In point of fact, Galileo’s condemnation did not turn upon his teaching a demonstrated truth, for it was not yet demonstrated. It did not turn upon a novel idea in Astronomy, but upon an hypothesis which was already hoary before Galileo was born; and the condemnation was not originated against the idea as an hypothesis, but against the teaching of it as an established fact. So much for point _one_. Next, as to point _two_, the condemnation did not proceed from the Catholic Church. It proceeded from a particular disciplinary organ of the Catholic Church, with no authority whatsoever for finally establishing a point in doctrine. To confuse it with Catholic definition of doctrine would be like confusing the definition of a New York court of justice with an amendment to the Constitution. The Pope himself, as it happened, forbade what would have been a grave error--though not one binding the Church--I mean, a full definition of heresy by the inquisitors upon the matter. But all that is neither here nor there. There was no definition binding upon Christians, and has been none, nor ever will be in such a purely mechanical affair. What there _was_ was disciplinary action against a man who had done everything he could to provoke the constituted authorities of religion by querulous and bitter insult (he was a difficult character), a man who was unable to support his own statements in court (nothing he brought forward at his trial came near to being conclusive on the motion of the earth, and much that he brought forward was fantastic),[3] and the action came at the end of an upheaval in which, by exactly this kind of irrational, angry attitude in graver matters, the unity of Christendom had been destroyed. No wonder the authorities had grown touchy. Moreover, as anyone may see who reads the trial (and as Huxley saw), Galileo could not prove his case. It was still only an hypothesis. The theory that the earth was not fixed, but turning on its axis and moving round the sun, had not only been familiar (as I have said) to educated[4] Europe from long before Galileo was born, but had been taught with clerical approval _as an hypothesis_ in Catholic universities; it was taught again in such universities not long after the Galileo trial as evidence accumulated, and became a commonplace of all teaching in Catholic schools and colleges long before the expunging of the Galilean treatise from the Index--always, and necessarily, a lengthy process.