Galileo’s attitude before the Inquisition is such that the latter supposition does not seem altogether unjustifiable; but we must assume with Wohlwill, who has analysed the trial with great judicial acumen, and whom we have followed on many points discussed above, that Galileo would only have availed himself of such a lie and misrepresentation, if it would have helped him before the tribunal of the Inquisition. But the advantage of denying any actual proceeding of 26th February is by no means evident. On the contrary, Galileo must have seen—supposing him to make false depositions—from the Inquisitor’s questions that he had the protocol of 26th February before him. Of what avail then could a fiction be in face of this document? Of none whatever. It would rather injure his cause by stamping him as a liar. Wohlwill has pointed out that it would have been a masterpiece of cunning to play out the comedy of assumed ignorance from beginning to end of the trial in so consistent a manner, never contradicting himself, as appears from Galileo’s depositions. His simplest replies would then have formed parts of a complex tissue of falsehood, and it would be astonishing that throughout the whole course of the trial he should never for a moment deviate from his difficult part. While the complexity of such a mode of defence renders the assumption of Galileo’s denial, to say the least, improbable, there are other more weighty arguments to show that he states before his judges all that he knows about the proceedings in 1616. These arguments consist of all Galileo’s statements and actions with which we are acquainted, during the seventeen years from 1616-1632, and they form the strongest evidence for the credibility of his depositions. We recur first, simply to the letters of the time of the first trial, in which there is not only no trace of the assumed absolute prohibition, but Galileo openly expresses his satisfaction that his enemies have not succeeded in obtaining an entire prohibition of the Copernican theory, and he again and again mentions that the hypothetical discussion of it still remains open. And the attitude maintained by him during the seventeen years towards the new system is in entire conformity with the decree of the Congregation of the Index of 5th March, 1616, which was in force for everybody, but not with the categorical prohibition of the Commissary-General of the Holy Office. This is shown by his eagerness to get his work on Copernicus published in the very year 1616; by his sending the treatise on the tides to the Archduke Leopold of Austria, in 1618; by the discussion of the Copernican theory in his “Il Saggiatore,” in 1623; by his efforts in 1624 to get the clause of 5th March, 1616, abolished by the new, and, as he thought, more tolerant Pope (there is no trace that he tried to get any special prohibition to himself revoked); by his reply to Ingoli of the same date, which treated exclusively of the marked defence of the Copernican