Note 66 — Chapter IV · THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE MIDDLE AGE.

The following quotation illustrates this servile dependence on authority:

“At the time when the discovery of spots on the sun first began to circulate, a student called the attention of his old professor to the rumor, and received the following reply: ‘There can be no spots on the sun, for I have read Aristotle twice from beginning to end, and he says the sun is incorruptible. Clean your lenses, and if the spots are not in the telescope, they must be in your eyes!’” Naville, La Logique de l’Hypothèse. (P.)