But this
barbarian was their twin-brother, and though their antagonist he was
also the antagonist of the common enemy. All this, I say, is due to the
Renaissance and the Reformation, and to what was the offspring of these
two, the Revolution, and to them we owe also a new Inquisition, that of
science or culture, which turns against those who refuse to submit to
its orthodoxy the weapons of ridicule and contempt.
When Galileo sent his treatise on the earth's motion to the Grand Duke
of Tuscany, he told him that it was meet that that which the higher
authorities had determined should be believed and obeyed, and that he
considered his treatise "as poetry or as a dream, and as such I desire
your highness to receive it." And at other times he calls it a "chimera"
or a "mathematical caprice." And in the same way in these essays, for
fear also--why not confess it?--of the Inquisition, of the modern, the
scientific, Inquisition, I offer as a poetry, dream, chimera, mystical
caprice, that which springs from what is deepest in me. And I say with
Galileo, _Eppur si muove!_ But is it only because of this fear? Ah, no!
for there is another, more tragic Inquisition, and that is the
Inquisition which the modern man, the man of culture, the European--and
such am I, whether I will or not--carries within him. There is a more
terrible ridicule, and that is the ridicule with which a man
contemplates his own self.
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