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The Warfare of Science
THE
WARFARE OF SCIENCE.
BY
ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL.D.,
PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
1888.
ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876,
BY D. APPLETON & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
TO
HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE,
OF BROOKLYN, N. Y.,
A CHRISTIAN MAN, WHO HAS PROVED THAT HE WELCOMES
ALL TRUTH, AND FEARS NONE,
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS INSCRIBED,
WITH FEELINGS OF
THOROUGH RESPECT AND ESTEEM.
PREFATORY NOTE.
In its earlier abridged form this address was given as a Phi Beta Kappa
oration at Brown University, and, as a lecture, at New York, Boston,
New Haven, Ann Arbor, and elsewhere. In that form, substantially, it
was published in THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. I have now given it
careful revision, correcting some errors, and extending it largely
by presenting new facts and developing various points of interest in
the general discussion. Among the subjects added or rewrought are: in
Astronomy, the struggle of Galileo and the retreat of the Church after
its victory; in Chemistry and Physics, the compromise between Science
and Theology made by Thomas Aquinas, and the unfortunate route taken
by Science in consequence; in Anatomy and Medicine, the earlier growth
of ecclesiastical distrust of these sciences; in Scientific Education,
the dealings of various European universities with scientific studies;
in Political and Social Science, a more complete statement of the
opposition of the Church, on Scriptural grounds, to the taking of
interest for money; and, in the conclusion, a more careful summing up.
If I have seemed to encumber the text with notes, it has been in the
intention to leave no important assertion unsupported; and in the hope
that others--less engrossed with administrative care than myself--may
find in them indications for more extended studies in various parts of
the struggle which I have but sketched.
A. D. W.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, _March, 1876_.
THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.
I purpose to present an outline of the great, sacred struggle for
the liberty of science--a struggle which has lasted for so many
centuries, and which yet continues. A hard contest it has been; a war
waged longer, with battles fiercer, with sieges more persistent, with
strategy more shrewd than in any of the comparatively transient warfare
of Cæsar or Napoleon or Moltke.
I shall ask you to go with me through some of the most protracted
sieges, and over some of the hardest-fought battle-fields of this
war. We will look well at the combatants; we will listen to the
battle-cries; we will note the strategy of leaders, the cut and thrust
of champions, the weight of missiles, the temper of weapons; we will
look also at the truces and treaties, and note the delusive impotency
of all compromises in which the warriors for scientific truth have
consented to receive direction or bias from the best of men uninspired
by the scientific spirit, or unfamiliar with scientific methods.
My thesis, which, by an historical study of this warfare, I expect
to develop, is the following: _In all modern history, interference
with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how
conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the
direst evils both to religion and to science--and invariably. And, on
the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how
dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed, for the time,
to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good of religion and of
science._ I say "invariably." I mean exactly that. It is a rule to
which history shows not one exception.
It would seem, logically, that this statement cannot be gainsaid.
God's truths must agree, whether discovered by looking within upon the
soul, or without upon the world. A truth written upon the human heart
to-day, in its full play of emotions or passions, cannot be at any real
variance even with a truth written upon a fossil whose poor life ebbed
forth millions of years ago.
This being so, it would also seem a truth irrefragable, that the search
for each of these kinds of truth must be followed out on its own lines,
by its own methods, to its own results, without any interference from
investigators on other lines, or by other methods. And it would also
seem logical to work on in absolute confidence that whatever, at any
moment, may seem to be the relative positions of the two different
bands of workers, they must at last come together, for Truth is one.
But logic is not history. History is full of interferences which have
cost the earth dear. Strangest of all, some of the direst of them have
been made by the best of men, actuated by the purest motives, and
seeking the noblest results. These interferences, and the struggle
against them, make up the warfare of science.
One statement more, to clear the ground. You will not understand me at
all to say that religion has done nothing for science. It has done much
for it. The work of Christianity has been mighty indeed. Through these
two thousand years, despite the waste of its energies on all the things
its Blessed Founder most earnestly condemned--on fetich and subtlety
and war and pomp--it has undermined servitude, mitigated tyranny, given
hope to the hopeless, comfort to the afflicted, light to the blind,
bread to the starving, joy to the dying, and this work continues. And
its work for science, too, has been great. It has fostered science
often. Nay, it has nourished that feeling of self-sacrifice for human
good, which has nerved some of the bravest men for these battles.
Unfortunately, a devoted army of good men started centuries ago with
the idea that independent scientific investigation is unsafe--that
theology must intervene to superintend its methods, and the Biblical
record, as an historical compendium and scientific treatise, be taken
as a standard to determine its results. So began this great modern war.
GEOGRAPHY.
The first typical battle-field to which I would refer is that of
Geography--the simplest elementary doctrine of the earth's shape and
surface.
Among the legacies of thought left by the ancient world to the modern,
were certain ideas of the rotundity of the earth. These ideas were
vague; they were mixed with absurdities; but they were _germ ideas_,
and, after the barbarian storm which ushered in the modern world had
begun to clear away, these germ ideas began to bud and bloom in the
minds of a few thinking men, and these men hazarded the suggestion that
the earth is round--is a globe.[1]
The greatest and most earnest men of the time took fright at once. To
them, the idea of the earth's rotundity seemed fraught with dangers to
Scripture: by which, of course, they meant _their interpretation_ of
Scripture.
Among the first who took up arms against the new thinkers was Eusebius.
He endeavored to turn off these ideas by bringing science into
contempt, and by making the innovators understand that he and the
fathers of the Church despised all such inquiries. Speaking of the
innovations in physical science, he said: "It is not through ignorance
of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their useless
labor, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to
better things."[2]
Lactantius asserted the ideas of those studying astronomy to be "mad
and senseless."[3]
But the attempt to "flank" the little phalanx of thinkers did not
succeed, of course. Even such men as Lactantius and Eusebius cannot
pooh-pooh down a new scientific idea. The little band of thinkers went
on, and the doctrine of the rotundity of the earth naturally led to the
consideration of the tenants of the earth's surface, and another germ
idea was warmed into life--the idea of the existence of the antipodes,
the idea of the existence of countries and men on the hemisphere
opposite to ours.[4]
At this the war-spirit waxed hot. Those great and good men determined
to fight. To all of them such doctrines seemed dangerous; to most of
them they seemed damnable. St. Basil and St. Ambrose[5] were tolerant
enough to allow that a man might be saved who believed the earth to be
round, and inhabited on its opposite sides; but the great majority of
the Fathers of the Church utterly denied the possibility of salvation
to such misbelievers.
Lactantius asks: "... Is there any one so senseless as to believe that
there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads?--that the
crops and trees grow downward?--that the rains and snow and hail fall
upward toward the earth?... But if you inquire from those who defend
these marvelous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower
part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that
heavy bodies are borne toward the middle, like the spokes of a wheel;
while light bodies, such as clouds, smoke, and fire, tend from the
centre toward the heavens on all sides. Now, I am at loss what to say
of those who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their
folly, and defend one vain thing by another."
St. Augustine seems inclined to yield a little in regard to the
rotundity of the earth, but he fights the idea that men exist on the
other side of the earth, saying that "Scripture speaks of no such
descendants of Adam."
But this did not avail to check the idea. What may be called the flank
movement, as represented by Eusebius, had failed. The direct battle
given by Lactantius, Augustine, and others, had failed; in the sixth
century, therefore, the opponents of the new ideas built a great
fortress and retired into that. It was well built and well braced. It
was nothing less than a complete theory of the world, based upon the
literal interpretation of texts of Scripture, and its author was Cosmas
Indicopleustes.[6]
According to Cosmas, the earth is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded
by four great seas. At the outer edges of these seas rise immense walls
closing in the whole structure. These walls support the vault of the
heavens, whose edges are cemented to the walls; walls and vault shut
in the earth and all the heavenly bodies. The whole of this theologic,
scientific fortress was built most carefully, and, as was then thought,
most scripturally.
Starting with the expression, _Το ἁγιον κοσμικὁν_, applied in the
ninth chapter of Hebrews to the tabernacle in the desert, he insists,
with other interpreters of his time, that it gives a key to the whole
construction of the world. The universe is, therefore, made on the
plan of the Jewish Tabernacle--box-like and oblong.
Coming to details, he quotes those grand words of Isaiah, "It is he
that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, ... that stretcheth out
the heavens like a curtain, and spreadeth them out like a tent to
dwell in,"[7] and the passage in Job, which speaks of the "pillars
of heaven."[8] He turns all that splendid and precious poetry into a
prosaic statement, and gathers therefrom, as he thinks, treasures for
science.
This vast box is then divided into two compartments, one above the
other. In the first of these, men live and stars move; and it extends
up to the first solid vault or firmament, where live the angels, a
main part of whose business it is to push and pull the sun and planets
to and fro. Next he takes the text, "Let there be a firmament in the
midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,"[9]
and other texts from Genesis. To these he adds the text from the
Psalms, "Praise him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above
the heavens,"[10] casts that outburst of poetry into his crucible
with the other texts, and, after subjecting them to sundry peculiar
processes, brings out the theory that over this first vault is a vast
cistern containing the waters. He then takes the expression in Genesis
regarding the "windows of heaven,"[11] and establishes a doctrine
regarding the regulation of the rain, which is afterward supplemented
by the doctrine that the angels not only push and pull the heavenly
bodies, to light the earth, but also open and close the windows of
heaven to water it.
To find the character of the surface of the earth, Cosmas studies the
table of shew-bread in the Tabernacle. The dimensions of that table
prove to him that the earth is flat and twice as long as broad; the
four corners of the table symbolize the four seasons. To account for
the movement of the sun, Cosmas suggests that at the north of the
earth is a great mountain, and that, at night, the sun is carried
behind this; but some of the commentators ventured to express a doubt
here; they thought that the sun was pushed into a great pit at night,
and was pulled out in the morning. Nothing can be more touching in
its simplicity than Cosmas's closing of his great argument. He bursts
forth in raptures, declaring that Moses, the prophets, evangelists, and
apostles, agree to the truth of his doctrine.[12]
Such was the fortress built against human science in the sixth
century, by Cosmas; and it stood. The innovators attacked it in vain.
The greatest minds in the Church devoted themselves to buttressing it
with new texts, and throwing out new outworks of theologic reasoning.
It stood firm for two hundred years, when a bishop--Virgilius of
Salzburg--asserts his belief in the existence of the antipodes.
It happened that there then stood in Germany, in the first years
of the eighth century, one of the greatest and noblest of men--St.
Boniface. His learning was of the best then known; in labors he was a
worthy successor to the apostles; his genius for Christian work made
him, unwillingly, Primate of Germany; his devotion afterward led him,
willingly, to martyrdom. There sat, too, at that time, on the papal
throne, a great Christian statesman--Pope Zachary. Boniface immediately
declares against the revival of such a terrible heresy as the existence
of the antipodes. He declares that it amounts to the declaration that
there are men on the earth beyond the reach of the means of salvation;
he attacks Virgilius; he calls on Zachary for aid; effective measures
are taken, and we hear no more of Virgilius or his doctrine.
Six hundred years pass away, and in the fourteenth century two men
publicly assert the doctrine. The first of these, Peter of Abano,
escapes punishment by natural death; the second, known as Cecco
d'Ascoli, a man of seventy years, is burned alive. Nor was that all
the punishment: that great painter, Orcagna, whose terrible works you
may see on the walls of the Campo Santa at Pisa, immortalized Cecco by
representing him in the flames of hell.[13]
Still the idea lived and moved, and a hundred years later we find the
theologian Tostatus protesting against the doctrine of the antipodes
as "unsafe." He has invented a new missile--the following syllogism:
"The apostles were commanded to go into all the world, and to preach
the gospel to every creature; they did not go to any such part of the
world as the antipodes, they did not preach to any creatures there:
_ergo_, no antipodes exist." This is just before the time of Columbus.
Columbus is the next warrior. The world has heard of his battles:
how the Bishop of Ceuta worsted him in Portugal; how at the Junta of
Salamanca the theologians overwhelmed him with quotations from the
Psalms, from St. Paul, and from St. Augustine.[14] And even after
Columbus was triumphant, and after his voyage had greatly strengthened
the theory of the earth's sphericity, the Church, by its highest
authority, was again solemnly committed to the theory of the earth's
flatness. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI. issues a bull laying down a line
of demarkation upon the earth as a flat disk; this line was drawn from
north to south, west of the Azores and Canary Islands; and the Pope, in
the plenitude of his knowledge and powers, declared that all lands
discovered east of this line should belong to the Portuguese, and all
discovered west of it should belong to the Spaniards. This was hailed
as an exercise of divinely illuminated power in the Church; but in
a few years difficulties arose. The Portuguese claimed Brazil, and,
of course, had no difficulty in showing that it could be reached by
sailing to the east of the line, provided the sailing were sufficiently
long-continued. The bull of Pope Alexander quietly passed into the
catalogue of ludicrous errors.[15]
But in 1519 Science gains a crushing victory. Magalhaens makes his
famous voyages. He proves the earth to be round, for his great
expedition circumnavigates it; he proves the doctrine of the antipodes,
for he sees the men of the antipodes;[16] but even this does not end
the war. Many earnest and good men oppose the doctrine for two hundred
years longer. Then the French astronomers make their measurements of
degrees in equatorial and polar regions, and add to other proofs that
of the lengthened pendulum: when this was done, when the deductions of
science were seen to be established by the simple test of measurement,
beautifully, perfectly, then and then only this war of twelve centuries
ended.[17]
And now, what was the result of this war? The efforts of Eusebius and
Lactantius to deaden scientific thought; the efforts of Augustine to
combat it; the efforts of Cosmas to stop it by dogmatism; the efforts
of Boniface, and Zachary, and others to stop it by force, conscientious
as they all were, had resulted in what? Simply in forcing into many
noble minds this most unfortunate conviction, that Science and Religion
are enemies; simply in driving away from religion hosts of the best
men in all those centuries. The result was wholly bad. No optimism can
change that verdict.
On the other hand, what was gained by the warriors of science for
religion? Simply, a far more ennobling conception of the world, and a
far truer conception of Him who made and who sustains it.
Which is the more consistent with a great, true religion--the
cosmography of Cosmas, or that of Isaac Newton? Which presents the
nobler food for religious thought--the diatribes of Lactantius, or the
astronomical discourses of Thomas Chalmers?
ASTRONOMY.
The next great battle was fought on a question relating to the
_position of the earth among the heavenly bodies_. On one side, the
great body of conscientious religious men planted themselves firmly on
the geocentric doctrine--the doctrine that the earth is the centre, and
that the sun and planets revolve about it. The doctrine was old, and
of the highest respectability.[18] The very name, Ptolemaic theory,
carried weight. It had been elaborated until it accounted well for the
phenomena. Exact textual interpreters of Scripture cherished it, for it
agreed with the letter of the sacred text.[19]
But, most important of all, it was stamped with the seal of St. Thomas
Aquinas. The sainted theologian--the glory of the Mediæval Church, the
"angelic doctor"--he to whom it was believed an image of the Crucified
had spoken words praising his writings--had shown in his treatise on
the Heaven and Earth, by philosophy, theology, and revelation, that the
position of the earth must be in the centre.[20]
Still the germs of the heliocentric theory[21] had been planted long
before, and well planted; it had seemed ready even to bloom forth in
the fifth century, from the mind of Martianus Capella, and in the
fifteenth from the mind of Cardinal de Cusa; but it could not be
forgotten that St. Thomas had elaborated the opposite view; the chill
of dogmatism was still over the earth, and up to the beginning of the
sixteenth century there had come to this great truth neither bloom nor
fruitage.[22]
Quietly, however, the soil was receiving enrichment, and the air
warmth. The processes of mathematics were constantly improved, the
heavenly bodies were steadily though silently observed; and at length
appeared, afar off from the centres of thought, on the borders of
Poland, a plain, simple-minded scholar, who first fairly uttered to
the world the truth, now so commonplace, then so astounding, that the
sun and planets do not revolve about the earth, but that the earth and
planets revolve about the sun, and that man was Nicholas Kopernik.[23]
Kopernik had been a professor at Rome, but, as this truth grew within
him, he seemed to feel that at Rome he was no longer safe.[24]
To publish this thought was dangerous indeed, and for more than thirty
years it lay slumbering in the minds of Kopernik and the friends to
whom he had privately intrusted it.
At last he prepares his great work on the _Revolution of the Heavenly
Bodies_, and dedicates it to the pope himself. He next seeks a place of
publication. He dares not send it to Rome, for there are the rulers of
the older Church ready to seize it. He dares not send it to Wittenberg,
for there are the leaders of Protestantism no less hostile. It is
therefore intrusted to Osiander, of Nuremberg.[25]
But, at the last moment, Osiander's courage fails him. He dares not
launch the new thought boldly. He writes a groveling preface; endeavors
to excuse Kopernik for his novel idea. He inserts the apologetic lie
that Kopernik propounds the doctrine of the movement of the earth, not
as a _fact_, but as an _hypothesis_; he declares that it is lawful
for an astronomer to indulge his _imagination_, and that this is what
Kopernik has done.
Thus was the greatest and most ennobling, perhaps, of scientific
truths--a truth not less ennobling to religion than to
science--forced, in coming into the world, to sneak and crawl.[26]
On the 24th of May, 1543, the newly-printed book first arrived at
the house of Kopernik. It was put into his hands; but he was on his
death-bed. A few hours later he was beyond the reach of those mistaken,
conscientious men, whose consciences would have blotted his reputation,
and perhaps have destroyed his life.
Yet not wholly beyond their reach. Even death could not be trusted
to shield him. There seems to have been fear of vengeance upon his
corpse, for on his tombstone was placed no record of his life-long
labors, no mention of his great discovery. There were graven upon
it affecting words, which may be thus simply translated: "I ask not
the grace accorded to Paul, not that given to Peter; give me only the
favor which thou didst show to the thief on the cross." Not till thirty
years after did a friend dare write on his tombstone a memorial of his
discovery.[27]
The book was taken in hand by the proper authorities. In due time it
was solemnly condemned; to read it was to risk damnation; and the
world accepted the decree.[28] The earnest theologians of the period
immediately wheeled their batteries of sacred learning to support the
Church in its effort to beat back the terrible doctrine that the earth
revolves about the sun. Among the most vigorous of them in Northern
Europe was Fromundus. From the shadow of the Cathedral of Antwerp he
sent forth his famous treatise, the _Anti-Aristarchus_, full of the
strongest arguments against the new theory. His very title-page was a
contemptuous insult to the memory of Kopernik, since it paraded the
assumption that the new truth was only an old and exploded theory of
Aristarchus. He declares that "sacred Scripture fights against the
Copernicans." To prove that the sun revolves about the earth, he cites
the passage in the Psalms which speaks of the sun "which cometh forth
as a bridegroom out of his chamber." To prove that the earth stands
still, he quotes the passage from Ecclesiastes, "the earth standeth
fast forever." To show the utter futility of the Copernican ideas, he
indulges in scientific reasoning as he understands it--declaring that,
if the hated theory were true, "the wind would constantly blow from the
east; we should with great difficulty hear sounds against such a wind;"
that "buildings, and the earth itself, would fly off with such a
rapid motion;" and, greatest weapon of all, he works up, by the use of
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, a demonstration from theology and science
combined, that the earth must stand in the centre, and that the sun
must revolve about it.[29]
Doubtless many will at once exclaim against the Roman Catholic Church
for this. Justice compels me to say that the founders of Protestantism
were no less zealous against the new scientific doctrine. Said Martin
Luther: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer, who strove to show
that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and
the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system,
which of all systems is, of course, the very best. This fool wishes to
reverse the entire science of astronomy. But Sacred Scripture tells us
that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."
Melanchthon, mild as he was, was not behind Luther in condemning
Kopernik. In his treatise, _Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ_, he says:
"The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of
twenty-four hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty,
or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth
moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun
revolves.... Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such
notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a
good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God, and to acquiesce
in it." Melanchthon then cites passages from the Psalms and from
Ecclesiastes which he declares assert positively and clearly that the
earth stands fast, and that the sun moves around it, and adds eight
other proofs of his proposition that "the earth can be nowhere, if not
in the centre of the universe."[30]
And Protestant people were not a whit behind Catholic in following
out these teachings. The people of Elbing made themselves merry over a
farce in which Kopernik was the main object of ridicule. The people of
Nuremberg, a great Protestant centre, caused a medal to be struck, with
inscriptions ridiculing the philosopher and his theory.[31]
Then was tried, also, one piece of strategy very common formerly in
battles between theologians themselves. It consists in loud shoutings
that the doctrine attacked is outworn, and already refuted--that
various distinguished gentlemen have proved it false--that it is not
a living truth, but a detected lie--that, if the world listens to it,
that is simply because the world is ignorant. This strategy was brought
to bear on Kopernik. It was shown that his doctrine was simply a
revival of the Pythagorean notion, which had been thoroughly exploded.
Fromundus, as we have seen in his title-page and throughout his book,
delights in referring to the doctrine of the revolution of the planets
around the sun, as "that Pythagorean notion." This mode of warfare
was imitated by the lesser opponents, and produced, for some time,
considerable effect.[32]
But the new truth could neither be laughed down nor forced down. Many
minds had received it; only one tongue dared utter it. This new warrior
was that strange mortal, Giordano Bruno. He was hunted from land to
land, until, at last, he turns on his pursuers with fearful invectives.
For this he is imprisoned six years, then burned alive and his ashes
scattered to the winds. Still the new truth lived on; it could not
be killed. Within ten years after the martyrdom of Bruno,[33] after
a world of troubles and persecutions, the truth of the doctrine of
Kopernik was established by the telescope of Galileo.[34]
Herein was fulfilled one of the most touching of prophecies. Years
before, the enemies of Kopernik had said to him, "If your doctrines
were true, Venus would show phases like the moon." Kopernik answered:
"You are right; I know not what to say; but God is good, and will in
time find an answer to this objection."[35] The God-given answer came
when the rude telescope of Galileo showed the phases of Venus.
On this new champion, Galileo, the war was long and bitter. The
supporters of what was called "sound learning" declared his discoveries
deceptions, and his announcements blasphemy. Semi-scientific
professors, endeavoring to curry favor with the Church, attacked him
with sham science; earnest preachers attacked him with perverted
Scripture![36]
I shall present this warfare at some length, because, so far as I can
find, no careful outline of it has been given in our language, since
the whole history was placed in a new light by the revelation of the
trial documents in the Vatican Library, published for the first time by
M. de l'Epinois in 1867.
The first important attack on Galileo began when he announced that his
telescope had revealed the moons of the planet Jupiter; the enemy
saw that this strengthened the Copernican theory, and gave battle
immediately.
The whole theory was denounced as impossible and impious. Professors,
bred in the mixed science favored by the Church,[37] argued that the
Bible clearly showed, by all applicable types, that there could be only
seven planets; that this was proved by the seven golden candlesticks of
the Apocalypse, by the seven-branched candlestick of the Tabernacle,
and by the seven churches of Asia:[38] theologians showed the
destructive consequences which must logically result to fundamental
Christian truths: bishops and priests uttered impressive warnings to
their flocks; and multitudes of the faithful besought the Inquisition
to protect the fold by dealing speedily and sharply with the heretic.
In vain did Galileo try to save the great truths he had discovered,
by his letters to the Benedictine Castelli and the Grand-duchess
Christine, in which he argued that literal Biblical interpretation
should not be applied to science; it was declared that by making such
an argument his heresy was only rendered more detestable; that he was
"worse than Luther or Calvin."
In vain did he try to prove the existence of satellites by showing them
to the doubters through his telescope. They either declared it impious
to look, or, if they did see them, denounced them as illusions from the
devil. Good Father Clavius declared that to "see satellites of Jupiter,
men had to make an instrument which would create them."[39]
The war on the Copernican theory, which up to that time had been
carried on quietly, now flamed forth. It was declared that the doctrine
was proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua; by the
declarations that "the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that
they cannot be moved," and that the sun "runneth about from one end of
heaven to the other."[40]
The Dominican father, Caccini, preached a sermon from the text,
"Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" and this
wretched pun was the first of a series of sharper weapons; for before
Caccini finishes, he insists that "geometry is of the devil," and that
"mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies;"
and, for this, the Church authorities gave Caccini promotion.[41]
Father Lorini proved that the doctrine was not only "heretical," but
"atheistic," and besought the Inquisition to intervene. The Bishop of
Fiesole screamed in rage against the Copernican system, and proposed
to denounce Galileo to the grand-duke. The Archbishop of Pisa secretly
sought to entrap Galileo and deliver him to the Inquisition at Rome.
The Archbishop of Florence solemnly condemned the doctrines of Kopernik
and Galileo as unscriptural.
But by far the most terrible champion who appeared against him
was Bellarmin, one of the greatest of theologians, and one of the
poorest of scientists. He was earnest, sincere, learned, but made the
fearful mistake for the world of applying to science, direct, literal
interpretation of Scripture.[42]
The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp used were theological. They
held up before the world the dreadful consequences which must result
to Christian theology were the doctrine to prevail that the heavenly
bodies revolve about the sun, and not about the earth. Their most
tremendous theologic engine against Galileo was the idea that his
pretended discovery "vitiated the whole Christian plan of salvation."
Father Lecazre declared that it "cast suspicion on the doctrine of
the Incarnation." Others declared that it "upset the whole basis
of theology; that, if the earth is a planet, and one among several
planets, it cannot be that any such great things have been done
especially for it, as the Christian doctrine teaches. If there are
other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited;
but how can these inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they
trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have been redeemed
by the Saviour?"[43]
Nor was this argument confined to the theologians of the Roman Church;
Melanchthon, Protestant as he was, had already used it in his attacks
upon the ideas of Kopernik and his school.[44]
In addition to this prodigious engine of war, there was kept up a
terrific fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and scriptural
extracts.
But the little telescope of Galileo still swept the heavens, and the
next revelation announced was the system of mountains and valleys
in the moon. This was a signal for another attack. It was declared
that this, coupled with the statement that the moon shines by light
reflected from the sun, was a contradiction of the statement in
Genesis that the moon is a "great light" like the sun. To make the
matter worse, a painter, placing the moon in a religious picture in
its usual position beneath the feet of the Blessed Virgin, outlined on
its surface mountains and valleys; this was denounced as a sacrilege
logically resulting from the astronomer's heresy.
The next struggle was aroused when the hated telescope revealed spots
upon the sun, and their motion, which indicated the sun's rotation.
Monsignor Elci, head of the University of Pisa, forbade the Professor
of Astronomy, Castelli, to mention these spots. Father Busaeus, at
the University of Innspruck, forbade the astronomer Scheiner to allow
the new discovery to be known there. At the College of Douay and the
University of Louvain it was expressly placed under the ban, and this
became the general rule among the Catholic universities and colleges
of Europe. The Spanish universities were specially intolerant of this
and similar ideas,[45] and up to a recent period they were strictly
forbidden in the most important university of all--that of Salamanca.
In 1820 the Abbé Settele, professor at the College of Rome, having
announced a work on Optics and Astronomy, the master of the sacred
palace, under the authority of the old decrees against the teachings
of Kopernik and Galileo, forbade the publication, and it was not until
1822 that Pope Pius VII. sanctioned a decision of the Inquisition
permitting such teachings.[46]
Such are the consequences of placing the instruction of men's minds
in the hands of those mainly absorbed in the work of saving men's
souls.[47] Nothing could be more in accordance with the idea recently
put forth by the Bishop of Montpellier, that the Church is alone
fully empowered to promulgate scientific truth or direct university
instruction; but science gained the victory here also. News came of
observations of the solar spots, not only from Galileo in Italy, but
from Fabricius in Holland. Father Scheiner then endeavors to make the
usual treaty; he promulgates a pseudo-scientific theory--a statement
based on a "religious science"--which only provokes derision.
But the war grew more and more bitter, and the principal weapons in it
are worth examining. They are very easily examined; you may pick them
up on any of the battle-fields of science; but on that field they were
used with more effect than on almost any other. These weapons are two
epithets: "Infidel" and "Atheist."
The battle-fields of science are thickly strewn with these. They have
been used against almost every man who has ever done anything new for
his fellow-men. The list of those who have been denounced as infidel
and atheist includes almost all great men of science--general scholars,
inventors, philanthropists. The deepest Christian life, the most noble
Christian character, have not availed to shield combatants. Christians
like Isaac Newton and Pascal and John Locke and John Milton, and even
Howard and Fénelon, have had these weapons hurled against them. Of all
proofs of the existence of a God, those of Descartes have been wrought
most thoroughly into the minds of modern men; and yet the Protestant
theologians of Holland sought to bring him to torture and to death by
the charge of atheism, and the Roman Catholic theologians of France
prevented the rendering of any due honors to him at his burial.[48]
These epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. They are
burning arrows. They set fire to great masses of popular prejudices;
smoke rises to obscure the real questions; fire bursts forth at times
to destroy the attacked party. They are poisoned. They go to the hearts
of loving women, they alienate dear children; they injure the man after
life is ended, for they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts of those
who loved him best--fears for his eternal happiness--dread of the
Divine displeasure. Of course, in these days, these weapons, though
often effective in disturbing good men and in scaring good women, are
somewhat blunted. Indeed, they not unfrequently injure assailants more
than assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo; they were then in
all their sharpness and venom.
Yet far more vile than the use even of these weapons--vile indeed
beyond belief--was the attack by the Archbishop of Pisa.
It is a remark made by one of the most moderate and judicially fair
of modern philosophic historians, that, of all organizations this
world has known, the Roman Church has caused most undeserved woe and
shed most innocent blood; but, in the whole terrible succession of
Torquemadas and Arbues and Granvilles, the vilest enemy of the human
race is probably this same Archbishop of Pisa.
This man, whose cathedral is more truly consecrated by the remembrance
of Galileo's observation of the lamp swinging before its altar, than by
all the church services of a thousand years, began a siege against the
great philosopher.
Galileo, after his discoveries had been denounced as contrary to
Scripture, had been induced to write to the Duchess Christine and to
his friend Castelli two letters, to show that his discoveries might
be reconciled to Scripture. The archbishop saw his opportunity: he
determined to get hold of these letters and exhibit them as proofs that
Galileo had uttered heretical views of theology and the Scriptures,
and thus to bring the astronomer hopelessly into the clutch of the
Inquisition. The archbishop begs Castelli, therefore, to let him see
the original letter in the handwriting of Galileo. Castelli declines;
the archbishop then, while, as is now revealed, writing constantly and
bitterly to the inquisitors against Galileo, professes to Castelli
the greatest admiration of Galileo's genius, and a sincere desire to
know more of his discoveries. Castelli is seduced by this; but Galileo
sturdily forbids sending the letter, and the archbishop is obliged to
resort to open attack.
The whole struggle to crush Galileo and to save him would be
amusing were it not so fraught with evil. There were intrigues and
counter-intrigues, plots and counter-plots, lying and spying, and in
the thickest of this seething, squabbling, screaming mass, priests,
bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and even the future Pope Urban VIII.
himself. It is most suggestive to see in this crisis of the Church, on
the eve of the greatest errors in church policy the world has known, in
all the efforts and deliberations of these consecrated leaders of the
Church, at the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, no more sign of the
guidance or presence of the Holy Spirit than in a caucus of New York
politicians.
But the opposing powers were too strong. In 1615 Galileo is summoned
by the Inquisition to Rome, and the mine, which had been so long
preparing, was sprung. Pope Paul V. and the cardinal inquisitors order
eleven theologians of the Inquisition to examine these two propositions
which had been extracted from Galileo's letters on the solar spots:
_First_, that the sun does not move about the earth; _secondly_, that
the earth does move about the sun. The eleven theologians solemnly
considered these points, and in about a month rendered a solemn
decision that "the first proposition, _that the sun is the centre,
and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in
theology, and heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture;
and that the second proposition, that the earth is not the centre, but
revolves about the sun, is absurd, false in philosophy, and, from a
theological point of view, at least opposed to the true faith_."[49]
The pope himself, Paul V., now intervenes; he orders that Galileo be
brought before the Inquisition. Then the great man of science in that
age is brought face to face with the greatest theologian: Galileo is
confronted by Cardinal Bellarmin. Bellarmin shows Galileo the error
of his opinion, and orders him to renounce it. De Lauda, fortified by
a letter from the pope, ordering the astronomer to be placed in the
dungeon of the Inquisition should he refuse to yield, commands him
to "_abandon entirely the opinion that the sun is the centre of the
universe, and that the earth moves_, and to abstain from sustaining,
teaching, or defending that opinion in any manner whatever, orally or
by writing."[50]
Galileo bowed to this order, was allowed to retire, and the whole
proceeding was kept secret.
About ten days later, on March 5, 1616, the Congregation of the Index,
moved thereto, as we have seen, and as the letters and documents now
brought to light show, by Pope Paul V., solemnly rendered their decree:
that the doctrine of the double movement of the earth about its axis
and about the sun is _false and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture_;
that this opinion must neither be taught nor defended. The same decree
condemned the writings of Kopernik, and _all writings which affirm
the motion of the earth_. The great work of Kopernik was interdicted
until corrected in accordance with the views of the Inquisition; and
the works of Galileo and Kepler, though not mentioned by name, were
included among those implicitly condemned as "affirming the motion of
the earth."
The condemnations were inscribed upon the _Index_, and to the Index was
prefixed the usual papal bull giving its monitions the papal sanction.
To teach or even read the works denounced or passages condemned, was to
risk persecution in this world and damnation in the next. Human science
had apparently lost the great decisive battle.
For some time Galileo remained at Rome perfectly submissive.[51] Pope
Paul V. petted him, and all seemed happy in the ending of the long war.
But, returning to Florence, something of his old scientific ardor
stirred within him; and at last Cardinal Barberini, who had seemed
liberal and friendly, having been made pope under the name of Urban
VIII., Galileo conceived new hopes, and again in a published work
alluded favorably to the Copernican system. New troubles ensued.
Galileo was induced to visit Rome again, and Pope Urban tried to
cajole him into silence, and personally took the trouble to try to
show the astronomer his errors by argument. Other opponents were less
considerate. Works appeared attacking his ideas--works all the more
unmanly, since their authors knew how Galileo was restrained by force
from defending himself; and, as if to accumulate proofs of the fitness
of the Church to take charge of advanced instruction, his salary as
professor at the University of Pisa was taken from him. Sapping and
mining began. Just as the Archbishop of Pisa some years before had
tried to betray Galileo with honeyed words to the Inquisition, so now
Father Grassi tried it; and after various attempts to draw him out by
flattery, suddenly denounced his scientific ideas as "leading to a
denial of the real presence in the Eucharist."
And here science again loses ground. Galileo had announced his
intention of writing upon the theory of the tides, but he retreated,
and thus was lost a great treatise to the world.
For the final assault, the park of heavy artillery was at last wheeled
into place. You see it on all the scientific battle-fields. It consists
of general denunciation; and Father Melchior Inchofer, of the Jesuits,
brought his artillery to bear well on Galileo with this declaration:
that the opinion of the earth's motion is, of all heresies, the
most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous; that the
immobility of the earth is thrice sacred; that argument against the
immortality of the soul, the Creator, the incarnation, etc., should be
tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves.[52]
But this state of things could not be endured forever. Urged beyond
forbearance, Galileo prepares a careful treatise in the form of a
dialogue, exhibiting the arguments for and against the Copernican and
Ptolemaic systems. He then offers to submit to any conditions the
Church tribunals may impose, if they will but allow it to be printed.
At last they consent, imposing the most humiliating condition of all,
which was a preface written by Father Ricciardi and signed by Galileo,
in which the whole work was virtually exhibited as a play of the
imagination, and not at all as opposed to the truth laid down in 1616
by the Inquisition.
The new work met with prodigious success; it put new weapons into the
hands of the supporters of the Copernican theory. The preface only
embittered the contest; it was laughed at from one end of Europe to
the other as ironical. This aroused the enemy. The Jesuits, Dominicans,
and the great majority of the clergy, returned to the attack more
violent than ever; and Pope Urban VIII., his personal pride being
touched, after some halting joined the clerical forces.
The first important piece of strategy was to forbid the sale of the
work; but the first edition had already been exhausted and spread
throughout Europe. Urban now became angry, and both Galileo and his
works were placed in the hands of the Inquisition. In vain did the good
Benedictine Castelli urge that Galileo was entirely respectful to the
Church; in vain did he say that "nothing that could be done could now
hinder the earth from revolving." He was dismissed, and Galileo was
forced to appear in the presence of the dread tribunal without defender
or adviser. There, as was so long concealed but as is now fully
revealed, he was menaced with torture by express order of Pope Urban,
and, as is now thoroughly established by documentary evidence, forced
to abjure under threats, and subjected to imprisonment by command of
Urban, the Inquisition deferring in the most servile manner to the
papal authority.
The rest of the story the world knows by heart; none of the recent
attempts have succeeded in mystifying it. The whole world will
remember forever how Galileo was subjected certainly to indignity and
imprisonment equivalent to physical torture;[53] how he was at last
forced to pronounce publicly, and on his knees, his recantation as
follows: "I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner
and on my knees, and before your eminences, having before my eyes the
Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the
error and the heresy of the movement of the earth."
He was vanquished indeed, for he had been forced, in the face of all
coming ages, to perjure himself; and, to complete his dishonor, he
was obliged to swear to denounce to the Inquisition any other man of
science whom he should discover to be supporting heresy--the "heresy of
the movement of the earth."
Nor was this all. To the end of his life, nay, after his life was
ended, this bitter persecution was continued, on the supposition that
the great truths he revealed were hurtful to religion. After a brief
stay in the dungeons of the Inquisition, he was kept in exile from
family, friends, all his noble employments, and held rigidly to his
promise not even to speak of his theory. When, in the midst of intense
bodily sufferings from disease and mental sufferings from calamities in
his family, he besought some little liberty, he was met with threats
of a recommittal to his dungeon. When, at last, a special commissioner
had reported to the ecclesiastical authorities that Galileo had
become blind and wasted away with disease and sorrow, he was allowed
but little more liberty, and that little tempered by the close
surveillance of the ecclesiastical authorities. He was forced to bear
contemptible attacks on himself and on his works in silence; he lived
to see his ideas carefully weeded out from all the church colleges and
universities in Europe; and when, in a scientific work, he happened to
be spoken of as "renowned," the Inquisition ordered the substitution of
the word "notorious."[54]
Nor did the persecution cease with his death. Galileo had begged to be
buried in his family tomb in Santa Croce; the request was denied: his
friends wished to erect a monument over him; this, too, was refused.
Pope Urban said to the embassador Niccolini that "it would be an evil
example for the world if such honors were rendered to a man who had
been brought before the Roman Inquisition for an opinion so false and
erroneous, who had communicated it to many others, and who had given
so great a scandal to Christendom."[55]
In accordance, therefore, with the wish of the pope and the orders of
the Inquisition, Galileo was buried ignobly, apart from his family,
without fitting ceremony, without monument, without epitaph. Not
until forty years after did Pierozzi dare to write his epitaph. Not
until a hundred years after did Nelli dare transfer his remains to
Santa Croce and erect above them a suitable monument. Even then the
old conscientious hostility burst out: the Inquisition was besought
to prevent such honors to "a man condemned for notorious errors;" and
that tribunal refused to allow any epitaph to be placed above him
which had not first been submitted to its censorship. Nor has that
old conscientious consistency in hatred yet fully relented; hardly a
generation since has not seen some Marini, or De Bonald, or Rallaye,
or De Gabriac, suppressing evidence, or torturing expressions, or
inventing theories, to blacken the memory of Galileo and save the
reputation of the Church.[56]
The action of the Church authorities corresponded well to the spirit
thus exhibited; not until 1757, over one hundred years after his
condemnation, was it removed, and then secretly; not until 1835, over
two hundred years after his condemnation, was the record of it expunged
from the _Index_.
But this is by no means the only important part of this history. Hardly
less important, for one who wishes to understand the character of the
warfare of science, is it to go back over those two hundred years
between that fearful crime and its acknowledgment, and study the great
retreat of the army of the Church after its disastrous victory over
Galileo.
Having gained this victory, the conscientious believers in the Bible as
a compendium of history and text-book of science exulted greatly. Loud
was the rejoicing that the "heresy," the "infidelity," the "atheism,"
involved in believing that the earth revolves about its axis and moves
around the sun, had been crushed by the great tribunal of the Church,
acting in strict obedience to the expressed will of one pope and the
written order of another.
But soon clear-sighted men saw that this victory was a disaster.
From all sides came proofs that Kopernik and Galileo were right;
and although Pope Urban and the Inquisition held Galileo in strict
seclusion, not allowing him even to _speak_ regarding the double
motion of the earth; and although the condemnation of "all books which
affirm the motion of the earth" was kept on the Index; and although
the colleges and universities under Church control were compelled to
teach the opposite doctrine, it was seen that the position gained by
the victory over Galileo could not be maintained for ever. So began the
great retreat--the retreat of the army of Church apologists through two
centuries of sophistry, trickery, and falsehood.
The first important move in the retreat was a falling back upon the
statement that Galileo was condemned, not because he affirmed the
motion of the earth, but because he supported it from Scripture. For
a considerable time this falsehood served its purpose; even a hundred
and fifty years after Galileo's condemnation it was renewed by the
Protestant Mallet du Pan,[57] in his wish to gain favor from the
older Church; but the slightest critical examination of the original
documents, recently revealed, show this position utterly untenable.
The letters of Galileo to Castelli and the Grand-duchess Christine, in
which he spoke of the Copernican theory as reconcilable with Scripture,
were not published until after the condemnation; and although the
Archbishop of Pisa had endeavored to use them against him, they
were but casually mentioned in 1616, and entirely left out of view
in 1633. What was condemned in 1616 as "absurd, false in theology,
and heretical, because absolutely contrary to Holy Scripture," was
the proposition that "_the sun is the centre about which the earth
revolves_;" and what was condemned as "absurd, false in philosophy,
and, from a theologic point of view at least, opposed to the true
faith," was the proposition that "_the earth is not the centre of the
universe and immovable, but has a diurnal motion_."[58]
What Galileo was made, by express order of Pope Urban and by the action
of the Inquisition under threat of torture, to abjure, was "_the error
and heresy of the movement of the earth_."[59]
What the _Index_, prefaced by papal bulls binding its contents upon the
consciences of the faithful, for two hundred years steadily condemned,
were "_all books which affirm the motion of the earth_."
Not one of these condemnations was directed against Galileo's private
letters to Castelli and Christine affirming the possibility of
reconciling his ideas to Scripture.
Having been dislodged from this point, the Church apologists sought
cover under the statement that "Galileo was condemned not for heresy,
but for contumacy," and for "wanting in respect for the pope."[60]
As to the first point, the very language of the various sentences shows
the falsehood of the assertion; they speak of "heresy," and never
of "contumacy." As to the last point, the display of the original
documents settled that forever. It was proved by them that from first
to last he had been toward the pope most patient and submissive. He
had indeed expressed his anger at times against his traducers; but to
hold this the cause of the judgment against him, is to degrade the
whole proceeding, and to convict the pope, Bellarmin, the theologians,
and the Inquisition, of direct falsehood, since they assigned entirely
different reasons for their conduct. From this, therefore, the
apologists hastily retreated.
The next rally was made about the statement that the persecution of
Galileo was the result of a quarrel between Aristotelian professors on
one side and professors favoring the experimental method on the other,
and that at first Pope Urban favored Galileo. But this position was
attacked and carried by a very simple statement. If the Divine guidance
of the Church is such a sham that it can be dragged into a professional
squabble, and the pope made the tool of a faction in bringing about a
most disastrous condemnation of a proven truth, how does the Church
differ from any human organization sunk into decrepitude, managed by
simpletons and controlled by schemers? If the argument be true, the
condition of the Church is worse than its enemies have declared it.
Amid the jeers of an unfeeling world the apologists sought new shelter.
The next point at which a stand was made was the assertion that the
condemnation of Galileo was "provisory;" but this proved a more
treacherous shelter than the other. When doctrines have been solemnly
declared, as those of Galileo were solemnly declared, "contrary to
the sacred Scriptures," "opposed to the true faith," and "false and
absurd in theology and philosophy," to say that such declarations are
"provisory,"[61] is to say that the truth held by the Church is not
immutable; from this, then, the apologists retreated.
While this retreat was going on, there was a constant discharge of
small-arms in the shape of innuendoes, hints, and small sophistries,
by small writers; every effort was made to blacken Galileo's private
character; the irregularities of his early life were dragged forth, and
stress was laid on breaches of etiquette; but this succeeded so poorly,
that in 1850 it was thought necessary by the Roman court to cover their
retreat by some more careful strategy.
The original documents of the trial of Galileo had, during the
storms of the early part of the century, been transferred to Paris;
but after several years, in 1846, they were returned to Rome by the
French government, on the express promise by the papal authorities
that the decisions should be published. After various delays, on
various pretexts, in 1850 the long-expected publication appeared. The
ecclesiastic charged with presenting them to the world was Monsignor
Marini. This ecclesiastic was of a kind which has too often afflicted
the weary earth--fox-like in cunning, cat-like in treachery. Despite
the solemn promise of the papal court, the wily Marini became
the instrument of the Roman authority in evading the promise; by
suppressing a document here, and interpolating a statement there, he
managed to give plausible standing-ground for nearly every important
sophistry ever broached to save the reputation of the Church and
destroy the reputation of Galileo. He it was who supported the idea
that "Galileo was condemned not for heresy, but for contumacy," and
various other assertions as groundless.
The first effect of Monsignor Marini's book seemed favorable in
covering the retreat of the Church; aided by him, such vigorous writers
as Ward were able to throw up temporary intrenchments between the
Church and the indignation of the world.
But some time later came an investigator very different from wily
Monsignor Marini. This man was a Frenchman, M. de l'Epinois. Like
Marini, de l'Epinois was devoted to the Church, but, unlike Marini,
he could not lie. Having obtained access, in 1867, to the Galileo
documents at the Vatican, he published fully all those of importance,
without suppression or piously-fraudulent manipulation. This made all
the intrenchments based upon Marini's statements untenable. Another
retreat had to be made.
And now was made the most desperate effort of all. The apologistic
army, reviving an idea which popes and Church had spurned, declared
that the pope, _as pope_, had never condemned the doctrines of Kopernik
and Galileo; that he had condemned them as a man simply; that therefore
the Church had never been committed to them; that they were condemned
by the cardinals of the Inquisition and Index, and that the pope
had evidently been restrained from signing their condemnation by
Providence.[62] Nothing could show the desperation of the retreating
party better than jugglery like this. The facts are, that from Pope
Urban downward, among the Church authorities of the seventeenth
century, the decision was spoken of as made by the pope and the Church.
Urban VIII. spoke of that of 1616 as made by Pope Paul V. and the
Church, and of that of 1633 as made by himself and the Church.[63]
When Gassendi attempted to raise the point that the decision was not
sanctioned by the Church as such, a great theological authority,
Father Lecazre, rector of the College of Dijon, publicly contradicted
him, and declared that it "was not certain cardinals, but the supreme
authority of the Church," that had condemned Galileo; and to this
statement the pope and the Church gave consent, either openly or by
silence.[64] The suspected thinkers, like Descartes and others, who
attempted to raise the same point, were treated with contempt. Father
Castelli, who had devoted himself to Galileo, and knew to his cost just
what the condemnation meant and who made it, takes it for granted, in
his letter to the papal authorities, that it was made by the Church.
Cardinal Querenghi in his letters, the embassador Guicciardini in his
dispatches, the historian Viviani in his biography of Galileo--all
writing under Church inspection at the time--take the view that the
Church condemned Galileo. The Inquisition itself, backed by the
greatest theologian of the time, Bellarmin, took the same view;[65]
and if this were not enough, we have the Roman Index, containing the
condemnation for nearly two hundred years, prefaced by a solemn bull of
the reigning pope, binding the condemnation on the consciences of the
whole Church, and reiterating year after year the condemnation of "all
books which affirm the motion of the earth" as damnable.[66] To attempt
to face all this, added to the fact that the Inquisition condemned
Galileo, and required his abjuration of "the heresy of the movement of
the earth" by written order of the pope, was soon seen to be impossible.
In spite, then, of all the casuistry of de l'Epinois and all the
special pleadings of M. Martin, the sturdy common-sense of the world
proved too strong; and now comes to view the most astounding defense of
all--that hinted at by Viscount de Bonald and developed in the _Dublin
Review_. This was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under a
charge of deception against the Almighty himself. The argument is as
follows: "But it may well be doubted whether the Church did retard the
progress of scientific truth. What retarded it, was the circumstance
that God has thought fit to express many texts of Scripture in words
which have every appearance of denying the earth's motion. But it is
God who did this, not the Church; and, moreover, since He thought fit
so to act as to retard the progress of scientific truth, it would be
little to her discredit even if it were true that she had followed His
example."
With this, the retreat of the army of apologists is complete; further
than this, through mazes of sophistry and into depths of contempt, they
could not go.[67]
Do not understand me here as casting blame on the Roman Church at
large. It must in fairness be said, that some of its best men tried
to stop this great mistake. Even Pope Urban himself would have been
glad at one time to stop it; but the current was too strong, and he
weakly yielded, becoming a bitter persecutor.[68] The whole of the
civilized world was at fault, Protestant as well as Catholic, and not
any particular part of it. It was not the fault of religion; it was the
fault of the short-sighted views which narrow-minded, loud-voiced men
are ever prone to mix in with religion, and to insist are religion.[69]
But the losses to the earth in the long war against Galileo were
followed by losses not less unfortunate in other quarters. There was
then in Europe one of the greatest thinkers ever given to mankind--Réné
Descartes. Mistaken though many of his theories were, they were
fruitful in truths. The scientific warriors had stirred new life in
him, and he was working over and summing up in his mighty mind all the
researches of his time; the result must make an epoch in history. His
aim was to combine all knowledge and thought into a "Treatise on the
World." His earnestness he proved by the eleven years which he gave to
the study of anatomy alone. Petty persecution he had met often, but
the fate of Galileo robbed him of all hope, of all energy; the battle
seemed lost; he gave up his great plan forever.[70]
But champions pressed on. Campanella, full of vagaries as he was,
wrote his _Apologia pro Galileo_, though for that and other heresies,
religious and political, he seven times underwent torture.[71]
And Kepler comes. He leads science on to greater victories. Kopernik,
great as he was, could not disentangle his scientific reasoning
entirely from the theological bias. The doctrines of Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas as to the necessary superiority of the circle, had
vitiated the minor features of his system, and left breaches in it
through which the enemy was not slow to enter. Kepler sees these
errors, and, by wonderful genius in insight and vigor in thought,
he brings to the world the three laws which bear his name, and this
fortress of science is complete. He thinks and speaks as one inspired.
His battle is severe; he is sometimes abused, sometimes ridiculed,
sometimes imprisoned. Protestants in Styria and at Tübingen, Catholics
at Rome, press upon him;[72] but Newton, Halley, Bradley, and the other
great leaders follow, and to science remains the victory.
And yet the war did not wholly end. During the seventeenth century,
in all France, after all the splendid proofs added by Kepler, no one
dared openly teach the Copernican theory, and Cassini, the great
astronomer, never declared it.[73] In 1672 Father Riccioli, a Jesuit,
declared that there were precisely forty-nine arguments for the
Copernican theory and seventy-seven against it; so that there remained
twenty-eight reasons for preferring the orthodox theory.[74] Toward
the end of the seventeenth century, after the demonstration of Sir
Isaac Newton, even Bossuet, the "eagle of Meaux," among the loftiest
of religious thinkers, declared for the Ptolemaic theory as the
Scriptural theory;[75] and in 1724 John Hutchinson published in England
his _Moses's Principia_, maintaining that the Hebrew Scriptures are a
perfect system of natural philosophy, and are opposed to the Newtonian
theory of gravitation.[76] In 1746 Boscovich, the great mathematician
of the Jesuits, used these words: "As for me, full of respect for the
Holy Scriptures and the decree of the Holy Inquisition, I regard the
earth as immovable; nevertheless, for simplicity in explanation, I
will argue as if the earth moves, for it is proved that of the two
hypotheses the appearances favor that idea."[77] And even at a date
far within our own nineteenth century, the authorities of the Spanish
universities vigorously excluded the Newtonian system, and the greatest
of them all, the University of Salamanca, held it under the ban until a
very recent period.[78]
Nor has the opposition failed even in our own time. On the 5th of May,
1829, a great multitude assembled at Warsaw, to do honor to the memory
of Kopernik, and to unveil Thorwaldsen's statue of him.
Kopernik had lived a pious, Christian life. He was well known for
unostentatious Christian charity. With his religious belief no fault
had ever been found; he was a canon of the church of Frauenberg, and
over his grave had been written the most touching of Christian epitaphs.
Naturally, then, the people expected a religious service. All was
understood to be arranged for it. The procession marched to the church
and waited. The hour passed, and no priest appeared; none could be
induced to appear. Kopernik, simple, charitable, pious, one of the
noblest gifts of God to the service of religion as well as science,
was still held to be a reprobate. Five years after that, his book was
still standing on the Index of books prohibited to Christians; and
although, in 1757, under Benedict XIV., the Congregation of the Index
had secretly allowed the ideas of Kopernik and Galileo to be simply
tolerated, it was not until 1822, as we have seen, that Pius VII.
allowed the publishing of them at Rome; and not until 1835 did the
prohibition of them fully disappear from the Index.[79]
The Protestantism of England was little better. In 1772 sailed the
famous English expedition for scientific discovery under Cook. The
greatest by far of all the scientific authorities chosen to accompany
it was Dr. Priestley. Sir Joseph Banks had especially invited him; but
the clergy of Oxford and Cambridge intervened. Priestley was considered
unsound in his views of the Trinity; it was suspected that this would
vitiate his astronomical observations; he was rejected, and the
expedition crippled.[80]
Nor has the warfare against dead champions of science been carried on
only by the older Church.
On the 10th of May, 1859, was buried Alexander von Humboldt. His
labors were among the greatest glories of the century, and his funeral
one of the most imposing that Berlin had ever seen; among those who
honored themselves by their presence was the prince regent--the present
emperor. But of the clergy it was observed that none were present save
the officiating clergyman and a few regarded as unorthodox.[81]
Nor have attempts to renew the battle been wanting in these latter
days. The attempt in the Church of England, in 1864, to fetter science,
which was brought to ridicule by Herschel, Bowring, and De Morgan; the
Lutheran assemblage at Berlin, in 1868, to protest against "science
falsely so called," in the midst of which stood Pastor Knak denouncing
the Copernican theory; the "Syllabus," the greatest mistake of the
Roman Church, are all examples of this.[82]
And now, what has been won by either party in this long and terrible
war? The party which would subordinate the methods and aims of science
to those of theology, though in general obedient to deep convictions,
had given to Christianity a series of the worst blows it had ever
received. They had made large numbers of the best men in Europe hate
it. Why did Ricetto and Bruno and Vanini, when the crucifix was
presented to them in their hours of martyrdom, turn from that blessed
image with loathing?[83] Simply because Christianity had been made to
them identical with the most horrible oppression of the mind.
Worse than that, the well-meaning defenders of the faith had wrought
into the very fibre of the European heart that most unfortunate of all
ideas, the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science
and religion. Like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of
the sinking ship, they had attached the fundamental doctrines of
Christianity, by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin,
to these mistaken ideas in science, and the advance of knowledge had
wellnigh engulfed them.
On the other hand, what had science done for religion? Simply this:
Kopernik, escaping persecution only by death; Giordano Bruno, burned
alive as a monster of impiety; Galileo, imprisoned and humiliated as
the worst of misbelievers; Kepler, hunted alike by Protestant and
Catholic, had given to religion great new foundations, great new,
ennobling conceptions, a great new revelation of the might of God.
Under the old system we have that princely astronomer, Alfonso of
Castile, seeing the poverty of the Ptolemaic system, yet knowing no
other, startling Europe with the blasphemy that if he had been present
at creation he could have suggested a better ordering of the heavenly
bodies. Under the new system you have Kepler, filled with a religious
spirit, exclaiming, "I do think the thoughts of God."[84] The
difference in religious spirit between these two men marks the conquest
made in this, even by science, for religion.
But we cannot leave the subject of astronomy without noticing the most
recent warfare. Especially interesting is it because at one period the
battle seemed utterly lost, and then was won beautifully, thoroughly,
by a legitimate advance in scientific knowledge. I speak of the Nebular
Hypothesis.
The sacred writings of the Jews which we have inherited speak literally
of the creation of the heavenly bodies by direct intervention, and for
the convenience of the earth. This was the view of the Fathers of the
Church, and was transmitted through the great doctors in theology.
More than that, it was crystallized in art. So have I seen, over the
portal of the Cathedral of Freiburg, a representation of the Almighty
making and placing numbers of wafer-like suns, moons, and stars; and at
the centre of all, platter-like and largest of all, the earth.[85] The
lines on the Creator's face show that He is obliged to contrive; the
lines of his muscles show that He is obliged to toil. Naturally, then,
did sculptors and painters of the mediæval and early modern period
represent the Almighty as weary after labor, and enjoying dignified
repose.
These ideas, more or less gross in their accompaniments, passed into
the popular creed of the modern period.
But about the close of the last century, Bruno having guessed the
fundamental fact of the nebular hypothesis, and Kant having reasoned
out its foundation idea, Laplace developed it, showing the reason for
supposing that our own solar system, in its sun, planets, satellites,
with their various motions, distances, and magnitudes, is a natural
result of the diminishing heat of a nebulous mass--a result obeying
natural laws.
There was an outcry at once against the "atheism" of the scheme. The
war raged fiercely. Laplace claimed that there were in the heavens
many nebulous patches yet in the gaseous form, and pointed them out.
He showed by laws of physics and mathematical demonstration that his
hypothesis accounted in a most striking manner for the great body of
facts, and, despite clamor, was gaining ground, when the improved
telescopes resolved some of the patches of nebulous matter into
multitudes of stars.
The opponents of the nebular hypothesis were overjoyed; they sang
pæans to astronomy, because, as they said, it had proved the truth of
Scripture. They had jumped to the conclusion that all nebulæ must be
alike--that if _some_ are made up of systems of stars, _all_ must be so
made up; that none can be masses of attenuated gaseous matter, because
some are not.
Science, for a time, halted. The accepted doctrine became this: that
the only reason why all the nebulæ are not resolved into distinct
stars is because our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. But in
time came that wonderful discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum
analysis, and this was supplemented by Fraunhofer's discovery that the
spectrum of an ignited gaseous body is discontinuous, with interrupting
lines; and this, in 1846, by Draper's discovery that the spectrum of an
ignited solid is continuous, with no interrupting lines. And now the
spectroscope was turned upon the nebulæ, and about one-third of them
were found to be gaseous.
Again the nebular hypothesis comes forth stronger than ever. The
beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rotation of a fluid globe comes
in to strengthen if not to confirm it. But what was likely to be lost
in this? Simply a poor conception of the universe. What to be gained? A
far more worthy idea of that vast power which works in the universe, in
all things by law, and in none by caprice.[86]
CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.
The great series of battles to which I next turn with you were fought
on those fields occupied by such sciences as Chemistry and Natural
Philosophy.
Even before these sciences were out of their childhood, while yet they
were tottering mainly toward childish objects and by childish steps,
the champions of that same old mistaken conception of rigid Scriptural
interpretation began the war. The catalogue of chemists and physicists
persecuted or thwarted would fill volumes.
The first entrance of these sciences, as a well-defined force, into
the modern world, began in the thirteenth century. But the thirteenth
century was marked by a revival of religious fervor; to this day the
greatest and best works of the cathedral-builders are memorials of its
depth and strength.
Out of this religious fervor naturally came a great growth of
theological thought and ecclesiastical power, and the spirit of inquiry
was soon obliged to take account of this influence.
First among the distinguished men who, in that century, laid
foundations for modern science, was Albert of Bollstadt, better known
as Albert the Great, the most renowned scholar of Germany.
Fettered though he was by the absurd methods of his time, led astray
as he was by the scholastic spirit, he had conceived ideas of better
methods and aims. His eye pierces the mists of scholasticism; he sees
the light, and draws the world toward it. He stands among the great
pioneers of modern physical and natural science. He aids in giving
foundations to botany and chemistry, and Humboldt finds in his works
the germ of the comprehensive science of physical geography.[87]
The conscience of the time, acting, as it supposed, in defense of
religion, brought out a missile which it hurled with deadly effect. You
see those mediæval scientific battle-fields strewed with such: it was
the charge of sorcery, of unlawful compact with the devil.
This missile was effective. You find it used against every great
investigator of Nature in those times and for centuries after. The list
of great men charged with magic, as given by Naudé, is astounding. It
includes every man of real mark, and the most thoughtful of the popes,
Sylvester II. (Gerbert), stands in the midst of them. It seemed to be
the received idea that, as soon as a man conceived a wish to study the
works of God, his first step must be a league with the devil.[88]
This missile was hurled against Albert. He was condemned by
the authorities of the Dominican order, subjected to suspicion
and indignity, and only escaped persecution by yielding to the
ecclesiastical spirit of the time, and working mainly in theological
channels by scholastic methods. It was a sad loss to the earth; and
certainly, of all organizations that have reason to lament the pressure
of those ecclesiastical forces which turned Albert the Great from the
path of experimental philosophy, foremost of all in regret should be
the Christian Church, and especially the Roman branch of it. Had the
Church of the thirteenth century been so full of faith as to accept the
truths in natural science brought by Albert and his compeers, and to
have encouraged their growth, this faith and this encouragement would
to this day have formed the greatest argument for proving the Church
directly under Divine guidance; they would have been the brightest
jewels in her crown. The loss to the Church, by this want of faith and
courage, has proved, in the long-run, even greater than the loss to
science.
The next great man of that age whom the theological and ecclesiastical
forces of the time turn from the right path is Vincent of Beauvais.
Vincent devoted himself to the study of Nature in several of her most
interesting fields. To astronomy, mineralogy, botany, and chemistry,
he gave much thought; but especially did he devote himself to the
preparation of a full account of the universe. Had he taken the path
of experimental research, the world would have been enriched with most
precious discoveries; but the impulse followed by Albert of Bollstadt,
backed as it was by the whole ecclesiastical power of his time, was
too strong, and, in all the life-labor of Vincent, nothing appears of
any permanent value. He built a structure which careless observation
of facts, literal interpretation of Scripture, and theological
subtilizing, combined to make one of the most striking monuments of
human error.[89]
But the theological ecclesiastical spirit of the thirteenth century
gained its greatest victory in the work of the most renowned of all
thinkers of his time, St. Thomas Aquinas. In him was the theological
spirit of his age incarnate. Although he yielded somewhat, at one
period, to love of studies in natural science, it was he who finally
made that great treaty or compromise which for ages subjected science
entirely to theology. He it was whose thought reared the most enduring
barrier against those who, in that age and in succeeding ages, labored
to open for science the path by its own legitimate method toward its
own noble ends.
Through the earlier systems of philosophy as they were then known,
and through the earlier theologic thought, he had gone with great
labor and vigor; he had been a pupil of Albert of Bollstadt, and from
him had gained inspiration in science. All his mighty powers, thus
disciplined and cultured, he brought to bear in making a treaty or
truce, giving to theology the supremacy over science. The experimental
method had already been practically initiated; Albert of Bollstadt and
Roger Bacon had begun their work in accordance with its methods; but
St. Thomas Aquinas gave all his thoughts to bringing science again
under the sway of the theological bias, metaphysical methods, and
ecclesiastical control. He gave to the world a striking example of what
his method could be made to produce. In his commentary upon Aristotle's
treatise upon "Heaven and Earth" he illustrates all the evils of such
a combination of theological reasoning and literal interpretation of
the Scriptural with scientific facts as then understood, and it remains
to this day a prodigious monument to human genius and human folly.
The ecclesiastical power of the time hailed him as a deliverer; it
was claimed that striking miracles were vouchsafed, showing that the
blessing of Heaven rested upon his labors. Among the legends embodying
the Church spirit of that period is that given by the Bollandists and
immortalized by a renowned painter. The great philosopher and saint
is represented in the habit of his order, with book and pen in hand,
kneeling before the image of Christ crucified; and as he kneels the
image thus addresses him: "Thomas, thou hast written well concerning
me; what price wilt thou receive for thy labor?" To this day the
greater ecclesiastical historians of the Roman Church, like the Abbé
Rohrbacher, and the minor historians of science, who find it convenient
to propitiate the Church, like Pouchet, dilate upon the glories of St.
Thomas Aquinas in thus making a treaty of alliance between religious
and scientific thought, and laying the foundations for a "sanctified
science." But the unprejudiced historian cannot indulge in this
enthusiastic view. The results both for the Church and for the progress
of science have been most unfortunate. It was a wretched step backward.
The first result of this great man's great compromise was to close that
new path in science which alone leads to discoveries of value--the
experimental method--and to reopen the old path of mixed theology and
science, which, as Hallam declares, "after three or four hundred years
had not untied a single knot, or added one unequivocal truth to the
domain of philosophy;" the path which, as all modern history proves,
has ever since led only to delusion and evil.[90]
The path thus unfortunately opened by these strong men became the main
path in science for ages, and it led the world farther and farther
from any fruitful fact or hopeful method. Roger Bacon's investigations
were virtually forgotten; worthless mixtures of literal interpretation
of Scripture with imperfectly authenticated physical facts took their
place.
Every age since has been full of examples of this, but out of them I
will take just one; and it shall be no other than that Francis Bacon,
who, more than any other man, led the modern world out of the path
opened by Aquinas, and back into the path trod by Roger Bacon. Strange
as it may at first seem, Francis Bacon, whose keenness of sight
revealed the delusions of the old path and the promises of the new,
that man whose boldness in thought did so much to turn the world from
the old path into the new, presents, in his own writings, one of the
most striking examples of the strength of the evil he did so much to
destroy.
The _Novum Organum_, considering the time when it came from his pen,
is doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in the history
of human thought. This treatise it was which showed the modern world
the way out of the scholastic method and reverence for dogma into the
experimental method and reverence for demonstrated fact. In the course
of it occur many passages which show that the great philosopher was
fully alive to the danger, both to religion and to science, arising
from their mixture. Early in his argument he says: "But the corruption
of philosophy from superstition and admixture of theology separates
altogether more widely, and introduces the greatest amount of evil,
both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." And a
little later he says: "Some moderns have indulged this vanity with
the greatest carelessness, and have endeavored to found a Natural
Philosophy on the first of Genesis and the Book of Job, and other
sacred Scriptures, so 'seeking the dead among the living.' And by so
much the more is this vanity to be restrained and coerced because their
expressions form an unwholesome mixture of things human and divine; not
merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical religion. And so it is very
salutary that, with due sobriety of mind, those things only be rendered
to faith which are faith's."[91] Still later, in his treatise, Bacon
returns to the charge yet more strongly. He says: "Nor is it to be
overlooked, that natural philosophy has in all ages had a troublesome
and stubborn adversary in superstition and the blind and immoderate
zeal for religion. Thus it has been among the Greeks, that they who
first proposed to the yet unprepared ears of men the natural causes of
lightning and tempests were condemned, on that head, for impiety toward
the gods; nor by some of the old fathers of the Christian religion
were those much better received, who laid it down from the most sure
demonstrations, such as no one in his senses could nowadays contradict,
that the earth is round, and asserted in consequence that there must be
antipodes. Furthermore, as things are now, the condition of discourses
on Nature is made severe and more rigorous in consequence of the
summaries and methods of scholastic theologians, who, while they have,
as far as they could, reduced theology to order, and have fashioned it
into the form of an art, have besides succeeded in mingling far more
than was right of the quarrelsome and thorny philosophy of Aristotle
with the body of religion."
"The fictions, too, of those who have not feared to deduce and confirm
from the principles and authority of philosophies the true Christian
religion, have the same tendency, though in a different way. These
celebrated the wedding of faith and sense, as though it were lawful,
with much pomp and solemnity, and soothed the minds of men with a
grateful variety of things, but, meanwhile, mingled the divine with
the human in ill-matched state. And in mixtures like this of theology
with natural philosophy, those things only which are now received in
philosophy are included; while novelties, though they be changes for
the better, are all banished and driven out."
And, again, Bacon says: "Lastly you may find, thanks to the
unskillfulness of some divines, the approach to any kind of philosophy,
however improved, entirely closed up. Some, indeed, in their simplicity
are rather afraid, lest perhaps a deeper inquiry into Nature should
penetrate beyond the allowed limits of sobriety." Still further on
Bacon penetrates into the very heart of the question in a vigorous way,
and says: "Others, more craftily, conjecture and consider that, if the
means be unknown, each single thing can be referred more easily to the
hand and rod of God--a matter, as they think, of very great importance
to religion: and this is nothing more nor less than wishing to _please
God by a lie_." And, finally, he says: "Whereas, if one considers the
matter rightly, natural philosophy is, after God's word, the surest
medicine for superstition, and also the most approved nourishment of
faith."[92]
No man who has thought much upon the annals of his race can, without
a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such inspired clearness
of insight and boldness of utterance. The first thought of the reader
is, that, of all men, this Francis Bacon is the most free from the
unfortunate bias he condemns. He certainly cannot be deluded into the
old path. But, as we go on through the treatise, we are surprised
to find that the strong arm of Aquinas had been stretched over the
intervening ages, and had laid hold upon this master-thinker of the
sixteenth century. Only a few chapters further along we find Bacon,
after alluding to the then recent voyage of Columbus, speaking of the
prophecy of Daniel regarding the latter days, that "many shall run to
and fro and knowledge be increased," as "clearly signifying that it is
in the fates, i. e., in providence, that the circumnavigation of the
world, which through so many lengthy voyages seems to be entirely
complete or in course of completion, and the increase of science,
should happen in the same age."[93]
Here, then, we have this great man indulging in that very mixture of
literal Scriptural interpretation and scientific thought which he had
condemned, and therefrom evidently deducing the conclusion that these
great voyages and discoveries, which were the beginning of a new world
in thought and action, were the end of all things.
But in his great work on _The Advancement of Learning_ the firm grip
which the methods he condemned held upon him is shown yet more clearly.
In his first book he shows how "that excellent Book of Job, if it be
revolved with diligence, it will be found pregnant and swelling with
natural philosophy," and endeavors to show that the "roundness of the
world," the "fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distance,"
the "depression of the southern pole," "matter of generation," and
"matter of minerals," are "with great elegancy noted." But, curiously
enough, he uses to support some of these truths the very texts which
the Fathers of the Church used to destroy them, and those for which he
finds Scriptural warrant most clearly are such as science has since
disproved. So, too, he says that Solomon was enabled by "donation of
God" in his proverbs "to compile a natural history of all verdure."[94]
Certainly no more striking examples of the strength of the evil which
he had all along been denouncing could be exhibited than these in his
own writings; after this we cease to wonder at his blindness to the
discoveries of Kopernik and the experiments of Gilbert.
I pass from the legions of those who from that day to this have
stumbled into similar errors by degrading our sacred volume into a
compendium of history or a text-book of science, and turn next to a
far more serious class of effects arising from the great mediæval
compromise between science and theology. We have considered the wrong
road into which so many master-spirits were led or driven; we will now
look at the war brought against those men of science who persevered in
the right road.
The first great thinker who, in spite of some stumbling into theologic
pitfalls, persevered in this true path was Roger Bacon. His life and
works seem until recently to have been generally misunderstood. He
has been ranked as a superstitious alchemist who stumbled upon some
inventions; but more recent investigation has revealed him to be one
of the great masters in human progress.
The advance of sound historical judgment seems likely to bring nearer
to equality the fame of the two who bear the name of Bacon. Bacon of
the chancellorship and the _Novum Organon_ may not wane; but Bacon
of the prison-cell and the _Opus Majus_ steadily approaches him in
brightness.[95]
More than three centuries before Francis Bacon advocated the
experimental method, Roger Bacon practised it, and the results as
now revealed are wonderful. He wrought with power in philosophy and
in all sciences, and his knowledge was sound and exact. By him,
more than by any other man of the middle ages, was the world put on
the most fruitful paths of science--the paths which have led to the
most precious inventions. Among them are clocks, lenses, burning
specula, telescopes, which were given by him to the world, directly
or indirectly. In his writings are found formulæ for extracting
phosphorus, manganese, and bismuth. It is even claimed, with much
appearance of justice, that he investigated the power of steam. He
seems to have very nearly reached also some of the principal doctrines
of modern chemistry. But it should be borne in mind that his method
of investigation was even greater than these vast results. In the age
when metaphysical subtilizing was alone thought to give the title of
scholar, he insisted on _real_ reasoning and the aid of natural science
by mathematics. In an age when experimenting was sure to cost a man
his reputation, and was likely to cost him his life, he insisted on
experiment and braved all its risks. Few greater men have lived. As
we read the sketch given by Whewell of Bacon's process of reasoning
regarding the refraction of light, he seems fairly inspired.[96]
On this man came the brunt of the battle. The most conscientious men
of his time thought it their duty to fight him, and they did it too
well. It was not that he disbelieved in Christianity; _that_ was never
charged against him. His orthodoxy was perfect. He was attacked and
condemned, in the words of his opponents, "_propter quasdam novitates
suspectas_."
He was attacked, first of all, with that goodly old missile, which,
with the epithets "infidel" and "atheist," has decided the fate of so
many battles--the charge of magic and compact with Satan.
He defended himself with a most unfortunate weapon--a weapon which
exploded in his hands and injured him more than the enemy, for he
argued against the idea of compacts with Satan, and showed that much
which is ascribed to demons results from natural means. This added
fuel to the flame. To limit the power of Satan was deemed hardly less
impious than to limit the power of God.[97]
The most powerful protectors availed him little. His friend Guy Foulkes
having been made pope, Bacon was for a time shielded, but the fury
of the enemy was too strong. In an unpublished letter, Blackstone
declares that when, on one occasion, Bacon was about to perform a few
experiments for some friends, all Oxford was in an uproar. It was
believed that Satan was let loose. Everywhere were priests, fellows,
and students rushing about, their garments streaming in the wind, and
everywhere resounded the cry, "Down with the conjurer!" and this cry,
"Down with the conjurer!" resounded from cell to cell and hall to
hall.[98]
But the attack took a shape far more terrible. The two great religions
orders, Franciscan and Dominican, vied with each other in fighting the
new thought in chemistry and philosophy. St. Dominic, sincere as he
was, solemnly condemned research by experiment and observation. The
general of the Franciscan order took similar grounds.
In 1243 the Dominicans solemnly interdicted every member of their order
from the study of medicine and natural philosophy, and in 1287 this
interdiction was extended to the study of chemistry.[99] In 1278 the
authorities of the Franciscan order, assembled at Paris, solemnly
condemned Bacon's teachings.
Another weapon began to be used upon the battle-fields of that time
with much effect. The Arabs had made noble discoveries in science.
Averroès had, among many, divided the honors with St. Thomas Aquinas.
These facts gave the new missile: it was the epithet "Mahometan." This,
too, was flung with effect at Bacon.[100]
Bacon was at last conquered. He was imprisoned for fourteen years. At
the age of eighty years he was released from prison, but death alone
took him beyond the reach of his enemies. How deeply the struggle had
racked his mind may be gathered from that last affecting declaration of
his: "Would that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of
science!"
Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the
world had the world not refused the gift. He held the key of treasures
which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery. With his
discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the
world have gained! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was
done to this age also. The nineteenth century was robbed at the same
time with the thirteenth. But for that interference with science,
the nineteenth century would, without doubt, be enjoying discoveries
which will not be reached before the twentieth century. Thousands of
precious lives shall be lost in this century, tens of thousands shall
suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of
discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken religious fight
against Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth.
In 1868 and 1869, sixty thousand children died in England and in Wales
of scarlet fever; probably nearly as many died in this country. Had not
Bacon been hindered, we should have had in our hands, by this time,
the means to save two-thirds of these victims; and the same is true of
typhoid, typhus, and that great class of diseases of whose physical
causes science is just beginning to get an inkling. Put together all
the efforts of all the atheists who have ever lived, and they have not
done so much harm to Christianity and the world as has been done by the
narrow-minded, conscientious men who persecuted Roger Bacon, and closed
the path which he gave his life to open.[101]
But, despite the persecution of Bacon and the defection of those who
ought to have followed him, champions of natural science and the
experimental method arose from time to time during the succeeding
centuries. We know little of them personally. Our main knowledge of
their efforts is derived from the efforts of their opponents and
persecutors.
In 1317 Pope John XXII. issued his bull _Spondent Pariter_, nominally
leveled at the alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the
beginnings of the science of chemistry.
In 1380 Charles V. of France carried out the same policy, and even
forbade the possession of furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical
processes. Under this law the chemist John Barillon, for possessing
chemical furnaces and apparatus, was thrown into prison, and it was
only by the greatest effort that his life was saved.
In 1404 Henry IV. of England issued a decree of the same sort; and in
1418 the republic of Venice followed the example of pope and kings. But
champions of science still pressed on. Antonio de Dominis relinquishes
his archbishopric of Spalatro, investigates the phenomena of light, and
dies in the clutches of the Inquisition.[102]
Pierre de la Ramée stands up against Aristotelianism at Paris. A royal
edict, sought by the Church, stopped his teaching, and the massacre of
St. Bartholomew ended his life.
Somewhat later, John Baptist Porta began his investigations. Despite
many absurdities, his work was most fruitful. His book on meteorology
was the first in which sound ideas were broached. His researches in
optics gave the world the camera obscura, and, possibly, the telescope.
In chemistry he seems to have been the first to show how to reduce the
metallic oxides, and thus to have laid the foundation of all those
industries based upon the staining and coloring of glass and enamels;
and, last of all, he did much to change natural philosophy from a
"black art" to a vigorous open science. He encountered the same old
policy of conscientious men. The society founded by him for physical
research, "I Secreti," was broken up, and he was summoned to Rome and
censured.[103]
In 1624 some young chemists of Paris, having taught the experimental
method and cut loose from Aristotle, the Faculty of Theology besets the
Parliament of Paris, and the Parliament prohibits this new chemical
teaching under penalty of death.[104]
The war went on in Italy. In 1657 occurred the first sitting of the
_Accademia del Cimento_, at Florence, under the presidency of Prince
Leopold dei Medici. This Academy promised great things for science. It
was open to all talent. Its only fundamental law was "the repudiation
of any favorite system or sect of philosophy, and the obligation to
investigate Nature by the pure light of experiment."
The new Academy entered into scientific investigations with energy;
Borelli in mathematics, Redi in natural history, and many others,
pushed on the boundaries of knowledge. Heat, light, magnetism,
electricity, projectiles, digestion, the incompressibility of water,
were studied by the right method and with results that enriched the
world.
The Academy was a fortress of science, and siege was soon laid to
it. The votaries of scholastic learning denounced it as irreligious.
Quarrels were fomented. Leopold was bribed with a cardinal's hat and
drawn away to Rome; and, after ten years of beleaguering, the fortress
fell: Borelli was left a beggar; Oliva killed himself in despair.[105]
Still later, just before the great discoveries by Stahl, we find his
predecessor Becher opposed with the following syllogism: "King Solomon,
according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven and
earth. But King Solomon sent his vessels to Ophir to seek gold, and
he levied taxes upon his subjects. Now, if Solomon had known anything
about alchemy, he would not have done this; therefore Solomon did
not know anything about alchemy (or chemistry in the form which then
existed); therefore alchemy (or chemistry) has no reality or truth."
And we find that Becher is absolutely turned away from his labors,
and obliged to devote himself to proving that Solomon used more money
than he possibly could have obtained from Ophir or his subjects, and
therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical methods
and the philosopher's stone as the result of them.[106]
And, in our time, Joseph de Maistre, uttering his hatred of physical
sciences, declaring that man has paid too dearly for them, asserting
that they must be subjected to theology, likening them to fire--good
when confined, but fearful when scattered about--this brilliant thinker
has been the centre of a great opposing camp, an army of good men who
cannot relinquish the idea that the Bible is a text-book of science.
ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.
I pass, now, to fields of more immediate importance to us--to anatomy
and medicine.
It might be supposed that the votaries of sciences like these would be
suffered to escape attack; unfortunately, they have had to stand in the
thickest of the battle.
The Church, even in its earliest centuries, seems to have developed
a distrust of them. Tertullian, in his "Treatise upon the Soul,"
stigmatizes the surgeon Herophilus as a "butcher," and evidently on
account of his skill in his profession rather than on account of his
want of it. St. Augustine, in his great treatise on the City of God,
which remains to this day one of the treasures of the Church, speaks
with some bitterness of "medical men who are called anatomists," and
says that "with a cruel zeal for science they have dissected the bodies
of the dead, and sometimes of sick persons, who have died under their
knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body
to learn the nature of disease and its exact seat, and how it might be
cured!"[107]
But it was not until the mixture of theology and science had begun
to ferment, in the thirteenth century, and the ecclesiastical power
had been aroused in behalf of this sacred mixture, that the feeling
against medical science broke into open war. About the beginning of
that century Pope Innocent III. forbade surgical operations by priests,
deacons, or subdeacons. Pope Honorius went still further, and forbade
medicine to be practised by archdeacons, priests, or deacons; in
1243 the Dominican authorities banished books on medicine from their
monasteries; somewhat later, Pope Boniface VIII. interdicted dissection
as sacrilege.[108]
Toward the close of that great religious century came a battle which
serves to show the spirit of the time.
The great physician and chemist of the day was Arnold de Villa Nova.
Although he has been overrated by some modern historians as a votary
of the experimental method, and under-rated by others as a votary of
alchemy, the sober judgment of the most thoughtful has acknowledged him
as one of the most useful forerunners of modern masters in medical and
chemical science.
The missile usual in such cases was hurled at him. He was charged with
sorcery and dealings with the devil. The Archbishop of Tarragona first
excommunicated him and drove him from Spain; next he was driven from
Paris, and took refuge at Montpellier; thence, too, he was driven,
finally, every place in France was closed against him, and he became an
outcast.[109]
Such seemed the fate of men in that field who gained even a glimmer of
new scientific truth. Even men like Cardan, and Paracelsus, and Porta,
who yielded much to popular superstitions, were at once set upon if
they ventured upon any other than the path which the Church thought
sound--the insufficient path of Aristotelian investigation.
We have seen that the weapons used against the astronomers were
mainly the epithets "infidel" and "atheist." We have also seen that
the missiles used against the chemists and physicians were the
epithets "sorcerer" and "leaguer with the devil," and we have picked
up on various battle-fields another effective weapon, the epithet
"Mohammedan."
On the heads of the anatomists and physicians were concentrated _all_
these missiles. The charge of atheism ripened into a proverb: "_Ubi
sunt tres medici, ibi sunt duo athei_." Magic seemed so common a
charge that many of the physicians seemed to believe it themselves.
Mohammedanism and Averroism became almost synonymous with medicine, and
Petrarch stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark at
Christ."[110]
Not to weary you with the details of earlier struggles, I will select
a great benefactor of mankind and champion of scientific truth at
the period of the revival of learning and the Reformation--Andreas
Vesalius, the founder of the modern science of anatomy. The battle
waged by this man is one of the glories of our race.
The old methods were soon exhausted by his early fervor, and he sought
to advance science by truly scientific means--by patient investigation
and by careful recording of results.
From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the search for
real knowledge he braved the most terrible dangers. Before his time
the dissection of the human subject was thought akin to sacrilege.
Occasionally an anatomist, like Mundinus, had given some little display
with such a subject; but, for the purposes of _investigation_, such
dissection was forbidden.[111] As we have already seen, even such men
in the early Church as Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in
abhorrence, and Boniface VIII. interdicted dissection as sacrilege.
Through this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear.
Braving ecclesiastical censure and popular fury, he studied his science
by the only method that could give useful results. No peril daunted
him. To secure the material for his investigations, he haunted gibbets
and charnel-houses; in this search he risked alike the fires of the
Inquisition and the virus of the plague. First of all men he began to
place the science of human anatomy on its solid, modern foundations--on
careful examination and observation of the human body. This was his
first great sin, and it was soon aggravated by one considered even
greater.
Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done for
Christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are doomed and
gradually sinking. Just as, in the time of Roger Bacon, excellent but
mistaken men devoted all their energies to binding Christianity to
Aristotle; just as, in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus, they insisted
on binding Christianity to Thomas Aquinas: so, in the time of Vesalius,
such men made every effort to link Christianity to Galen.
The cry has been the same in all ages; it is the same which we hear in
this age for curbing scientific studies--the cry for what is called
"sound learning." Whether standing for Aristotle against Bacon,
or Aquinas against Erasmus, or Galen against Vesalius, or making
mechanical Greek verses at Eton instead of studying the handiwork of
the Almighty, or reading Euripides with translations instead of Lessing
and Goethe in the original, the cry always is for "sound learning." The
idea always is that these studies are _safe_.
At twenty-eight years of age Vesalius gave to the world his great
work on human anatomy. With it ended the old and began the new. Its
researches, by their thoroughness, were a triumph of science; its
illustrations, by their fidelity, were a triumph of art.
To shield himself, as far as possible, in the battle which he foresaw
must come, Vesalius prefaced the work by a dedication to the Emperor
Charles V. In this dedicatory preface he argues for his method, and
against the parrot repetitions of the mediæval text-books; he also
condemns the wretched anatomical preparations and specimens made by
physicians who utterly refused to advance beyond the ancient master.
The parrot-like repeaters of Galen gave battle at once. After the
manner of their time, their first missiles were epithets; and, the
almost infinite magazine of these having been exhausted, they began to
use sharper weapons--weapons theologic.
At first the theologic weapons failed. A conference of divines having
been asked to decide whether dissection of the human body is sacrilege,
gave a decision in the negative. The reason is simple: Charles V. had
made Vesalius his physician, and could not spare him. But, on the
accession of Philip II. of Spain, the whole scene changed. That most
bitter of bigots must of course detest the great innovator.
A new weapon was now forged. Vesalius was charged with dissecting
living men,[112] and, either from direct persecution, as the great
majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent
apologists for Philip II. allow, Vesalius became a wanderer. On a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked,
and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to this world.
And yet not lost. In this century he again stands on earth; the painter
Hamann has again given him to us. By the magic of Hamann's pencil, we
look once more into Vesalius's cell. Its windows and doors, bolted
and barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without;
the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit
in which he labors; the corpse of the plague-stricken, over which he
bends, ceases to be repulsive; his very soul seems to send forth rays
from the canvas which strengthen us for the good fight in this age.[113]
He was hunted to death by men who conscientiously supposed he was
injuring religion. His poor, blind foes destroyed one of religion's
greatest apostles. What was his influence on religion? He substituted
for repetition, by rote, of worn-out theories of dead men,
conscientious and reverent searching into the works of the living God;
he substituted for representations of the human structure--pitiful and
unreal--truthful representations, revealing the Creator's power and
goodness in every line.[114]
I hasten now to the most singular struggle and victory of medical
science between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Early in the last century, Boyer presented Inoculation as a preventive
of small-pox, in France; thoughtful physicians in England, led by Lady
Montagu and Maitland, followed his example.
Theology took fright at once on both sides of the Channel. The French
theologians of the Sorbonne solemnly condemned the practice. English
theologians were most loudly represented by the Rev. Edward Massy, who,
in 1722, preached a sermon in which he declared that Job's distemper
was probably confluent small-pox, and that he had been doubtless
inoculated by the devil; that diseases are sent by Providence for the
punishment of sin, and that the proposed attempt to prevent them is
"a diabolical operation." This sermon was entitled "The Dangerous and
Sinful Practice of Inoculation." Not less absurd was the sermon of the
Rev. Mr. Delafaye, entitled "Inoculation an Indefensible Practice."
Thirty years later the struggle was still going on. It is a pleasure to
note one great churchman, Maddox, Bishop of Worcester, giving battle
on the side of right reason; but as late as 1753 we have the Rector
of Canterbury denouncing inoculation from his pulpit in the primatial
city, and many of his brethren following his example. Among the most
common weapons hurled by churchmen at the supporters of inoculation,
during all this long war, were charges of sorcery and atheism.[115]
Nor did Jenner's blessed discovery of vaccination escape opposition
on similar grounds. In 1798 an anti-vaccine society was formed by
clergymen and physicians, calling on the people of England to suppress
vaccination as "bidding defiance to Heaven itself--even to the will of
God," and declaring that "the law of God prohibits the practice." In
1803 the Rev. Dr. Ramsden thundered against it in a sermon before the
University of Cambridge, mingling texts of Scripture with calumnies
against Jenner; but Plumptre in England, Waterhouse in America, and a
host of other good men and true, press forward to Jenner's side, and at
last science, humanity, and right reason, gain the victory.[116]
But I pass to one typical conflict in our days. In 1847 James Young
Simpson, a Scotch physician of eminence, advocated the use of
anæsthetics in obstetrical cases.
Immediately a storm arose. From pulpit after pulpit such a use of
chloroform was denounced as impious. It was declared contrary to Holy
Writ, and texts were cited abundantly. The ordinary declaration was,
that to use chloroform was "to avoid one part of the primeval curse on
woman."[117]
Simpson wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to defend the blessing which
he brought into use; but the battle seemed about to be lost, when he
seized a new weapon. "My opponents forget," said he, "the twenty-first
verse of the second chapter of Genesis. That is the record of the
first surgical operation ever performed, and that text proves that the
Maker of the universe, before he took the rib from Adam's side for the
creation of Eve, caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam."
This was a stunning blow; but it did not entirely kill the opposition.
They had strength left to maintain that "the deep sleep of Adam took
place before the introduction of pain into the world--in the state of
innocence."[118] But now a new champion intervened--Thomas Chalmers.
With a few pungent arguments he scattered the enemy forever, and the
greatest battle of science against suffering was won.[119]
But was not the victory won also for religion? Go to yonder monument,
in Boston, to one of the discoverers of anæsthesia. Read this
inscription from our sacred volume: "This also cometh from the Lord of
hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working."
GEOLOGY.
I now ask you to look at another part of the great warfare, and I
select it because it shows more clearly than any other how Protestant
nations, and in our own time, have suffered themselves to be led into
the same errors that have wrought injury to religion and science in
other times. We will look very briefly at the battle-fields of Geology.
From the first lispings of this science there was war. The prevailing
doctrine of the Church was, that "in the beginning God made the heavens
and the earth;" that "all things were made at the beginning of the
world;" and that to say that stones and fossils have been made since
"the beginning," is contrary to Scripture. The theological substitutes
for scientific explanations ripened into such as these: that the
fossils are "sports of Nature," or "creations of plastic force," or
"results of a seminal air acting upon rocks," or "models" made by the
Creator before he had fully decided upon the best manner of creating
various beings. But, while some latitude was allowed among these
theologico-scientific explanations, it was held essential to believe
that they were placed in all the strata, on one of the creation-days,
by the hand of the Almighty; and that this was done for some mysterious
purpose of his own, probably for the trial of human faith.
In the sixteenth century Fracastoro and Palissy broached the true idea,
but produced little effect. Near the beginning of the seventeenth
century De Clave, Bitaud, and De Villon revived it; straight-way
the theologic faculty of Paris protested against the doctrine as
unscriptural, destroyed the offending treatises, banished the authors
from Paris, and forbade them to live in towns or enter places of public
resort.[120] At the middle of the eighteenth century, Buffon made
another attempt to state simple and fundamental geological truths. The
theological faculty of the Sorbonne immediately dragged him from his
high position, forced him to recant ignominiously, and to print his
recantation. It required a hundred and fifty years for science to carry
the day fairly against this single preposterous theory. The champion
who dealt it the deadly blow was Scilla, and his weapons were facts
revealed by the fossils of Calabria.
But the advocates of tampering with scientific reasoning now retired
to a new position. It was strong, for it was apparently based on
Scripture, though, as the whole world now knows, an utterly false
interpretation of Scripture. The new position was, that the fossils
were produced by the Deluge of Noah.
In vain had it been shown, by such devoted Christians as Bernard
Palissy, that this theory was utterly untenable; in vain did good men
protest against the injury sure to result to religion by tying it to a
scientific theory sure to be exploded: the doctrine that fossils were
the remains of animals drowned at the flood continued to be upheld
by the great majority as "sound doctrine," and as a blessed means of
reconciling science with Scripture.[121]
To sustain this "Scriptural view," so called, efforts were put forth
absolutely herculean, both by Catholics and Protestants. Mazurier
declared certain fossil remains of a mammoth, discovered in France, to
be bones of giants mentioned in Scripture. Father Torrubia did the same
thing in Spain. Increase Mather sent similar remains, discovered in
America, to England, with a similar statement. Scheuchzer made parade
of the bones of a great lizard discovered in Germany, as the _homo
diluvii testis_, the fossil man, proving the reality of the Deluge.[122]
In the midst of this appears an episode very comical but very
instructive; for it shows that the attempt to shape the deductions of
science to meet the exigencies of theology may mislead heterodoxy as
absurdly as orthodoxy.
About the year 1760 news of the discovery of marine fossils in various
elevated districts of Europe reached Voltaire. He, too, had a theologic
system to support, though his system was opposed to that of the sacred
books of the Hebrews. He feared that these new discoveries might be
used to support the Mosaic accounts of the Deluge. All his wisdom and
wit, therefore, were compacted into arguments to prove that the fossil
fishes were remains of fishes intended for food, but spoiled and thrown
away by travelers; that the fossil shells were accidentally dropped
by Crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land; and that
sundry fossil bones found between Paris and Étampes were parts of a
skeleton belonging to the cabinet of some ancient philosopher. Through
chapter after chapter, Voltaire, obeying the supposed necessities of
his theology, fights desperately the growing results of the geologic
investigations of his time.[123]
But far more widespread and disastrous was the effort on the other side
to show that the fossils were caused by the Deluge of Noah.
No supposition was too violent to support a theory which was considered
vital to the Bible. Sometimes it was claimed that the tail of a comet
had produced the Deluge. Sometimes, by a prosaic rendering of the
expression regarding the breaking up of "the fountains of the great
deep," a theory was started that the earth contained a great cistern,
from which the waters came and to which they retired. By taking sacred
poetry as prose, and by giving a literal interpretation of it, Thomas
Burnet, in his "Sacred Theory of the Earth," Whiston, in his "Theory
of the Deluge," and others like them, built up systems which bear to
real geology much the same relation that the "Christian Topography" of
Cosmas bears to real geography. In vain were exhibited the absolute
geological, zoölogical, astronomical proofs that no universal deluge,
or deluge covering any great extent of the earth, had taken place
within the last six thousand or sixty thousand years; in vain did
Bishop Clayton declare, that the Deluge could not have taken place
save in that district where Noah lived before the flood; in vain was
it shown that, even if there had been a universal deluge, the fossils
were not produced by it: the only answers were the citation of the
text, "And all the high mountains which were under the whole heaven
were covered," and denunciations of infidelity. In England, France, and
Germany, belief that the fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah
was insisted upon as part of that faith essential to salvation.[124]
It took a hundred and twenty years for the searchers of God's truth
as revealed in Nature--such men as Buffon, Linnæus, Whitehurst, and
Daubenton--to push their works under these mighty fabrics of error,
and, by statements which could not be resisted, to explode them.
Strange as it may at first seem, the war on geology was waged more
fiercely in Protestant countries than in Catholic; the older Church had
learned, by her earlier wretched mistakes, what dangers to her claim of
infallibility lay in meddling with a growing science; in Italy, then
entirely under papal control, little open opposition was made; and, of
all countries, England furnished the most bitter opponents to geology
at first, and the most active negotiators in patching up a truce on a
basis of sham science afterward.[125]
You have noted already that there are, generally, two sorts of attack
on a new science. First, there is the attack by pitting against science
some great doctrine in theology. You saw this in astronomy, when
Bellarmin and others insisted that the doctrine of the earth revolving
about the sun is contrary to the doctrine of the incarnation. So now,
against geology, it was urged that the scientific doctrine that the
fossils represented animals which died before Adam, was contrary to the
doctrine of Adam's fall, and that "death entered the world by sin."
Then, there is the attack by literal interpretation of texts, based
upon the idea that the Bible is a compendium of history or a text-book
of natural science, which serves a better purpose, generally, in
rousing prejudices.
Toward the close of the last century, in England, the opponents of
geology on Biblical grounds seemed likely to sweep all before them.
Cramping our sacred volume within the rules of an historical compend,
they showed the terrible dangers arising from the revelations of
geology, which make the earth older than the six thousand years
required by Archbishop Usher's interpretation of the Old Testament.
Nor was this panic confined to ecclesiastics. Williams, a thoughtful
layman, declared that such researches led to infidelity and atheism,
and are "nothing less than to depose the Almighty Creator of the
universe from his office." The poet Cowper, one of the mildest of men,
was also roused by these dangers, and in his most elaborate poem wrote:
"Some drill and bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn
That he who made it, and revealed its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age!"
And difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many of
us the battle was still raging most fiercely in England, and both kinds
of artillery usually brought against a new science were in full play,
and filling the civilized world with their roar.
About thirty years ago, the Rev. J. Mellor Brown, the Rev. Henry Cole,
and others, were hurling at all geologists alike, and especially at
such Christian divines as Dr. Buckland and Dean Conybeare, and Pye
Smith, and such religious scholars as Prof. Sedgwick, the epithets
of "infidel," "impugner of the sacred record," and "assailant of the
volume of God."[126]
Their favorite weapon was the charge that these men were "attacking
the truth of God," forgetting that they were simply opposing the
mistaken interpretations of Messrs. Brown, Cole, and others, like them,
inadequately informed.
They declared geology "not a subject of lawful inquiry," denouncing
it as "a dark art," as "dangerous and disreputable," as "a forbidden
province," as "infernal artillery," and as "an awful evasion of the
testimony of revelation."[127]
This attempt to scare men from the science having failed, various other
means were taken. To say nothing about England, it is humiliating to
human nature to remember the annoyances, and even trials, to which the
pettiest and narrowest of men subjected such Christian scholars in our
own country as Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock and Louis Agassiz.
But it is a duty and a pleasure to state here that one great Christian
scholar did honor to religion and to himself by standing up for the
claims of science, despite all these clamors. That man was Nicholas
Wiseman, better known afterward as Cardinal Wiseman. The conduct of
this pillar of the Roman Catholic Church contrasts nobly with that
of timid Protestants, who were filling England with shrieks and
denunciations.[128]
And here let me note, that one of the prettiest skirmishes in this war
was made in New England. Prof. Stuart, of Andover, justly honored as a
Hebrew scholar, virtually declared that geology was becoming dangerous;
that to speak of six periods of time for the creation was flying in the
face of Scripture; that Genesis expressly speaks of six days, each made
up of an evening and a morning, and not six periods of time.
To him replied a professor in Yale College, James Kingsley. In an
article admirable for keen wit and kindly temper, he showed that
Genesis speaks just as clearly of a solid firmament as of six ordinary
days, and that if Prof. Stuart had got over one difficulty and
accepted the Copernican theory, he might as well get over another
and accept the revelations of geology. The encounter was quick and
decisive, and the victory was with science and our own honored
Yale.[129]
But perhaps the most singular attempt against geology was made by a
fine specimen of the English Don--Dean Cockburn, of York--to _scold_
its champions out of the field. Without, apparently, the simplest
elementary knowledge of geology, he opened a battery of abuse. He gave
it to the world at large, by pulpit and press; he even inflicted it
upon leading statesmen by private letters.[130] From his pulpit in York
minster, Mary Somerville was denounced coarsely, by name, for those
studies in physical geography which have made her honored throughout
the world.[131]
But these weapons did not succeed. They were like Chinese gongs and
dragon-lanterns against rifled cannon. Buckland, Pye Smith, Lyell,
Silliman, Hitchcock, Murchison, Agassiz, Dana, and a host of noble
champions besides, press on, and the battle for truth is won.
And was it won merely for men of science? The whole civilized world
declares that it was won for religion--that thereby was infinitely
increased the knowledge of the power and goodness of God.
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
From the many questions on which the supporters of right reason
in Political and Social Science have only conquered conscientious
opposition after centuries of war, I select the taking of interest on
loans; in hardly any struggle has rigid adherence to the Bible as a
scientific text-book been more prolonged or injurious.[132]
Certainly, if the criterion of truth, as regards any doctrine, be
that it has been believed in the Church "always, everywhere, and by
all," then on no point may a Christian of these days be more sure than
that every savings-institution, every loan and trust company, every
bank, every loan of capital by an individual, every means by which
accumulated capital has been lawfully lent, even at the most moderate
interest, to make the masses of men workers rather than paupers, is
based on deadly sin.
The fathers of the Christian Church received from the ancient world a
strong prejudice against any taking of interest whatever; in Greece,
Aristotle had condemned it; in Rome it was regarded during many
generations as a crime.[133]
But far greater, in the early Church, was the influence of certain
texts in the Old and New Testaments. Citations from Leviticus,
Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Ezekiel, and St. Luke, were universally held
to condemn all loans at interest.[134]
On these texts the doctrine and legislation of the universal Church,
as regards interest for money, were based and developed. The fathers
of the Eastern Church, and among them St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and
St. Gregory Nazianzen; the fathers of the Western Church, and among
them Tertullian, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome, joined
most earnestly in this condemnation. St. Chrysostom says: "What can
be more unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain, without
ploughs? All those who give themselves up to this damnable agriculture
shall reap only tares. Let us cut off these monstrous births of gold
and silver; let us stop this execrable fecundity." St. Jerome threw the
argument into the form of a dilemma, which was used as a weapon against
money-lenders for centuries.[135]
This entire agreement of the fathers of the Church led to the
crystallization of the hostility to interest-bearing loans into
numberless decrees of popes and councils, and kings and legislatures,
throughout Christendom, during more than fifteen hundred years; and the
canon law was shaped in accordance with these. In the ninth century,
Alfred, in England, confiscated the estates of money-lenders, and
denied them burial in consecrated ground; and similar decrees were made
in other parts of Europe. In the twelfth century the Greek Church seems
to have relaxed its strictness somewhat, but the Roman Church only grew
more and more severe. St. Bernard, reviving religious earnestness in
the Church, was especially strenuous in denouncing loans at interest;
and, in 1179, the Third Council of the Lateran decreed that every
impenitent money-lender should be excluded from the altar, from
absolution in the hour of death, and from Christian burial!
In the thirteenth century this mistaken idea was still more firmly
knit into the thought of the Church by St. Thomas Aquinas; hostility
to loans at interest had been poured into his mind, not only from the
Scriptures, but from Aristotle.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Council of Vienne,
presided over by Pope Clement V., declared that, if any one "shall
pertinaciously presume to affirm that the taking of interest for money
is not a sin, we decree him to be a heretic fit for punishment."[136]
The economical and social results of this conscientious policy were
exceedingly unfortunate. Money could only be loaned, in most countries,
at the risk of incurring odium in this world and damnation in the next;
hence there was but little capital and few lenders; hence came enormous
rates of interest; thereby were commerce, manufactures, and general
enterprise dwarfed, while pauperism flourished.
But even worse than this were the moral results. For nations to do
what they believe is evil, is only second in bad consequences to their
doing what is really evil: all lending and borrowing, even for the
most legitimate purposes and at the most reasonable rates, tended
to debase the character of both borrower and lender.[137] And these
moral evils took more definite shapes than might at first be thought
possible. Sismondi, one of the most thoughtful of modern political
philosophers and historians, declares that the prohibition of interest
for the use of money in Continental Europe did very much to promote a
passion for luxury and to discourage economy; the rich who were not
engaged in business finding no easy way of employing their savings
productively.[138]
These evils became so manifest, when trade began to revive throughout
Europe in the fifteenth century, that most earnest efforts were made to
induce the Church to change its position.
The first important effort of this kind was made by John Gerson. His
general learning had made him Chancellor of the University of Paris;
his sacred learning made him the leading theologian and orator at
the Council of Constance; his piety led men to attribute to him "The
Imitation of Christ." Shaking off theological shackles, he declared:
"Better is it to lend money at reasonable interest, and thus to
give aid to the poor, than to see them reduced by poverty to steal,
waste their goods, and sell, at a low price, their personal and real
property."[139]
But this idea was at once suppressed by the Church--buried beneath
citations from Scripture, the fathers, councils, popes, and the
canon law. Even in the most active countries there seemed no hope.
In England, under Henry VII., Cardinal Morton, the lord-chancellor,
addressed Parliament, asking them to take into consideration loans of
money at interest, and the result was a law which imposed on lenders
at interest a fine of a hundred pounds, besides the annulment of the
loan; and, to show that there was an offence against religion involved,
there was added a clause "reserving to the Church, notwithstanding this
punishment, the correction of their souls according to the laws of the
same."[140] Similar enactments were made by civil authority in various
parts of Europe, and, as a climax, just as the trade and commerce and
manufactures of the modern epoch had received an immense impulse from
the great series of voyages of discovery, by such as Columbus, Vasco de
Gama, Magellan, and the Cabots, this barrier against enterprise was
strengthened by a decree from Pope Leo X.[141]
But this mistaken policy was not confined to the older Church. The
Reformed Church was led by Luther and several of his associates into
the same line of thought and practice. Said Luther: "To exchange
anything with any one and gain by the exchange, is not to do a charity,
but to steal. Every usurer is a thief worthy of the gibbet. I call
those usurers who lend money at five or six per cent."[142]
The English Reformers showed the same tendency. Under Henry VIII., the
law of Henry VII. against taking interest had been modified; but the
revival of religious feeling under Edward VI. caused, in 1552, the
passage of the "Bill of Usury." In this it is said: "Forasmuch as usury
is by the Word of God utterly prohibited, as a vice most odious and
detestable, as in divers places of the Holy Scriptures it is evident
to be seen, which thing by no godly teachings and persuasions can sink
into the hearts of divers greedy, uncharitable, and covetous persons
of this realm, nor yet by any terrible threatenings of God's wrath and
vengeance," etc., etc., it is enacted that whosoever shall
thereafter lend money "for any manner of usury, increase, lucre,
gain, or interest, to be had, received, or hoped for," shall forfeit
principal and interest, and suffer imprisonment and fine at the king's
pleasure.[143]
But, most fortunately, it happened that Calvin turned in the right
direction, and there was developed among Protestants the serviceable
fiction that "usury" means _illegal_ or _oppressive_ interest. Under
cover of this fiction commerce and trade revived rapidly in Protestant
countries, though with occasional checks from exact interpreters of
Scripture.
But, in the older Church, the more correct though less fortunate
interpretation of the sacred texts relating to interest continued.
When it was attempted in France, in the seventeenth century, to argue
that "usury" means oppressive interest, the Theological Faculty of the
Sorbonne declared that usury is the taking of any interest at all, no
matter how little, and the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel was cited to
clinch this judgment.
Another attempt to ease the burden on industry and commerce was made by
declaring that "usury means interest demanded not as matter of favor
but as matter of right." This, too, was solemnly condemned by Pope
Innocent XI.
Again the army of right reason pressed forward, declaring that "usury
is interest greater than the law allows." This, too, was condemned, and
the declaration that "usury is interest on loans not for a fixed time"
was condemned by Pope Alexander VII.
Still the attacking forces pressed on, and among them, in the
seventeenth century, in France, was Richard Simon: he attempts to
gloss over the strict interpretation of Scripture in this matter by an
elaborate treatise: he is immediately confronted by Bossuet.
It seems hardly possible that one of the greatest intellects of a
period so near us could have been so doubly deceived. Yet Bossuet,
the glory of the French Church, one of the keenest and strongest of
thinkers, not only mingled Scripture with astronomy, and opposed the
Copernican theory, but also mingled Scripture with political economy,
and denounced the lending of money at interest. He declared that
the Scriptures, the councils of the Church from the beginning, the
popes, the fathers, all interpreted the prohibition of "usury" to be a
prohibition of any lending at interest, and Bossuet demonstrated this
interpretation as the true one. Simon was put to confusion, and his
book condemned.[144]
There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. The
prohibition of this, one of the most simple and beneficial principles
in political and economical science, was affirmed not only by
the fathers, but by twenty-eight councils of the Church (six of
them general councils), and by seventeen popes, to say nothing of
innumerable doctors in theology and canon law.[145]
But about the middle of the eighteenth century the evil could be
endured no longer--a way of escape _must_ be found. The army opposed
to the Church had become so formidable, that the Roman authorities
saw that a concession must be made. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's
_Spirit of the Laws_; in it were concentrated twenty years' study and
thought of a great thinker on the necessities of the world about him.
In eighteen months it went through twenty-two editions, and it was
translated into every civilized language; this work attacked, among
other abuses, the position of the Church regarding interest for money.
The Church authorities had already taken the alarm. Benedict XIV. saw
that the best thing for him--nay, the only thing--was a surrender under
form of a compromise. In a brief he declared substantially that the law
of the Church was opposed to the taking of interest on loans; and
then, after sundry non-committal and ambiguous statements, he hinted
that there were possible exceptions to the rule.
Like the casuistry of Boscovich in using the Copernican theory for
"convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its condemnation by the
Church, this casuistry of Benedict broke the spell. Turgot, Adam Smith,
Bentham, and their disciples, pressed on, and science won for mankind
another great victory.
Yet in this case, as in others, insurrections against the sway of
scientific truth appeared among some over-zealous religionists. When
the Sorbonne, having retreated from its old position, armed itself
with sundry new casuistries against those who held to its earlier
decisions, provincial doctors in theology protested indignantly, making
the old citations from the Scriptures, fathers, saints, doctors, popes,
councils, and canonists. And even as late as 1830, when the Roman
court, though declining to commit itself on the doctrine involved,
decreed that confessors should no longer disquiet lenders of money at
legal interest, the old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the
Abbé Laborde, Vicar of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by
the Abbé Dennavit, Professor of Theology at Lyons. Good Abbé Dennavit
declared that he refused absolution to those who took interest,
and to priests who pretend that the sanction of the civil law is
sufficient.[146]
But the peace on this question is too profound to be disturbed by
such outcries. The Torlonia family at Rome, to-day, with its palaces,
chapels, intermarriages, affiliations, and papal favor, all won by
lending money at interest, and by devotion to the Roman See, is a
growth on ramparts long since surrendered and deserted.
INDUSTRIAL SCIENCES.
Did time permit, we might go over other battle-fields no less
instructive than those we have seen. We might go over the battle-fields
of Agricultural Progress, and note how, by a most curious perversion
of a text of Scripture, many of the peasantry of Russia were prevented
from raising and eating potatoes, and how in Scotland at the beginning
of this century the use of fanning-mills for winnowing grain was
denounced as contrary to the text "the wind bloweth where it listeth,"
etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is "prince of the powers of the air,"
and as sufficient cause for excommunication from the Scotch Church.[147]
We might go over the battle-fields of Civil Engineering, and note
how the introduction of railways into France was declared, by an
Archbishop, to be an evidence of the divine displeasure against country
innkeepers who set meat before their guests on fast-days, and now
were punished by seeing travelers carried by their doors; and how
railroad and telegraph were denounced from noted pulpits as "heralds
of Anti-christ." And then we might pass to Protestant England and
recall the sermon of the Curate of Rotherhithe at the breaking in of
the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and property, declaring that
"it was but a just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of mortal
man."[148]
VARIOUS SCIENCES.
We might go over the battle-fields of Ethnology and note how, a few
years since, an honored American investigator, proposing in a learned
society the discussion of the question between the origin of the human
race from a single pair and from many pairs, was called to order and
silenced as atheistic, by a Protestant divine whose memory is justly
dear to thousands of us.[149]
Interesting would it be to look over the field of
Meteorology--beginning with the conception, supposed to be scriptural,
of angels opening and shutting "the windows of heaven" and letting out
"the waters that be above the firmament" upon the earth--continuing
through the battle of Fromundus and Bodin, down to the onslaught upon
Lecky, in our own time, for drawing a logical and scientific conclusion
from the doctrine that meteorology is obedient to laws.[150]
We might go over the battle-fields of Cartography and see how at
one period, on account of expressions in Ezekiel, any map of the
world which did not place Jerusalem in the centre, was looked on as
impious.[151]
We might go over the battle-fields of Social Science in Protestant
countries, and note the opposition of conscientious men to the taking
of the census, in Sweden and in the United States, on account of
the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of in the Old
Testament.[152]
And we might also see how, on similar grounds, religious scruples have
been avowed against so beneficial a thing as Life Insurance.[153]
SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION.
But an outline of this kind would be too meagre without some sketch of
the warfare on instruction in science. Not without profit would it be
to note more at length how instruction in the Copernican theory was
kept out of the Church universities in every great Catholic country
of Europe; how they concealed the discovery of the spots on the sun;
how many of them excluded the Newtonian demonstrations; how, down to
the present time, the two great universities of Protestant England
and nearly all her intermediate colleges, under clerical supervision,
have excluded the natural and physical sciences as far as possible;
and how, from probably nine-tenths of the universities and colleges of
the United States, the students are graduated with either no knowledge
or with clerically emasculated knowledge of the most careful modern
thought on the most important problems in the various sciences, in
history, and in criticism.
From the dismissal of the scientific professors from the University of
Salamanca by Ferdinand VII. of Spain, in the beginning of this century,
down to sundry dealings with scientific men in our own land and time,
we might study another interesting phase of the same warfare; but,
passing all this, I shall simply present a few typical conflicts that
have occurred within the last ten years.
During the years 1867 and 1868 the war which had been long smouldering
in France, between the Church and the whole system of French advanced
education, came to an outbreak. Toward the end of the last century,
after the Church had held possession of advanced instruction in France
for more than a thousand years, and had, so far as it was able, made
experimental science contemptible; and after the Church authorities
had deliberately resisted and wrecked Turgot's noble plans for the
establishment of a system of public schools, the French nation decreed
the establishment of the most thorough and complete system of the
higher public instruction then known. It was kept under lay control,
and became one of the great glories of France.
But, emboldened by the restoration of the Bourbons, the Church began to
undermine the hated system, and in 1868 had made such progress that all
was ready for an assault.
Foremost among the leaders of the besieging party was the Bishop of
Orleans--Dupanloup--a man of much buzzing vigor. In various ways, and
especially in an open letter, he had fought the "Materialism" of the
School of Medicine at Paris, and especially were his attacks leveled
at Professors Vulpian and See, and the Minister of Public Instruction,
Duruy, a man of great merit, whose only crime was a quiet resistance
to clerical control.[154]
In these writings, Bishop Dupanloup stigmatized Darwin, Huxley, Lyell,
and others, as authors of "shameful theories," and made especial use of
the recent phrase of a naturalist, that "it is more glorious to be a
monkey perfected than an Adam degenerated."
The direct attack was made in the French Senate, and the storming party
in that body was led by a venerable and conscientious prelate, Cardinal
de Bonnechose.
It was charged by Archbishop de Bonnechose and his party, that the
tendencies of the teachings of these professors were fatal to religion
and morality. A heavy artillery of phrases was hurled, such as "sapping
the foundations," etc., "breaking down the bulwarks," etc., etc.,
and, withal, a new missile was used with much effect, the epithet of
"materialist." The result can be easily guessed; crowds came to the
lecture-rooms of these professors, and the lecture-room of Prof. See,
the chief offender, was crowded to suffocation.
A siege was begun in due form. A young physician was sent by the
cardinal's party into the heterodox camp as a spy. Having heard one
lecture of Prof. See, he returned with information that seemed to
promise easy victory to the besieging party. He brought a terrible
statement, one that seemed enough to overwhelm See, Vulpian, Duruy, and
the whole hated system of public instruction in France.
Good Cardinal Bonnechose seized the tremendous weapon. Rising in his
place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the
Minister of State who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the
College of Medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence of
his spy fresh from Prof. See's lecture-room, that the professor had
declared, in his lecture of the day before, that so long as he had the
honor to hold his professorship he would combat the false idea of the
existence of the soul. The weapon seemed resistless, and the wound
fatal; but M. Duruy rose and asked to be heard.
His statement was simply that he held in his hand documentary proofs
that Prof. See never made such a declaration. He held the notes used by
Prof. See in his lecture. Prof. See, it appeared, belonged to a school
in medical science which combated the idea of an art in medicine. The
inflamed imagination of the cardinal's too eager emissary had, as
the lecture notes proved, led him into a sad mistake as to words and
thoughts, and had exhibited Prof. See as treating a theological when he
was discussing a purely scientific questions. Of the existence of the
soul the professor had said nothing.
The forces of the enemy were immediately turned; they retreated in
confusion, amid the laughter of all France; and a quiet, dignified
statement as to the rights of scientific instructors by Wurtz, the dean
of the Faculty, completed their discomfiture. Thus a well-meant attempt
to check what was feared might be dangerous in science simply ended
in bringing ridicule on religion, and thrusting still deeper into the
minds of thousands of men that most mistaken of all mistaken ideas--the
conviction that religion and science are enemies.[155]
But justice forbids our raising an outcry against Roman Catholicism
alone for this. In 1864 a number of excellent men in England drew
up a declaration to be signed by students in the natural sciences,
expressing "sincere regret that researches into scientific truth are
perverted by some in our time into occasion for casting doubt upon the
truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures." Nine-tenths of the
leading scientific men of England refused to sign it. Nor was this the
worst. Sir John Herschel, Sir John Bowring, and Sir W. R. Hamilton,
administered, through the press, castigations which roused general
indignation against the proposers of the circular, and Prof. De Morgan,
by a parody, covered memorial and memorialists with ridicule. It was
the old mistake, and the old result followed in the minds of multitudes
of thoughtful young men.[156]
And in yet another Protestant country this same wretched mistake
was made. In 1868, several excellent churchmen in Prussia thought
it their duty to meet for the denunciation of "science falsely so
called." Two results followed: Upon the great majority of these really
self-sacrificing men--whose first utterances showed crass ignorance of
the theories they attacked--there came quiet and widespread contempt;
upon Pastor Knak, who stood forth and proclaimed views of the universe
which he thought Scriptural, but which most schoolboys knew to be
childish, came a burst of good-natured derision from every quarter of
the German nation.[157]
Warfare of this sort against Science seems petty indeed; but it is to
be guarded against in Protestant countries not less than in Catholic;
it breaks out in America not less than in Europe. I might exhibit many
proofs of this. Do conscientious Roman bishops in France labor to keep
all advanced scientific instruction under their own control--in their
own universities and colleges; so do very many not less conscientious
Protestant clergymen in our own country insist that advanced education
in science and literature shall be kept under control of their own
sectarian universities and colleges, wretchedly one-sided in their
development, and miserably inadequate in their equipment: did a leading
Spanish university, until a recent period, exclude professors holding
the Newtonian theory; so does a leading American college exclude
professors holding the Darwinian theory: have Catholic colleges in
Italy rejected excellent candidates for professorships on account of
"unsafe" views regarding the Immaculate Conception; so are Protestant
colleges in America every day rejecting excellent candidates on
account of "unsafe" views regarding the Apostolic Succession, or the
Incarnation, or Baptism, or the Perseverance of the Saints.
And how has all this system resulted? In the older nations, by natural
reaction, these colleges, under strict ecclesiastical control, have
sent forth the most bitter enemies the Christian Church has ever
known--of whom Voltaire and Renan and Saint-Beuve are types; and there
are many signs that the same causes are producing the same result in
our own country.
I might allude to another battle-field in our own land and time. I
might show how an attempt to meet the great want, in the State of New
York, of an institution providing scientific instruction, has been met
with loud outcries from many excellent men, who fear injury thereby
to religion. I might picture to you the strategy which has been used
to keep earnest young men from an institution which, it is declared,
cannot be Christian because it is not sectarian. I might lay before you
wonderful lines of argument which have been made to show the dangerous
tendencies of a plan which gives to scientific studies the same weight
as to classical studies, and which lays no less stress on modern
history and literature than on ancient history and literature.
I might show how it has been denounced by the friends and agents of
denominational colleges and in many sectarian journals; how the most
preposterous charges have been made and believed by good men; how
the epithets of "godless," "infidel," "irreligious," "unreligious,"
"atheistic," have been hurled against a body of Christian trustees,
professors, and students, and with little practical result save
arousing a suspicion in the minds of large bodies of thoughtful young
men, that the churches dread scientific studies untrammeled by
sectarianism.
SUMMARY.
You have now gone over the greater struggles in the long war between
Ecclesiasticism and Science, and have glanced at the lesser fields. You
have seen the conflicts in Physical Geography, as to the form of the
earth; in Astronomy, as to the place of the earth in the universe, and
the evolution of stellar systems in accordance with law; in Chemistry
and Physics; in Anatomy and Medicine; in Geology; in Meteorology; in
Cartography; in the Industrial and Agricultural Sciences; in Political
Economy and Social Science; and in Scientific Instruction; and each of
these, when fully presented, has shown the following results:
_First._ In every case, whether the war has been long or short,
forcible or feeble, Science has at last gained the victory.
_Secondly._ In every case, interference with Science, in the supposed
interest of religion, has brought dire evils on both.
_Thirdly._ In every case, while this interference, during its
continuance, has tended to divorce religion from the most vigorous
thinking of the world, and to make it odious to multitudes of the
most earnest thinkers; the triumph of Science has led its former
conscientious enemies to make new interpretations and lasting
adjustments, which have proved a blessing to religion, ennobling its
conceptions and bettering its methods.
And in addition to these points there should be brought out distinctly
a _corollary_, which is, that science must be studied by its own means
and to its own ends, unmixed with the means and unbiased by the motives
of investigators in other fields, and uncontrolled by consciences
unenlightened by itself.
The very finger of the Almighty seems to have written the proofs of
this truth on human history. No one can gainsay it. It is decisive,
for it is this: _There has never been a scientific theory framed from
the use of Scriptural texts, wholly or partially, which has been
made to stand_. Such attempts have only subjected their authors to
derision, and Christianity to suspicion. From Cosmas finding his plan
of the universe in the Jewish tabernacle, to Increase Mather sending
mastodon's bones to England as the remains of giants mentioned in
Scripture; from Bellarmin declaring that the sun cannot be the centre
of the universe, because such an idea "vitiates the whole Scriptural
plan of salvation," to a recent writer declaring that an evolution
theory cannot be true, because St. Paul says that "all flesh is not the
same flesh," the result has always been the same.[158]
Such facts show that scientific hypothesis will be established or
refuted by scientific men and scientific methods alone, and that no
conscientious citation of texts, or outcries as to consequences of
scientific truths, from any other quarter, can do any thing save retard
truth and cause needless anxiety.[159]
Such facts show, too, that the sacred books of the world were not given
for any such purpose as that to which so many men have endeavored to
wrest them--the purpose served by compends of history and text-books of
science.
Is skepticism feared? All history shows that the only skepticism which
does permanent harm is skepticism as to the value and safety of truth
as truth. No skepticism has proved so corrosive to religion, none so
cancerous in the human brain and heart.
Is faith cherished? All history shows that the first article of a
saving faith, for any land or time, is faith that there is a Power in
this universe strong enough to make truth-seeking safe, and good enough
to make truth-telling useful.
May we not, then, hope that the greatest and best men in the
Church--the men standing at centres of thought--will insist with
power, more and more, that religion be no longer tied to so injurious
a policy as that which this warfare reveals; that searchers for truth,
whether in theology or natural science, work on as friends, sure that,
no matter how much at variance they may at times seem to be, the
truths they reach shall finally be fused into each other? The dominant
religious conceptions of the world will doubtless be greatly modified
by science in the future, as they have been in the past; and the part
of any wisely religious person, at any centre of influence, is to see
that, in his generation, this readjustment of religion to science be
made as quietly and speedily as possible.
No one needs fear the result. No matter whether Science shall
complete her demonstration that man has been on the earth not merely
six thousand years, or six millions of years; no matter whether she
reveals new ideas of the Creator or startling relations between his
creatures; no matter how many more gyves and clamps upon the spirit of
Christianity she destroys: the result, when fully thought out, will
serve and strengthen religion not less than science.[160]
What science can do for the world is shown, not by those who have
labored to concoct palatable mixtures of theology and science--men like
Cosmas, and Torrubia, and Burnet, and Whiston--but by men who have
fought the good fight of faith in truth for truth's sake--men like
Roger Bacon, and Vesalius, and Palissy, and Galileo.
What Christianity can do for the world is shown, not by men who have
stood on the high places screaming in wrath at the advance of science;
not by men who have retreated in terror into the sacred caves and
refused to look out upon the universe as it is; but by men who have
preached and practised the righteousness of the prophets, and the
aspirations of the Psalmist, and the blessed Sermon on the Mount, and
"the first great commandment, and the second which is like unto it,"
and St. James's definition of "pure religion and undefiled."
It is shown in the Roman Church, not by Tostatus and Bellarmin, but
by St. Carlo Borromeo, and St. Vincent de Paul, and Fénelon, and
Eugénie de Guérin; in the Anglican Church, not by Dean Cockburn, but
by Howard, and Jenner, and Wilberforce, and Florence Nightingale; in
the German Church, not by Pastor Knak, but by Pastor Fliedner; in the
American Church, not by the Mathers, but by such as Bishop Whatcoat,
and Channing, and Muhlenberg, and Father De Smet, and Samuel May, and
Harriet Stowe.
Let the warfare of Science, then, be changed. Let it be a warfare in
which Religion and Science shall stand together as allies, not against
each other as enemies. Let the fight be for truth of every kind against
falsehood of every kind; for justice against injustice; for right
against wrong; for the living kernel of religion rather than the dead
and dried husks of sect and dogma; and the great powers, whose warfare
has brought so many sufferings, shall at last join in ministering
through earth God's richest blessings.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Most fruitful among these were those given by Plato in the
_Timæus_. See, also, Grote on Plato's doctrine of the rotundity of the
earth. Also _Sir G. C. Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients_, London,
1862, chap. iii., sec. i. and note. Cicero's mention of the antipodes
and reference to the passage in the _Timæus_ are even more remarkable
than the original, in that they much more clearly foreshadow the modern
doctrine. See _Academic Questions_, ii., xxxix. Also, _Tusc. Quest._,
i., xxviii., and v., xxiv.
[2] See _Eusebius_, _Præp. Ev._, xv., 61.
[3] See _Lactantius_, _Inst._, 1., iii., chap. 3. Also, citations in
_Whewell_, _Hist. Induct. Sciences_, Lond., 1857, vol. i., p. 194.
To understand the embarrassment thus caused to scientific men at a
later period, see _Letter of Agricola to Joachimus Vadianus_ in 1514.
Agricola asks Vadianus to give his views regarding the antipodes,
saying that he himself does not know what to do, between the Fathers
on one side and learned men of modern times on the other. On the other
hand, for the embarrassment caused to the Church by this mistaken zeal
of the Fathers, see Kepler's references and Fromund's replies; also _De
Morgan_, _Paradoxes_, p. 58. Kepler appears to have taken great delight
in throwing the views of Lactantius into the teeth of his adversaries.
[4] _Another germ idea_, etc. See _Plato_, _Timæus_, 62 C., Jowett's
translation, N. Y. ed. Also _Phædo_, pp. 449, _et seq._ Also _Cicero_,
_Academic Quest._, and _Tusc. Disput._, _ubi supra_. For citations
and summaries, see _Whewell_, _Hist. Induct. Sciences_, vol. i., p.
189, and _St. Martin_, _Hist. de la Géog._, Paris, 1873, p. 96. Also
_Leopardi_, _Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi_, Firenze,
1851, chap. xii., p. 184, _et seq._
[5] For opinion of Basil, Ambrose, and others, see _Lecky_, _Hist. of
Rationalism in Europe_, New York, 1872, vol. i., p. 279, note. Also,
_Letronne_, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, March, 1834.
[6] For Lactantius, see _Instit._, iii., 24, translation in the
Ante-Nicene Library; also, citations in _Whewell_, i., 196, and in _St.
Martin_, _Histoire de la Géographie_, pp. 216, 217. For St. Augustine's
opinion, see the _Civ. D._, xvi., 9, where this great Father of the
Church shows that the existence of the antipodes "nulla ratione
credendum est." Also, citations in _Buckle's Posthumous Works_, vol.
ii., p. 645. For a notice of the views of Cosmas in connection with
those of Lactantius, Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and others, see
_Schoell_, _Histoire de la Littérature Grecque_, vol. vii., pp. 37, _et
seq._
[7] Isaiah xl. 22.
[8] Job xxvi. 11.
[9] Genesis i. 6.
[10] Psalm cxlviii. 4.
[11] Genesis vii. 11.
[12] See _Montfaucon_, _Collectio Nova Patrum_, Paris, 1706, vol ii.,
p. 188; also pp. 298, 299. The text is illustrated with engravings
showing walls and solid vault (firmament), with the whole apparatus of
"fountains of the great deep," "windows of heaven," angels, and the
mountain behind which the sun is drawn. For an imperfect reduction of
one of them, see article _Maps_ in _Knight's Dictionary of Mechanics_,
New York, 1875. For still another theory, very droll, and thought
out on similar principles, see Mungo Park, cited in _De Morgan_,
_Paradoxes_, 309. For Cosmas's joyful summing up, see _Montfaucon_,
_Collectio Nova Patrum_, vol. ii., p. 255.
[13] Virgil of Salzburg. See _Neander's History of the Christian
Church_, Torrey's translation, vol. iii., p. 63. Since Bayle, there
has been much loose writing about Virgil's case. See _Whewell_, p.
197; but for best choice of authorities and most careful winnowing out
of conclusions, see _De Morgan_, pp. 24-26. For very full notes as to
pagan and Christian advocates of doctrine of rotundity of the earth
and of antipodes, and for extract from Zachary's letter, see _Migne_,
_Patrologia_, vol. vi., p. 426, and vol. xli., p. 487. For Peter
of Abano, or Apono, as he is often called, see _Tiraboschi_; also,
_Ginguené_, vol. ii., p. 293; also _Naudé_, _Histoire des Grands hommes
accusés de Magie_. For Cecco d'Ascoli, see _Montucla_, _Histoire des
Mathématiques_, i., 528; also, _Daunou_, _Études Historiques_, vol.
vi., p. 320. Concerning Orcagna's representation of Cecco in flames of
hell, see _Renan_, _Averroès et l'Averroisme_, Paris, 1867, p. 328.
[14] For Columbus before the Junta of Salamanca, see _Irving's
Columbus_, Murray's edition, vol. ii., pp. 405-410. _Figuier_, _Savants
du Moyen Age_, etc., vol. ii., p. 394, _et seq._ Also, _Humboldt_,
_Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent_.
[15] See _Daunou_, _Études Historiques_, vol. ii., p. 417.
[16] For effect of Magalhaens's voyages, and the reluctance to yield
to proof, see _Henri Martin_, _Histoire de France_, vol. xiv., p. 395;
_St. Martin's Histoire de la Géog._, p. 369; _Peschel_, _Geschichte des
Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, concluding chapters; and for an admirable
summary, _Draper_, _Hist. Int. Dev. of Europe_, pp. 451-453.
[17] For general statement as to supplementary proof by measurement of
degrees, and by pendulum, see _Somerville_, _Phys. Geog._, chapter i, §
6, note. Also _Humboldt_, _Cosmos_, vol. ii., p. 736, and v., pp. 16,
32. Also _Montucla_, iv., 138.
[18] _Respectability of Geocentric Theory_, _Plato's Authority for it_
etc., see _Grote's Plato_, vol. iii., p. 257. Also, _Sir G. C. Lewis_,
_Astronomy of the Ancients_, chap, iii., sec. i., for a very thoughtful
statement of Plato's view, and differing from ancient statements. For
plausible elaboration of it, see _Fromundus_, _Anti-Aristarchus_,
Antwerp, 1631. Also _Melanchthon_, _Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ_.
[19] For supposed agreement of Scripture with Ptolemaic theory, see
Fromundus, _passim_, Melanchthon, and a host of other writers.
[20] See _St. Thomas Aquinas_, _Liber de Cœlo et Mundo_, sec. xx.
[21] For _Germs of Heliocentric Theory planted long before_, etc.,
see _Sir G. C. Lewis_; also, _Draper_, _Intellectual Development
of Europe_, p. 512; and for a succinct statement of the claims of
Pythagoras, Philolaus, Aristarchus, and Martianus Capella, see _Hœfer_,
_Hist. de l'Astronomie_, 1873, p. 107, _et seq._ For germs among
thinkers of India, see _Whewell_, vol. i., p. 277. Also, _Whitney_,
_Oriental and Linguistic Studies_, New York, 1874; _Essay on the Lunar
Zodiac_, p. 345.
[22] For general statement of De Cusa's work, see _Draper_,
_Intellectual Development of Europe_, p. 512. For skillful use of
De Cusa's view in order to mitigate censure upon the Church for its
treatment of Copernicus's discovery, see an article in the _Catholic
World_ for January, 1869. For a very exact statement, in a spirit of
judicial fairness, see _Whewell_, _History of the Inductive Sciences_,
p. 275 and pp. 379, 380. In the latter, Whewell cites the exact words
of De Cusa in the _De Docta Ignorantia_, and sums up in these words:
"This train of thought might be a preparation for the reception of the
Copernican system; but it is very different from the doctrine that the
sun is the centre of the planetary system." In the previous passage,
Whewell says that De Cusa "propounded the doctrine of the motion of
the earth, more, however, as a paradox than as a reality. We cannot
consider this as any distinct anticipation of a profound and consistent
view of the truth." For Aristotle's views and their elaboration by St.
Thomas Aquinas, see the treatise _De Cœlo et Mundo_. It is curious to
see how even such a biographer of St. Thomas as Archbishop Vaughan
slurs over the angelic doctor's errors. See _Vaughan's Life and Labors
of St. Thomas of Aquin_, pp. 459, 460.
[23] For improvement of mathematical processes, see _Draper_,
_Intellectual Development of Europe_, 513. In looking at this and other
admirable summaries, one feels that Prof. Tyndall was not altogether
right in lamenting, in his farewell address at New York, that Dr.
Draper has devoted so much of his time to historical studies.
[24] Kopernik's danger at Rome. The _Catholic World_ for January,
1869, cites a recent speech of the Archbishop of Mechlin before the
University of Louvain, to the effect that Copernicus defended his
theory, at Rome, in 1500, before two thousand scholars; also, that
another professor taught the system in 1528, and was made Apostolic
Notary by Clement VIII. All this, even if the doctrines taught
were identical with those of Copernicus, as finally developed,
which idea Whewell seems utterly to disprove, avails nothing
against the overwhelming testimony that Copernicus felt himself in
danger--testimony which the after-history of the Copernican theory
renders invincible. The very title of Fromundus's book, already cited,
published within a few miles of the archbishop's own cathedral, and
sanctioned expressly by the theological Faculty of that same University
of Louvain in 1630, utterly refutes the archbishop's idea that the
Church was inclined to treat Copernicus kindly. The title is as follows:
"Anti-Aristarchus | Sive | Orbis-Terræ | Immobilis | In quo decretum
S. Congregationis S. R. E. | Cardinalium | IƆC. XVI adversus Pytha |
gorico-Copernicanos editum defenditur | Antwerpiæ MDCXXXI."
_L'Epinois_, _Galilée_, Paris, 1867, lays stress, p. 14, on the
broaching of the doctrine by De Cusa, in 1435, and by Widmanstadt, in
1533, and their kind treatment by Eugenius IV. and Clement VII., but
this is absolutely worthless in denying the papal policy afterward.
_Lange_, _Geschichte des Materialismus_, vol. i., pp. 217, 218, while
admitting that De Cusa and Widmanstadt sustained this idea and received
honors from their respective popes, shows that, when the Church gave it
serious consideration, it was condemned. There is nothing in this view
unreasonable. It would be a parallel case to that of Leo X., at first
inclined toward Luther and the others, in their "squabbles with the
begging friars," and afterward forced to oppose them. That Copernicus
felt the danger, is evident, among other things, by the expression in
the preface, "_Statim me explodendum cum tali opinione clamitant_."
[25] For dangers at Wittenberg, see _Lange_, _Geschichte des
Materialismus_, vol. i., p. 217.
[26] Osiander, in a letter to Copernicus, dated April 20, 1541, had
endeavored to reconcile him to such a procedure, and ends by saying,
"Sic enim placidiores reddideris peripatheticos et theologos quos
contradicturos metuis." See _Apologia Tychonis_ in _Kepleri Opera
Omnia_, Frisch's edition, vol. i., p. 246. Kepler holds Osiander
entirely responsible for this preface. Bertrand, in his _Fondateurs
de l'Astronomie Moderne_, gives its text, and thinks it possible
that Copernicus may have yielded "in pure condescension toward his
disciple." But this idea is utterly at variance with expressions in
Copernicus's own dedicatory letter to the pope, which follows the
preface. For a good summary of the argument, see _Figuier_, _Savants
de la Renaissance_, pp. 378, 379. See, also, citation from Gassendi's
life of Copernicus, in _Flammarion_, _Vie de Copernic_, p. 124. Mr.
John Fiske, accurate as he usually is, in his recent _Outlines of
Cosmic Philosophy_, appears to have followed Laplace, Delambre, and
Petit into the error of supposing that Copernicus, and not Osiander, is
responsible for the preface.
[27] _Figuier_, _Savants de la Renaissance_, p. 380. Also,
_Flammarion_, _Vie de Copernic_, p. 190.
[28] The "proper authorities" in this case were the "Congregation
of the Index," or cardinals having charge of the "Index Librorum
Prohibitorum." Recent desperate attempts to fasten the responsibility
on them as individuals seem ridiculous in view of the simple fact that
their work is sanctioned by the highest Church authority, and required
to be universally accepted by the Church. Three of four editions of the
"Index" in my own possession declare on their title-pages that they are
issued by order of the pontiff of the period, and each is prefaced by
a special papal bull or letter. See, especially, Index of 1664, issued
under order of Alexander VII., and that of 1761, under Benedict XIV.
Copernicus's work was prohibited in the Index "_donec corrigatur_."
Kepler said that it ought to be worded "_donec explicetur_." See
_Bertrand_, _Fondateurs de l'Astronomie Moderne_, p. 57. _De Morgan_,
pp. 57-60, gives the corrections required by the Index of 1620. Their
main aim seems to be to reduce Copernicus to the groveling level of
Osiander, making of his discovery a mere hypothesis; but occasionally
they require a virtual giving up of the whole Copernican doctrine, e.
g., "correction" insisted upon for cap. 8, p. 6. For scholarly account
of the relation of the Prohibitory and Expurgatory Indexes to each
other, see _Mendham_, _Literary Policy of the Church of Rome_.
[29] See Fromundus's book, cited above, _passim_, but especially the
heading of chapter vi., and the argument in chaps, x. and xi. For
interesting reference to one of Fromundus's arguments, showing by a
mixture of mathematics and theology, that the earth is the centre of
the universe, see _Quetelet_, _Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques et
Physiques_, Bruxelles, 1864, p. 170.
[30] See _Luther's Tischreden_, _Irmischer's Ausgabe_. Also,
_Melanchthon's Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ_. This treatise is cited under
a mistaken title by the _Catholic World_, September, 1870. The correct
title is as given above. It will be found in the _Corpus Reformatorum_,
ed. _Bretschneider_, Halle, 1846. (For the above passage, see vol.
xiii., pp. 216, 217.) Also, _Lange_, _Geschichte des Materialismus_,
vol. i., p. 217. Also, _Prowe_, _Ueber die Abhängigkeit des
Copernicus_, Thorn, 1865, p. 4. Also, note, pp. 5 and 6, where text is
given in full.
[31] For treatment of Copernican ideas by the people, see _Catholic
World_, as above.
[32] See title-page of Fromundus's work cited in note at bottom of p.
392; also, Melanchthon, _ubi supra_.
[33] See _Bartholmess_, _Vie de Jordano Bruno_, Paris, 1846, vol. i.,
pp. 121 and 212, _et seq._ Also _Berti_, _Vita di Giordano Bruno_,
Firenze, 1868, chapter xvi. Also _Whewell_, i., 294, 295. That
Whewell is somewhat hasty in attributing Bruno's punishment entirely
to the _Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante_ will be evident, in spite
of Montucla, to any one who reads the account of the persecution in
Bartholmess or Berti; and, even if Whewell be right, the _Spaccio_
would never have been written, but for Bruno's indignation at
ecclesiastical oppression. See _Tiraboschi_, vol. xi., p. 435.
[34] _Delambre_, _Histoire de l'Astronomie moderne_, discours
préliminaire, p. xiv. Also _Laplace_, _Système du Monde_, vol. i.,
p. 326, and for more careful statement, _Kepleri Opera Omnia_, edit.
Frisch, tom. ii., p. 464.
[35] _Cantu_, _Histoire Universelle_, vol. xv., p. 473.
[36] A very curious example of this sham science is seen in the
argument, frequently used at the time, that, if the earth really moved,
a stone falling from a height would fall back of the point immediately
below its point of starting. This is used by Fromundus with great
effect. It appears never to have occurred to him to test the matter by
dropping a stone from the topmast of a ship. But the most beautiful
thing of all is that Benzenburg has experimentally demonstrated just
such an aberration in falling bodies as is mathematically required by
the diurnal motion of the earth. See _Jevons_, _Principles of Science_,
vol. i., p. 453, and ii., pp. 310, 311.
[37] See Delambre as to the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter
being the turning-point with the heliocentric doctrine. As to its
effects on Bacon, see _Jevons_, _Principles of Science_, vol. ii., p.
298.
[38] For argument drawn from the candlestick and seven churches, see
Delambre.
[39] _Libri_, vol. iv., p. 211. _De Morgan_, _Paradoxes_, p. 26, for
account of Father Clavius. It is interesting to know that Clavius, in
his last years, acknowledged that "the whole system of the heavens is
broken down, and must be mended."
[40] _Cantu_, _Histoire Universelle_, vol. xv., p. 478.
[41] For Caccini's attack, see _Delambre_, _Hist. de l'Astron._, disc.
prélim., p. xxii.; also, _Libri_, _Hist. des Sciences Math._, vol. iv.,
p. 232; also, _Martin_, _Galilée_, pp. 43, 44.
[42] For Bellarmin's view, see _Quinet_, _Jesuits_, vol. ii., p. 189.
For other objectors and objections, see _Libri_, _Histoire des Sciences
Mathématiques en Italie_, vol. iv., pp. 233, 234; also, _Martin_, _Vie
de Galilée_.
[43] See Trouessart, cited in _Flammarion_, _Mondes Imaginaires et
Réels_, sixième édition, pp. 315, 316.
[44] _Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ_, pp. 220, 221.
[45] See _Ticknor_, _Hist. of Span. Literature_, vol. iii.
[46] See _Th. Martin_, _Galilée_, pp. 34, 208, and 266.
[47] See _Martin_, _Galilée_, pp. 34 and 208; also a curious note
in the earlier English editions, _Lyell_, _Principles of Geology_,
Introduction.
[48] For curious exemplification of the way in which these weapons
have been hurled, see lists of persons charged with "infidelity" and
"atheism," in _Le Dictionnaire des Athées_, Paris, An. viii. Also,
_Lecky_, _History of Rationalism_, vol. ii., p. 50. For case of
Descartes, see _Saisset_, _Descartes et ses précurseurs_, pp. 103, 110.
[49] See the original documents in _Epinois_, pp. 34-36. Martin's
translation does not seem exactly correct.
[50] See full official text in _Epinois_.
[51] See proofs of this in _Martin_. The reader should be reminded that
the archives exposed within the past few years have made the statements
of early writers untrustworthy on very many of the nicer points.
[52] See _Inchofer's Tractatus Syllepticus_, cited in Galileo's letter
to Deodati, July 28, 1634.
[53] It is not probable that torture in the ordinary sense was
administered to Galileo, though it was threatened. See _Th. Martin_,
_Vie de Galilée_, for a fair summing up of the case. For text of the
abjuration, see _Epinois_; also, _Private Life of Galileo_, Appendix.
[54] _Martin_, p. 227.
[55] _Martin_, p. 243.
[56] For the persecution of Galileo's memory, see _Th. Martin_, chaps.
ix and x. For documentary proofs, see _de l'Epinois_. For a collection
of the slanderous theories invented against Galileo, see _Martin_,
final chapters and appendix. Both these authors are devoted to the
Church, but, unlike Monsignor Marini, are too upright to resort to the
pious fraud of suppressing documents or interpolating pretended facts.
[57] See _Martin_, pp. 401, 402.
[58] See _de l'Epinois_, p. 35, where the document is given in its
original Latin.
[59] See translation of the abjuration in appendix to _Private Life of
Galileo_, London, 1870.
[60] See _Marini_, who manipulated the original documents to prove
this. Even Whewell appears to have been somewhat misled by him; but
Whewell wrote before de l'Epinois had shown all the documents, and
under the supposition that Marini was an honest man.
[61] See _Marini_.
[62] See _Epinois_ and _Th. Martin_, _passim_.
[63] See pages 136, 144, and elsewhere in _Martin_, who, much against
his will, is forced to allow this.
[64] _Martin_, pp. 146, 147.
[65] See Martin, p. 145.
[66] See note on condemnation of Kopernik.
[67] For the attempt to make the crime of Galileo a breach of
etiquette, see _Dublin Review_, as above. _Whewell_, vol. i., 393.
Citation from _Marini_: "Galileo was punished for trifling with
the authorities to which he refused to submit, and was punished
for obstinate contumacy, not heresy." The sufficient answer to all
this is, that the words of the inflexible sentence designating the
condemned books are: "Libri omnes qui affirmant telluris motum." See
_Bertrand_, p. 59. As to the idea that "Galileo was punished not
for his opinion, but for basing it on Scripture," the answer may be
found in the Roman Index of 1704, in which are noted for condemnation
"Libri omnes docentes mobilitatem terræ et inmobilitatem solis." For
the way in which, when it was found convenient in argument, Church
apologists insisted that it _was_ "the Supreme Chief of the Church,
by a pontifical decree, and not certain cardinals," who condemned
Galileo and his doctrine, see Father Lecazre's letter to Gassendi in
_Flammarion_, _Pluralité des Mondes_, p. 427, and Urban VIII.'s own
declarations as given by Martin. For the way in which, when necessary,
Church apologists asserted the very contrary of this, declaring that
"it was issued in a doctrinal decree of the Congregation of the
Index, and _not_ as the Holy Father's teaching," see _Dublin Review_,
September, 1865. And for the most astounding attempt of all, to take
the blame off the shoulders of both pope and cardinals, and place it
upon the Almighty, see the article above cited, in the _Dublin Review_,
September, 1865, p. 419. For a good summary of the various attempts,
and for replies to them in a spirit of judicial fairness, see _Th.
Martin_, _Vie de Galilée_, though there is some special pleading to
save the infallibility of pope and Church. The bibliography at the
close is very valuable.
[68] For Baronius's remark, see _De Morgan_, p. 26. Also, _Whewell_,
vol. i., p. 394.
[69] For an exceedingly striking statement, by a Roman Catholic
historian of genius, as to popular demand for persecution, and the
pressure of the lower strata, in ecclesiastical organizations,
for cruel measures, see _Balmès_, _Le Protestantisme comparé au
Catholicisme_, etc., 4th ed., Paris, 1855, vol. ii. Archbishop
Spaulding has something of the same sort in his Miscellanies.
_L'Epinois_, _Galilée_, pp. 22, _et seq._, stretches this as far as
possible, to save the reputation of the Church in the Galileo matter.
[70] _Humboldt_, _Cosmos_, London, 1851, vol. iii., p. 21. Also,
_Lange_, _Geschichte des Materialismus_, vol. i., p. 222, where the
letters of Descartes are given, showing his despair, and the giving up
of his best thoughts and works to preserve peace with the Church. Also,
_Saisset_, _Descartes et ses précurseurs_, pp. 100, _et seq._ Also,
_Jolly_, _Hist, du Mouvement Intellectuel au XVI^e Siècle_, vol. i., p.
390
[71] _Libri_, pp. 149, _et seq._
[72] Fromundus, speaking of Kepler's explanation, says: "Vix teneo
ebullientem risum." It is almost equal to the _New York Church
Journal_, speaking of John Stuart Mill as "that small sciolist," and of
the preface to Dr. Draper's recent work as "chippering." How a journal
generally so fair in its treatment of such subjects can condescend
to use such weapons, is one of the wonders of modern journalism. For
Protestant persecution of Kepler, see vol. i., p. 392. Among other
things, Kepler's mother was declared a witch, and this was followed by
a reminder of the Scriptural injunction, "Ye shall not suffer a witch
to live."
[73] For Cassini's position, see _Henri Martin_, _Hist. de France_,
vol. xiii., p. 175.
[74] _Daunou_, _Études Historiques_, vol. ii., p. 439.
[75] Bossuet, see _Bertrand_, p. 41.
[76] For Hutchinson, see _Lyell_, _Principles of Geology_, Introduction.
[77] Boscovich. This was in 1746, but in 1785 Boscovich seemed to feel
his position in view of history, and apologized abjectly. _Bertrand_,
pp. 60, 61. See also Whewell's notice of Le Sueur and Jacquier's
introduction to their edition of _Newton's Principia_. For a clear
statement of Bradley's exquisite demonstration of the Copernican
theory by reasonings upon the rapidity of light, etc., and Foucault's
exhibition of the rotation of the earth by the pendulum experiment,
see _Hoefer_, _Hist. de l'Astronomie_, pp. 492, _et seq._ For the most
recent proofs of the Copernican theory, by discoveries of Bunsen,
Bischoff, Benzenburg, and others, see _Jevons_, _Principles of Science_.
[78] See note in introduction to _Lyell's Principles of Geology_; also,
_Buckle, Hist. of Civ. in England_, vol. i., chap. i.
[79] _Bertrand_, _Fondateurs de l'Astron. Mod._, p. 61. _Flammarion_,
_Vie de Copernic_, chap. ix. As to the time when the decree of
condemnation was repealed, various authorities differ. Artaud, p.
307, cited in an apologetic article in _Dublin Review_, September,
1865, says that Galileo's famous dialogue was published in 1744, at
Padua, entire, and with the usual approbations. The same article also
declares that in 1818 the ecclesiastical decrees were repealed by
Pius VII., in full Consistory. Whewell says that Galileo's writings,
after some opposition, were expunged from the _Index Expurgatorius_ in
1818. Cantu, an authority rather favorable to the Church, says that
Copernicus's work remained on the _Index_ as late as 1835. _Cantu_,
_Histoire Universelle_, vol. xv., p. 483; and with this Th. Martin, not
less favorable to the Church, but exceedingly careful as to the facts,
agrees.
[80] See _Weld_, _History of the Royal Society_, vol. ii., p. 56, for
the facts and the admirable letter of Priestley upon this rejection.
[81] _Bruhns_ and _Lassell_, _Life of Humboldt_, London, 1873, vol.
ii., p. 411.
[82] For the very amusing details of the English attempt, and of the
way in which it was met, see _De Morgan_, _Paradoxes_, p. 42. For
Pastor Knak and his associates, see _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1868.
[83] For a striking account, gathered from eye-witnesses of this
frightful scene at the execution of Bruno, see letter of Scioppius in
appendix to vol. iv. of _Libri_, _Hist. des Mathématiques_.
[84] As a pendant to this ejaculation of Kepler may be cited those
wondrous words of Linnæus: "Deum omnipotentem a tergo transeuntem vidi
et obstupui."
[85] For papal bull representing the earth as a flat disk, see
_Daunou_, _Études Historiques_, vol. ii., p. 421.
[86] For Bruno's conjecture (in 1591), see _Jevons_, vol. ii., p. 299.
For Kant's part in the nebular hypothesis, see _Lange_, _Geschichte
des Materialismus_, vol. i., p. 266. For value of Plateau's beautiful
experiment very cautiously estimated, see _W. Stanley Jevons_,
_Principles of Science_, London, 1874, vol. ii., p. 36. Also, _Elisée
Réclus_, _The Earth_, translated by Woodward, vol. i., pp. 14-18, for
an estimate still more careful. For a general account of discoveries
of nature of nebulæ by spectroscope, see _Draper_, _Conflict between
Religion and Science_. For a careful discussion regarding the spectra
of solid, liquid, and gaseous bodies, see _Schellen_, _Spectrum
Analysis_, pp. 100, _et seq._ For a very thorough discussion of the
bearings of discoveries made by spectrum analysis upon the nebular
hypothesis, ibid., pp. 532-537. For a presentation of the difficulties
yet unsolved, see article by Plummer, in London _Popular Science
Review_ for January, 1875. For excellent short summary of recent
observations and thought on this subject, see _T. Sterry Hunt_,
_Address at the Priestley Centennial_, pp. 7, 8. For an interesting
modification of this hypothesis, see Proctor's recent writings.
[87] For a very careful discussion of Albert's strength in
investigation and weakness in yielding to scholastic authority, see
_Kopp_, _Ansichten über die Aufgabe der Chemie von Geber bis Stahl_,
_Braunschweig_, 1875, pp. 64, _et seq._ For a very extended and
enthusiastic biographical sketch, see _Pouchet_. For comparison of
his work with that of Thomas Aquinas, see _Milman_, _History of Latin
Christians_, vol. vi., 461. _Il était aussi très-habile dans les arts
mécaniques, ce que le fit soupçonner d'être sorcier._ _Sprengel_,
_Histoire de la Médecine_, vol. ii., p. 389.
[88] For the charge of magic against scholars and others, see _Naudé_,
_Apologie pour les grands hommes accusés de Magie_, _passim_. Also,
_Maury_, _Hist. de la Magie_, troisième édit., pp. 214, 215. Also,
_Cuvier_, _Hist. des Sciences Naturelles_, vol. i., p. 396.
[89] See _Études sur Vincent de Beauvais par l'Abbé Bourgeat_, chaps.
xii., xiii., xiv. Also, _Pouchet_, _Histoire des Sciences Naturelles au
Moyen Age_, Paris, 1853, pp. 470, _et seq._
[90] For work of Aquinas, see _St. Thomas Aquinas_, _Liber de Cœlo et
Mundo_, section xx. Also, _Life and Labors of St. Thomas of Aquin_,
by _Archbishop Vaughan_, pp. 459, _et seq._ For his labors in natural
science, see _Hoefer_, _Histoire de la Chimie_, Paris, 1843, vol.
i., p. 381. For theological views of science in middle ages, and
rejoicing thereat, see _Pouchet_, _Hist. des Sci. Nat. au Moyen Age_,
_ubi supra_. Pouchet says: "En général au milieu du moyen âge les
sciences sont essentiellement chrétiennes, leur but est tout-à-fait
religieux, et elles semblent beaucoup moins s'inquiéter de l'avancement
intellectuel de l'homme que de son salut eternel." Pouchet calls this
"conciliation" into a "harmonieux ensemble" "la plus glorieuse des
conquêtes intellectuelles du moyen âge." Pouchet belongs to Rouen, and
the shadow of the Rouen Cathedral seems thrown over all his history.
See, also, _L'Abbé Rohrbacher_, _Hist. de l'Église Catholique_,
Paris, 1858, vol. xviii., pp. 421, _et seq._ The abbé dilates upon
the fact that "the Church organizes the agreement of all the sciences
by the labors of St. Thomas of Aquin and his contemporaries." For
the theological character of science in middle ages, recognized
by a Protestant philosophic historian, see the well-known passage
in _Guizot_, _History of Civilization in Europe_; and by a noted
Protestant ecclesiastic, see _Bishop Hampden's Life of Thomas Aquinas_,
chaps. xxxvi., xxxvii. See, also, _Hallam_, _Middle Ages_, chap. ix.
For dealings of Pope John XXII., and kings of France and England, and
republic of Venice, see _Figuier_, _L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes_, pp.
140, 141, where, in a note, the text of the bull _Spondent Pariter_ is
given.
[91] The _Novum Organon_, translated by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, Oxford,
1855, chap. lxv.
[92] _Novum Organon_, chap. lxxxix.
[93] _Novum Organon_, chap. xciii.
[94] _Bacon, The Advancement of Learning_, edited by W. Aldis Wright,
London, 1873, pp. 47, 48.
[95] For a very contemptuous statement of Lord Bacon's claim to his
position as a philosopher, see _Lange_, _Geschichte des Materialismus_,
Leipsic, 1874, vol. i., p. 219. For a more just statement, see
_Brewster_, _Life of Sir Isaac Newton_. See, also, _Jevons_,
_Principles of Science_, London, 1874, vol. ii., p. 298.
[96] Kopp, in his _Ansichten_, pushes criticism even to some skepticism
as to Roger Bacon being the _discoverer_ of many of the things
generally attributed to him; but, after all deductions are carefully
made, enough remains to make Bacon the greatest benefactor to humanity
during the middle ages.
[97] For an account of Bacon's treatise, _De Nullitate Magiæ_, see
_Hoefer_.
[98] _Kopp_, _Geschichte der Chemie_, Braunschweig, 1843, vol. i.,
p. 63; and for a somewhat reactionary discussion of Bacon's relation
to the progress of chemistry, see a recent work by the same author,
_Ansichten über die Aufgabe der Chemie_, Braunschweig, 1874, pp. 85,
_et seq._ Also, for an excellent summary, see _Hoefer_, _Hist. de la
Chimie_, vol. i., pp. 368, _et seq._ For summaries of his work in
other fields, see _Whewell_, vol. i., pp. 367, 368. _Draper_, p. 438.
_Saisset_, _Descartes et ses Précurseurs_, deuxième édition, pp. 397,
_et seq._ _Nourrisson_, _Progrès de la pensée humaine_, pp. 271, 272.
_Sprengel_, _Histoire de la Médecine_, Paris, 1865, vol. ii., p. 397.
_Cuvier_, _Histoire des Sciences Naturelles_, vol. i., p. 417. As to
Bacon's orthodoxy, see _Saisset_, pp. 53, 55. For special examination
of causes of Bacon's condemnation, see _Waddington_, cited by Saisset,
p. 14. On Bacon as a sorcerer, see Featherstonaugh's article in _North
American Review_. For a good example of the danger of denying full
power of Satan, even in much more recent times, and in a Protestant
country, see account of treatment of _Bekker's Monde Enchanté_ by the
theologians of Holland, in _Nisard_, _Histoire des Livres Populaires_,
vol. i., pp. 172, 173.
[99] _Henri Martin_, _Hist. de France_, vol. iv., p. 283.
[100] On Bacon as a "Mahometan," see _Saisset_, p. 17.
[101] For proofs that the world is steadily working toward great
discoveries as to the cause and prevention of zymotic diseases and
of their propagation, see _Beale's Disease Germs_, _Baldwin Latham's
Sanitary Engineering_, _Michel Lévy_, _Traité d'Hygiène Publique et
Privée_, Paris, 1869. And for very thorough summaries, see President
Barnard's paper read before Sanitary Congress in New York, 1874, and
_Dr. J. C. Dalton's Anniversary Discourse on the Origin and Propagation
of Disease_, New York, 1874.
[102] Antonio de Dominis, see _Montucla_, _Hist. des Mathématiques_,
vol. i., p. 705. _Humboldt_, _Cosmos._ _Libri_, vol. iv., pp. 145, _et
seq._
[103] For Porta, see _Hoefer_, _Hist. de la Chemie_, vol. ii., pp.
102-106. Also, _Kopp_. Also, _Sprengel_, _Hist. de la Médecine_, iii.,
p. 239. Also, _Musset-Parthay_.
[104] _Henri Martin_, _Histoire de France_, vol. xii., pp. 14, 15.
[105] _Napier_, _Florentine History_, vol. v., p. 485. _Tiraboschi_,
_Storia della Literatura_. _Henri Martin_, _Histoire de France_.
_Jevons Principles of Science_, vol. ii., pp. 36-40. For value attached
to Borelli's investigations by Newton and Huyghens, see _Brewster's_
_Life of Sir Isaac Newton_, London, 1875, pp. 128, 129. Libri, in his
_Essai sur Galilée_, p. 37, says that Oliva was summoned to Rome, and
so tortured by the Inquisition that, to escape further cruelty, he
ended his life by throwing himself from a window.
[106] For this syllogism, see _Figuier_, _L'Alchimie et les
Alchimistes_, pp. 106, 107. For careful appreciation of Becher's
position in the history of chemistry, see _Kopp_, _Ansichten über die
Aufgabe der Chemie_, etc., _von Geber bis Stahl_, Braunschweig, 1875,
pp. 201, _et seq._
[107] For Tertullian's views, see the _De Anima_, chap. x. For views of
St. Augustine, see the _De Civ. Dei_, book xxii., chap. 24.
[108] For Boniface VIII. and his interdiction of dissections, see
_Buckle's Posthumous Works_, vol. ii., p. 567. For injurious effects of
this ecclesiastical hostility to anatomy upon the development of art,
see _Woltman_, _Holbein and His Time_, pp. 266, 267. For an excellent
statement of the true relation of the medical profession to religious
questions, see _Prof. Acland_, _General Relations of Medicine in Modern
Times_, Oxford, 1868. For thoughtful and witty remarks on the struggle
at a recent period, see _Maury_, _L'Ancienne Académie des Sciences_,
Paris, 1864, p. 148. Maury says: "La faculté n'aimait pas à avoir
affaire aux théologiens qui procèdent par anathèmes beaucoup plus que
par analyses."
[109] For uncritical praise of Arnold de Villa Nova, see _Figuier_,
_L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes_, 3ème edit. For undue blame, see
_Hoefer_, _Histoire de la Chimie_, Paris, 1842, vol. i., p. 386. For
a more broad and fair judgment, see _Kopp_, _Geschichte der Chemie_,
Braunschweig, 1843, vol. i., p. 66, and vol. ii., p. 185. Also,
_Pouchet_, _Histoire des Sciences Naturelles au Moyen Age_, Paris,
1853, pp. 52, _et seq._ Also, _Draper_, _Int. Dev. of Europe_, p. 421.
_Whewell_, _Hist. of the Induct. Sciences_, vol. i., p. 235; vol.
viii., p. 36. _Frédault_, _Hist. de la Médecine_, vol. i., p. 204.
[110] _Renan_, _Averroès et l'Averroisme_, Paris, 1867, pp. 327, 333,
335. For a perfectly just statement of the only circumstances which can
justify the charge of "atheism," see Dr. Deems's article in POPULAR
SCIENCE MONTHLY, February, 1876.
[111] _Whewell_, vol. iii., p. 328, says, rather loosely, that Mundinus
"dissected at Bologna in 1315." How different his idea of dissection
was from that introduced by Vesalius, may be seen by Cuvier's careful
statement that the entire number of dissections by Mundinus was three.
The usual statement is that it was two. See _Cuvier_, _Hist. des Sci.
Nat._, tome iii., p. 7; also, _Sprengel_, _Frédault_, and _Hallam_;
also, _Littré_, _Médecine et Médecins_, chap. on anatomy. For a very
full statement of the agency of Mundinus in the progress of anatomy,
see _Portal_, _Hist. de l'Anatomie et de la Chirurgérie_, vol. i., pp.
209-216.
[112] For a similar charge against anatomical investigations at a
much earlier period, see _Littré_, _Médecine et Médecins_, chapter on
anatomy.
[113] The original painting of Vesalius at work in his cell, by Hamann,
is now at Cornell University.
[114] For a curious example of weapons drawn from Galen and used
against Vesalius, see _Lewes_, _Life of Goethe_, p. 343, note. For
proofs that I have not over-estimated Vesalius, see _Portal_, _ubi
supra_. Portal speaks of him as "_le génie le plus droit qu'eut
l'Europe_;" and again, "_Vesale me paraît un des plus grands hommes qui
ait existé_."
[115] See _Sprengel_, _Histoire de la Médecine_, vol. vi., pp. 39-80.
For the opposition of the Paris Faculty of Theology to inoculation, see
the _Journal de Barbier_, vol. vi., p. 294. For bitter denunciations of
inoculation by the English clergy, and for the noble stand against them
by Maddox, see _Baron_, _Life of Jenner_, vol. i., pp. 231, 232, and
vol. ii., pp. 39, 40. For the strenuous opposition of the same clergy,
see _Weld_, _History of the Royal Society_, vol. i., p. 464, note.
Also, for the comical side of this matter, see _Nichols's Literary
Illustrations_, vol. v., p. 800.
[116] For the opposition of conscientious men in England to
vaccination, see _Duns_, _Life of Sir James Y. Simpson, Bart._, London,
1873, pp. 248, 249; also, _Baron_, _Life of Jenner_, _ubi supra_, and
vol. ii., p. 43; also, _Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson_, vol. ii.
[117] See _Duns_, _Life of Sir J. Y. Simpson_, pp. 215-222.
[118] _Ibid._, pp. 256-259.
[119] _Ibid._, p. 260; also, _Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson_, _ubi supra_.
[120] _Morley_, _Life of Palissy the Potter_, vol. ii., pp. 315, _et
seq._
[121] _Audiat_, _Vie de Palissy_, p. 412. _Cantu_, _Hist. Universelle_,
vol. xv., p. 492.
[122] For ancient beliefs regarding giants, see _Leopardi_, _Saggio_
_sopra gli errori popolari_, etc., chapter xv. For accounts of the
views of Mazurier and Scheuchzer, see _Büchner_, _Man in Past,
Present, and Future_, English translation, pp. 235, 236. For Increase
Mather's views, see _Philosophical Transactions_, xxiv., 85. For
similar fossils sent from New York to the Royal Society as remains of
giants, see _Weld_, _History of the Royal Society_, vol. i., p. 421.
For Father Torrubia and his _Gigantologia Española_, see _D'Archiac_,
_Introduction à l'Étude de la Paléontologie stratiographique_, Paris,
1864, p. 202. For admirable summaries, see _Lyell_, _Principles of
Geology_, London, 1867; _D'Archiac_, _Géologie et Paléontologie_,
Paris, 1866; _Pictet_, _Traité de Paléontologie_, Paris, 1853;
_Vezian_, _Prodrome de la Géologie_, Paris, 1863; _Haeckel_, _History
of Creation_, New York, 1876, chapter iii.
[123] See _Voltaire_, _Dissertation sur les Changements arrivés dans
notre Globe_; also, _Voltaire_, _Les Singularités de la Nature_,
chapter xii., near close of vol. v. of the Didot edition of 1843; also,
_Jevons_, _Principles of Science_, vol. ii., p. 328.
[124] For a candid summary of the proofs from geology, astronomy,
and zoölogy, that the Noachian Deluge was not universally or widely
extended, see _McClintock and Strong_, _Cyclopædia of Biblical Theology
and Ecclesiastical Literature_, article _Deluge_. For general history,
see _Lyell_, _D'Archiac_, and _Vezian_. For special cases showing
bitterness of the conflict, see the _Rev. Mr. Davis's Life of Rev. Dr.
Pye Smith_, _passim_.
[125] For comparison between conduct of Italian and English
ecclesiastics, as regards geology, see _Lyell_, _Principles of
Geology_, tenth English ed., vol i., p. 33. For a philosophical
statement of reasons why the struggle was more bitter, and the attempt
at deceptive compromises more absurd in England than elsewhere, see
_Maury_, _L'Ancienne Académie des Sciences_, second edition, p. 152.
[126] For these citations, see _Lyell_, _Principles of Geology_,
introduction.
[127] See _Pye Smith, D. D._, _Geology and Scripture_, pp. 156, 157,
168, 169.
[128] _Wiseman_, _Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science and
Revealed Religion_, first American edition, New York, 1837.
[129] See _Silliman's Journal_, vol. xxx., p. 114.
[130] Prof. Goldwin Smith informs me that the papers of Sir Robert
Peel, yet unpublished, contain very curious specimens of these epistles.
[131] See _Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville_, Boston, 1874,
pp. 139 and 375. Compare with any statement of his religious views that
Dean Cockburn was able to make, the following from Mrs. Somerville:
"Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the Deity as these
purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which
have been, by slow degrees, vouchsafed to man--and are still granted
in these latter times, by the differential calculus, now superseded by
the higher algebra--all of which must have existed in that sublimely
omniscient mind from eternity."--See _Personal Recollections_, pp. 140,
141.
[132] For another great error of the Church in political economy,
leading to injury to commerce, see _Lindsay_, _History of
Merchant-Shipping_, London, 1874, vol. ii.
[133] See _Murray_, _History of Usury_, Philadelphia, 1866, p.
25; also, _Coquelin and Guillaumin_, _Dictionnaire de l'Économie
Politique_, articles _Intérêt_ and _Usure_; also, _Lecky_, _History of
Rationalism in Europe_, vol. ii., chapter vi.; also, _Jeremy Bentham's
Defence of Usury_, Letter X.; also, _Mr. D. S. Dickinson's Speech in
the Senate of New York_, vol. i. of his collected writings. Of all the
summaries, Lecky's is by far the best.
[134] The texts cited most frequently were Leviticus xxv. 36, 37;
Deuteronomy xxiii. 19; Psalms xv. 5; Ezekiel xviii. 8 and 17; St. Luke
vi. 35. See _Lecky_; also, _Dickinson's Speech_, as above.
[135] See _Dictionnaire de l'Économie Politique_, articles _Intérêt_
and _Usure_ for these citations. For some doubtful reservations made by
St. Augustine, see _Murray_.
[136] See citation of the Latin text in _Lecky_.
[137] For this moral effect, see _Montesquieu_, _Esprit des Lois_, lib.
xxi., chap. xx.
[138] See citation in _Lecky_.
[139] See _Coquelin and Guillaumin_, article _Intérêt_.
[140] See _Craik's History of British Commerce_, chapter vi. The
statute cited is _3 Henry VII._, chapter vi.
[141] See _Lecky_.
[142] See citation from the _Tischreden_, in _Guillaumin and Coquelin_,
article _Intérêt_.
[143] See _Craik's History of British Commerce_, chapter vi.
[144] For citation, as above, see _Lecky_. For further account, see
_Œuvres de Bossuet_, edition of 1845, vol. xi., p. 330.
[145] See citation from _Concina_ in _Lecky_; also, acquiescence in
this interpretation by _Mr. Dickinson_, in _Speech in Senate of New
York_, above quoted.
[146] See _Réplique des douze Docteurs_, etc., cited by Guillaumin and
Coquelin.
[147] _Burton_, _History of Scotland_, vol. viii., p. 511. See, also,
Mause Headrigg's views in Scott's _Old Mortality_, chapter vii. For the
case of a person debarred from the communion for "raising the devil's
wind" with a winnowing-machine, see _Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson_, vol.
ii. Those doubting the authority or motives of Simpson may be reminded
that he was, to the day of his death, one of the strictest adherents of
Scotch orthodoxy.
[148] See _Journal of Sir I. Brunel_, for May 20, 1827, in _Life of I.
K. Brunel_, p. 30.
[149] This scene will be recalled, easily, by many leading ethnologists
in America, and especially by Mr. E. G. Squier, formerly minister of
the United States to Central America.
[150] The meteorological battle is hardly fought out yet. Many
excellent men seem still to entertain views almost identical with
those of over two thousand years ago, depicted in _The Clouds_ of
Aristophanes.
[151] These texts are Ezekiel v. 5 and xxxviii. 12. The progress of
geographical knowledge, evidently, caused them to be softened down
somewhat in our King James's version; but the first of them reads,
in the Vulgate, "Ista est Hierusalem, in medio gentium posui eam et
in circuitu ejus terras;" and the second reads in the Vulgate "in
medio terræ," and in the Septuagint _ἑπι τὁν ὁμφαλὁν τἡς γἡς_. That
the literal centre of the earth was meant, see proof in St. Jerome,
Commentar. in Ezekiel, lib. ii., and for general proof, see Leopardi,
"Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi," pp. 207, 208. For an
idea of orthodox geography in the middle ages, see _Wright's Essay on
Archæology_, vol. ii., chapter "On the Map of the World in Hereford
Cathedral." For an example of the depth to which this idea of Jerusalem
as the centre had entered into the thinking of the great poet of the
middle ages, see _Dante_, _Inferno_, _Canto xxxiv._:
"E se' or sotto l'emisperio giunto,
Ch' è opposito a quel, che la gran secca
Coverchia, e sotto 'l cui colmo consunto
Fu l'uom che nacque e visse senza pecca."
[152] See _Michaelis_, _Commentaries on the Laws of Moses_, 1874,
vol. ii., p. 3. The writer of the present article himself witnessed
the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer the questions
of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse, N. Y., and this
reluctance was based upon the reasons assigned in II. Samuel chapter
xxiv. 1, and I. Chronicles, chapter xxi. 1, for the numbering of the
children of Israel.
[153] See _De Morgan_, _Paradoxes_, pp. 214-220.
[154] For _Dupanloup_, _Lettre à un Cardinal_, see the _Revue de
Thérapeutique_, 1868, p. 221.
[155] For general account of the Vulpian and See matter, see _Revue des
Deux Mondes_, 31 Mai, 1868. _Chronique de la Quinzaine_, pp. 763-765.
As to the result on popular thought, may be noted the following comment
on the affair by the _Revue_, which is as free as possible from
anything like rabid anti-ecclesiastical ideas: "_Elle a été vraiment
curieuse, instructive, assez triste et même un peu amusante._" For
Wurtz's statement, see _Revue de Thérapeutique_ for 1868, p. 303.
[156] _De Morgan_, _Paradoxes_, pp. 421-428; also, _Daubeny's Essays_.
[157] See the Berlin newspapers for the summer of 1868, especially
_Kladderadatsch_.
[158] In the _Church Journal_, New York, May 28, 1874, a
reviewer, praising Rev. Dr. Hodge's book against Darwinism, says:
"Darwinism--whether Darwin knows it or not; whether the clergy, who
are half prepared to accept it in blind fright as 'science,' know it
or not--is a denial of every article of the Christian faith. It is
supreme folly to talk as some do about accommodating Christianity to
Darwinism. Either those who so talk do not understand Christianity,
or they do not understand Darwinism. If we have all, men and monkeys,
women and baboons, oysters and eagles, all 'developed' from an original
monad and germ, then St. Paul's grand deliverance--'All flesh is not
the same flesh. There is one kind of flesh of men, another of beasts,
another of fishes, and another of birds. There are bodies celestial and
bodies terrestrial'--may be still very grand in our funeral-service,
but very untrue to fact." This is the same dangerous line of argument
which Caccini indulged in in Galileo's time. Dangerous, for suppose
"Darwinism" _be proved true_! For a soothing potion by a skillful
hand, see _Whewell_ on the consistency of evolution doctrines with
teleological ideas; also, _Rev. Samuel Houghton, F. R. S._, _Principles
of Animal Mechanics_, London, 1873, preface, and page 156, for some
interesting ideas on teleological evolution.
[159] For some excellent remarks on the futility of such attempts and
outcries, see the _Rev. Dr. Deems_, in POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY for
February, 1876. To all who are inclined to draw scientific conclusions
from Biblical texts, may be commended the advice of a good old German
divine of the Reformation period: "Seeking the milk of the Word, do not
press the teats of Holy Writ too hard."
[160] In an eloquent sermon, preached in March, 1874, Bishop Cummins
said, in substance: "The Church has no fear of Science; the persecution
of Galileo was entirely unwarrantable; but Christians should resist to
the last Darwinism; for that is evidently contrary to Scripture." The
bishop forgets that Galileo's doctrine seemed to such colossal minds as
Bellarmin, and Luther, and Bossuet, "evidently contrary to Scripture."
Far more logical, modest, sagacious, and full of faith, is the attitude
taken by his former associate, Dr. John Cotton Smith: "For geology,
physiology, and historical criticism have threatened or destroyed only
particular forms of religious opinion, while they have set the spirit
of religion free to keep pace with the larger generalizations of modern
knowledge."--_Picton_, _The Mystery of Matter_, London, 1873, p. 72.
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_The Formation of Vegetable Mould,_
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