to sixteen hundred forty-two Galileo Galilei remains a prisoner of the church until his death.
A large room with a table, a leather chair and a globe. Galileo, now old and almost blind, is experimenting carefully with a small wooden ball roiling on a curved wooden rail. In the anteroom a monk is sitting on guard. A knock at the door. The monk opens and a peasant comes in carrying two plucked geese. Virginia emerges from the kitchen. She is now about forty years old. The monk takes them from her rand examines them-suspiciously. Satisfied, be gives them back and she carries them by the necks to Galileo in the large room)
A present, dropped off by someone who's passing through. What is it?
VIRGINIA
GALILEO
VIRGINIA
GALILEO
VIRGINIA No.
GALILEO (taking one goose from her) Heavy. Maybe I'll have some.
VIRGINIA You can't be hungry again. You just finished dinner. And what's
wrong with your eyes today? You ought to be able to see them from
where you are.
GALILEO You're standing in the shadow.
VIRGINIA I'm not in the shadow. (She carries the geese out)
GALILEO Put in thyme and apples.
VIRGINIA (to the monk) We must send for the eye doctor. Father couldn't see the
geese.
THE MONK I'll need permission from Monsignor Carpula. -- Has he been
writing again?
VIRGINIA No. He's dictating his book to me, you know that. You have pages
131 and 132, they were the last. THE MONK He's an old fox.
VIRGINIA He doesn't do anything against the rules. His repentance is real. I keep an eye on him. (She gives him the geese) Tell them in the kitchen to fry the liver with an apple and an onion. (She comes back into the large room) And now we're going to think of our eyes and stop playing with that ball and dictate a little more of our weekly letter to the archbishop.
GALILEO I don't feel up to it. Read me some Horace.
VIRGINIA Only last week Monsignor Carpula, to whom we owe so much--those
vegetables the other day--told me the archbishop keeps asking him what you think of the questions and quotations he's been sending you.
(She has sat down ready for dictation)
Can't you see?
No. (He goes closer) Geese, Was there any name?
59
? GALILEO Where was I?
VIRGINIA Section four: Concerning the reaction of the church to the unrest in
the arsenal in Venice, I agree with Cardinal Spoletti's attitude concerning
the rebellious rope makers . . .
GALILEO Yes. (Dictates) . . . agree with Cardinal Spoletti's attitude concerning the
rebellious rope makers, to wit, that it is better to dispense soup to them in the name of Christian charity than to pay them more for their ship's cables and bell ropes. All the more so, since it seems wiser to strengthen their faith than their greed. The Apostle Paul says: Charity never faileth. --How does that sound?
VIRGINIA It's wonderful, father.
GALILEO You don't think it could be mistaken for irony?
VIRGINIA No, the archbishop will be very pleased. He's a practical man.
GALILEO I rely on your judgment. What's the next point?
VIRGINIA A very beautiful saying: "When I am weak then I am strong. "
GALILEO No comment.
VIRGINIA Why not?
GALILEO What's next?
VIRGINIA "And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. " Paul
to the Ephesians three nineteen.
GALILEO I must especially thank Your Eminence for the magnificent quotation
from the epistle to the Ephesians. Inspired by it, I found the following in our incomparable "Imitation": (He quotes from memory) "He to whom speaketh the eternal word is free from much questioning. " May I seize this opportunity to say something on my own behalf? To this day I am being reproached for once having written a book on celestial bodies in the language of the market place. . . .
(A knocking at the door. Virginia goes into the anteroom. The monk opens
the door. Andrea Sarti appears. He is a man in his middle years)
ANDREA Good evening. I am leaving Italy. To do scientific work in Holland. I was asked to see him on my way through and bring the latest news of him.
VIRGINIA I don't know if he'll want to see you. You never came to visit us. ANDREA Ask him.
(Galileo has recognized the voice. He sits motionless. Virginia goes in to him)
GALILEO Is it Andrea?
VIRGINIA Yes. Should I send him away? GALILEO (after a pause) Bring him in.
(Virginia leads Andrea inside)
VIRGINIA (to the monk) He's harmless. He was his pupil. So now he's his enemy. GALILEO Leave us alone, Virginia.
VIRGINIA I want to hear what he says. (She sits down)
ANDREA (cool) How are you?
GALILEO Come closer. What are you doing? Tell me about your work. I hear
you're on hydraulics.
ANDREA Fabricius in Amsterdam has asked me to inquire about your health.
(Pause)
GALILEO ANDREA GALILEO
I'm well. I receive every attention.
I shall be glad to report that you are well.
Fabricius will be glad to hear it. And you may add that I am living in reasonable comfort. The depth of my repentance has moved my
60
? superiors to allow me limited scientific pursuits under clerical control. ANDREA Oh yes. We too have heard that the church is pleased with you. Your
total submission has borne fruit. The authorities, I am told, are most gratified to note that since your submission no work containing any new hypothesis has been published in Italy.
GALILEO (listening in the direction of the anteroom) Unfortunately there are countries which elude the protection of the church. I fear the condemned doctrines are being perpetuated in those countries.
ANDREA There too your recantation has resulted in a setback most gratifying to the church.
GALILEO You don't say. (Pause) Nothing from Descartes? No news from Paris? ANDREA Oh yes. When he heard you had recanted he stuffed his treatise on the
nature of light in his desk drawer.
(Long pause)
GALILEO I keep worrying about some of my scientific friends whom I led down the path of error. Has my recantation helped them to mend their ways?
ANDREA I am going to Holland to carry on my work. The ox is not allowed to do what Jupiter denies himself.
GALILEO I understand.
ANDREA Fulganzio, our little monk, has given up science and returned to the fold. GALILEO Yes. (Pause) My superiors are looking forward to my complete spiritual recovery. I'm making better progress than expected.
ANDREA I see.
VIRGINIA The Lord be praised.
GALILEO (gruffly) Attend to the geese, Virginia.
(Virginia leaves angrily. In passing she is addressed by the monk)
THE MONK I don't like that man.
VIRGINIA He's harmless. You heard what he said. (On her way out) We've got
fresh goat cheese. (The monk follows her out)
ANDREA I'm going to travel through the night so as to cross the borderby morning.
May I go now?
GALILEO I can't see why you've come, Sarti. To stir me up? I've been living
prudently and thinking prudently since I came here. I have rny relapses
even so.
ANDREA I have no desire to upset you, Mr. Galilei.
GALILEO Barberini called it the itch. He wasn't entirely free from it himself.
(Pause)
(whispering) I've been writing again. ANDREA You have?
GALILEO I've finished the Discorsi.
ANDREA What? The Discourses Concerning Two New Sciences: Mechanics and Local
Motion? Here?
GALILEO Oh, they let me have paper and pen. My superiors aren't stupid. They
know that ingrained vices can't be uprooted overnight. They protect me from unpleasant consequences by locking up page after page.
Oh God!
Did you say something?
ANDREA GALILEO ANDREA
GALILEO Oh, I'm a slave of habit.
They let you plow water! They give you pen and paper to quiet you! How could you ever write under such conditions?
61
? ANDREA The Discorsi in the hands of monks! When Amsterdam and London and Prague are clamoring for them!
GALILEO I can just hear Fabricius wailing, demanding his pound of flesh, while he himself sits safely in Amsterdam.
ANDREA Two new branches of science as good as lost!
GALILEO No doubt he and some others will feel uplifted when they hear that I
jeopardized the last pitiful remnants of my comfort to make a copy, behind my own back so to speak, for six months using up the last ounces of light on the clearer nights.
ANDREA You have a copy?
GALILEO So far my vanity has prevented me from destroying
ANDREA Where is it?
GALILEO "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. " Whoever wrote that knew
more about comfort than I do. I'm sure it's the height of folly to let it out of my hands. But since I've been unable to leave science alone, you may just as well have it. The copy is in the globe. Should you consider taking it to Holland, you would of course have to bear full responsibility. You'd say you bought it from someone with access to the Holy Office.
(Andrea has gone to the globe. He takes out the copy)
ANDREA The Discorsi! (He leafs through the manuscript. He reads) "It is my purpose to
establish an entirely new science in regard to a very old problem, namely, motion. By means of experiments I have discovered some of its properties, which are worth knowing.
"
I had to do something with my time.
This will be the foundation of a new physics.
GALILEO
ANDREA
GALILEO
ANDREA And we thought you had deserted us! My voice was the loudest against
Put it under your coat.
you!
GALILEO You were absolutely right. I taught you science and I denied the
truth.
ANDREA That changes everything. Everything.
GALILEO You think so?
ANDREA You were hiding the truth. From the enemy. Even in ethics you were
centuries ahead of us.
GALILEO Explain that to me, Andrea.
ANDREA With the man on the street we said: He'll die, but he'll never recant. --
You came back and said: I've recanted but I shall live. --Your hands are
stained, we said. --You said: Better stained than empty.
GALILEO Better stained than empty. Sounds realistic. Sounds like me. A new
science, a new ethics.
ANDREA I should have known--better than anyone else. I was eleven when you
sold another man's telescope to the senate in Venice. And I watched you make immortal use of that instrument. Your friends shook their heads when you humbled yourself to that child in Florence: But science found an audience. You've always laughed at heroes. "People who suffer bore me," you said. "Bad luck comes from faulty calculations," and "If there are obstacles the shortest line between two points may well be a crooked line. "
GALILEO I remember.
ANDREA And in thirty-three when you decided to abjure a popular item of your
doctrine, I should have known that you were merely withdrawing from a
62
? hopeless political brawl in order to further the true interests of science. GALILEO Which consist in . . .
ANDREA . . . the study of the properties of motion, the mother of machines,
which alone will make the earth so good to live on that we shall be able
to do without heaven. GALILEO Hm.
ANDREA You won the leisure to write a scientific work which you alone could write. Had you perished in the fiery halo of the stake, the others would have been the victors.
GALILEO They are the victors. Besides, there is no scientific work that one man alone can write.
ANDREA GALILEO ANDREA GALILEO
Then why did you recant?
I recanted because I was afraid of physical pain.
No!
They showed me the instruments. ANDREA Then it was not
premeditated?
GALILEO It was not. (Pause)
ANDREA (loud) In science only one thing counts: contribution to knowledge. GALILEO And that I have supplied. Welcome to the gutter, brother in science
and cousin in treason! You like fish? I have fish. What stinks is not my fish, it's me. I'm selling out, you are the buyer. Oh, irresistible sight of a book, that hallowed commodity. The mouth waters, the curses are drowned. The great Babylonian whore, the murderous beast, the scarlet woman, opens her thighs, and everything is different! Hallowed be our haggling, whitewashing, death-shunning community!
ANDREA To shun death is human. Human weaknesses are no concern of science. GALILEO No? ! --My dear Sarti, even in my present condition I believe I can give
you a few hints about the science you are devoting yourself to.
(A short pause)
GALILEO (in lecture style, bands folded over his paunch) In my free time, and I've got
plenty of that, I have reviewed my case and asked myself how the world of science, of which I no longer consider myself a member, will judge it. Even a wool merchant, in addition to buying cheap and selling dear, has to worry about the obstacles that may be put in the way of the wool trade itself. In this sense, the pursuit of science seems to call for special courage. Science trades in knowledge distilled from doubt. Providing everybody with knowledge of everything, science aims at making doubters of everybody. But princes, landlords and priests keep the majority of the people in a pearly haze of superstition and outworn words to cover up their own machinations. The misery of the many is as old as the hills and is proclaimed in church and lecture hall to be as indestructible as the hills. Our new art of doubting delighted the common people. They grabbed the telescope out of our hands and focused it on their tormentors--princes, landlords, priests. Those self-seeking violent men greedily exploited the fruits of science for their own ends but at the same time they felt the cold stare of science focused upon the millennial, yet artificial miseries which mankind could obviously get rid of by getting rid of them. They showered us with threats and bribes, which weak souls cannot resist. But can we turn our backs on the people and still remain scientists? The movements of the heavenly bodies have become more comprehensible; but the movements of their rulers remain unpredictable to
? 63
? the people. The battle to measure the sky was won by doubt; but credulity still prevents the Roman housewife from winning her battle for milk. Science, Sarti, is involved in both battles. If mankind goes on stumbling in a pearly haze of superstition and outworn words and remains too ignorant to make full use of its own strength, it will never be able to use the forces of nature which science has discovered. What end are you scientists working for? To my mind, the only purpose of science is to lighten the toil of human existence. If scientists, browbeaten by selfish rulers, confine themselves to the accumulation of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, science will be crippled and your new machines will only mean new hardships. Given time, you may well discover everything there is to discover, but your progress will be a progression away from humanity. The gulf between you and humanity may one day be so wide that the response to your exultation about some new achievement will be a universal outcry of horror. --As a scientist, I had a unique opportunity. In my time astronomy reached the market place. Under these very special circumstances, one man's steadfastness might have had tremendous repercussions. If I had held out, scientists might have developed something like the physicians' Hippocratic oath, the vow to use their knowledge only for the good of mankind. As things stand now, the best we can hope for is a generation of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for any purpose. Furthermore, I have come to the conclusion, Sarti, that I was never in any real danger. For a few years I was as strong as the authorities. And yet I handed the powerful my knowledge to use, or not to use, or to misuse as served their purposes. (Virginia has come in with a dish and stops now) I have betrayed my calling. A man who does what I have done, cannot be tolerated in the ranks of science.
VIRGINIA You have been received in the ranks of the faithful.
(She -walks on and sets the dish on the table)
GALILEO Yes. --I must eat now.
(Andrea offers him his hand. Galileo sees it but does not take it)
GALILEO You are teaching now yourself. Can you afford to shake a hand such as mine? (He goes to the table) Somebody on the way through has sent me two geese. I still like to eat.
ANDREA Then you no longer believe that a new era has dawned?
GALILEO I do. --Take good care of yourself when you pass through the country
with the truth under your coat.
ANDREA (unable to leave) Regarding your opinion of the author we discussed I cannot
answer you. But I refuse to believe that your devastating analysis can be the last word.
GALILEO Thank you, sir. (He begins to eat) VIRGINIA (seeing Andrea, out) like visitors from the past. They upset him.
(Andrea leaves. Virginia comes back)
We don't
Any idea who could have sent the geese? Not Andrea.
Maybe not. How is the night?
GALILEO
VIRGINIA
GALILEO
VIRGINIA (at the window) Clear.
64
? 15
1637. Galileo's book Discorsi crosses the Italian border.
The great book o'er the border went And, good folk, that was the end. But we hope you'll keep in mind You and I were left behind.
May you now guard science' light Keep it up and use it right
Lest it be a flame to fall
One day to consume us all.
A small Italian border town. Early morning. Children are playing by the turnpike near the guard house. Andrea, beside a coachman, is waiting for his papers to he examined by the guards. He is sitting on a small box reading in Galileo's manuscript. The coach is on the far side of the turnpike.
THE BORDER GUARD Why are you leaving Italy?
ANDREA I'm a scholar.
THE BORDER GUARD "Reason for Leaving": Scholar.
THE FIRST BOY (to Andrea) Don't sit there. (He points at the hut in front of which
Andrea is sitting) A witch lives there.
THE SECOND BOY Old Marina isn't a witch.
THE FIRST BOY Want me to twist your arm?
THE SECOND BOY She is too. She flies through the air at night.
THE FIRST BOY If she's not a witch, why can't she get any milk anywhere in town? THE SECOND BOY How can she fly through the air? Nobody can do that.
(To Andrea) Or can they?
THE FIRST BOY (referring to the second boy) That's Giuseppe. He doesn't know
anything, because he doesn't go to school, because his pants are torn. THE BORDER GUARD What's that book?
ANDREA (without looking up) It's by Aristotle, the great philosopher.
THE BORDER GUARD (suspiciously) What's he up to?
ANDREA He's dead.
(To tease Andrea, the boys walk around him in a way indicating that they too are reading books)
THE BORDER GUARD Lets see if there's anything about religion in it.
(checking Andrea's belongings)
THE BORDER GUARD Nothing. Anyways there's no point in looking. Nobody'd be so open about anything he wanted to hide. {To Andrea) You'll have to sign a paper saying we examined everything.
(Andrea hesitantly gets up and reading all the time goes into the bouse with the guards)
THE SECOND,. BOY (pointing at the box) Look, there's something else. THE BORDER GUARD Wasn't it here before?
65
? THE FIRST BOY The devil's put it there.
THE SECOND BOY No, it belongs to the traveler.
THE BORDER GUARD (almost at the box hesitates and goes back) Well, we can't examine
everything. We'd never get through.
(Andrea returns with a pitcher of milk. He sits down on the box again and continues to
read)
THE BORQER. GUARD -(following him with papers) Close the boxes.
THE SECOND BOY (to Andrea) You say you're a scholar. Then tell me: Can people
fly through the air? ANDREA Just a moment.
THE BORDER GUARD You may proceed.
(The luggage has been picked up by the coachman. Andrea takes his box and prepares
to go)
THE BORDER GUARD Wait! What's in that box? ANDREA (taking up his book again)
Books.
THE FIRST BOY It's the witch's box.
THE BORDER GUARD Nonsense. How could she hex a box? THE SECOND BOY If the devil's helping her!
THE BORDER GUARD (laughs) Not in our rule book. We open it.
(The box is opened)
THE BORDER GUARD (listlessly) How many?
ANDREA Thirty-four.
THE BORDER GUARD (who has started rummaging superficially through the box)
All printed stuff. You'd have no time for breakfast, and when do you expect me to collect the overdue toll from Passi the coachman when his house is auctioned off, if I go through all these books?
THE BORDER GUARD You're right, we've got to get that money. (He kicks at the books) What could be in them anyway? (To the coachman) Pfftt!
(Andrea and the coachman who carries the box cross the border.
Beyond it Andrea puts Galileo's manuscript in his bag)
THE SECOND BOY (points at the pitcher which Andrea had left behind) Look!
THE FIRST BOY And the box is gone! Now do you see it was the devil?
ANDREA (turning around) No, it was me. You must learn to use your eyes. The
milk and the pitcher are paid for. Give them to the old woman. Oh yes, Giuseppe, I haven't answered your question. No one can fly through the air on a stick. Unless it has some sort of machine attached to it. Such machines don't exist yet.