A HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM,
by ANDREW DICKSON WHITE.
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A HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM
BY
ANDREW DICKSON WHITE
LL.D. (YALE), L.H.D. (COLUMBIA), PH.DR. (JENA)
LATE PRESIDENT AND PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY
TWO VOLUMES COMBINED
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1898
COPYRIGHT, 1896
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
To the Memory of
EZRA CORNELL
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK.
Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we
Breathe cheaply in the common air.--LOWELL
Dicipulus est prioris posterior dies.--PUBLIUS SYRUS
Truth is the daughter of Time.--BACON
The Truth shall make you free.--ST. JOHN, viii, 32.
INTRODUCTION
MY book is ready for the printer, and as I begin this
preface my eye lights upon the crowd of Russian peasants
at work on the Neva under my windows. With pick and
shovel they are letting the rays of the April sun into the
great ice barrier which binds together the modern quays
and the old granite fortress where lie the bones of the
Romanoff Czars.
This barrier is already weakened; it is widely decayed,
in many places thin, and everywhere treacherous; but it is,
as a whole, so broad, so crystallized about old boulders, so
imbedded in shallows, so wedged into crannies on either
shore, that it is a great danger. The waters from thousands
of swollen streamlets above are pressing behind it;
wreckage and refuse are piling up against it; every one
knows that it must yield. But there is danger that it may
resist the pressure too long and break suddenly, wrenching
even the granite quays from their foundations, bringing
desolation to a vast population, and leaving, after the
subsidence of the flood, a widespread residue of slime, a
fertile breeding-bed for the germs of disease.
But the patient _mujiks_ are doing the right thing. The
barrier, exposed more and more to the warmth of spring
by the scores of channels they are making, will break away
gradually, and the river will flow on beneficent and beautiful.
My work in this book is like that of the Russian _mujik_
on the Neva. I simply try to aid in letting the light of
historical truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought
which attaches the modern world to mediaeval conceptions
of Christianity, and which still lingers among us--a most
serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the
whole normal evolution of society.
For behind this barrier also the flood is rapidly rising
--the flood of increased knowledge and new thought; and
this barrier also, though honeycombed and in many places
thin, creates a danger--danger of a sudden breaking away,
distressing and calamitous, sweeping before it not only
out worn creeds and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles
and ideals, and even wrenching out most precious religious
and moral foundations of the whole social and political fabric.
My hope is to aid--even if it be but a little--in the
gradual and healthful dissolving away of this mass of
unreason, that the stream of "religion pure and undefiled"
may flow on broad and clear, a blessing to humanity.
And now a few words regarding the evolution of this book.
It is something over a quarter of a century since I
labored with Ezra Cornell in founding the university which
bears his honored name.
Our purpose was to establish in the State of New York
an institution for advanced instruction and research, i
which science, pure and applied, should have an equal plac
with literature; in which the study of literature, ancient
and modern, should be emancipated as much as possible
from pedantry; and which should be free from variou
useless trammels and vicious methods which at that period
hampered many, if not most, of the American universities
and colleges
We had especially determined that the institution shoul
be under the control of no political party and of no single
religious sect, and with Mr. Cornell's approval I embodied
stringent provisions to this effect in the charter
It had certainly never entered into the mind of eithe
of us that in all this we were doing anything irreligious or
unchristian. Mr. Cornell was reared a member of the Societ
of Friends; he had from his fortune liberally aided
every form of Christian effort which he found going on about
him, and among the permanent trustees of the public librar
which he had already founded, he had named all the clergymen
of the town--Catholic and Protestant. As for myself,
I had been bred a churchman, had recently been elected a
trustee of one church college, and a professor in another;
those nearest and dearest to me were devoutly religious
and, if I may be allowed to speak of a matter so personal t
my self, my most cherished friendships were among deepl
religious men and women, and my greatest sources of enjoyment
were ecclesiastical architecture, religious music, an
the more devout forms of poetry. So, far from wishing to
injure Christianity, we both hoped to promote it; but we
did not confound religion with sectarianism, and we saw in
the sectarian character of American colleges and universitie
as a whole, a reason for the poverty of the advanced instruction
then given in so many of them.
It required no great acuteness to see that a system of
control which, in selecting a Professor of Mathematics or
Language or Rhetoric or Physics or Chemistry, asked firs
and above all to what sect or even to what wing or branch of
a sect he belonged, could hardly do much to advance th
moral, religious, or intellectual development of mankind.
The reasons for the new foundation seemed to us, then,
so cogent that we expected the co-operation of all good
citizens, and anticipated no opposition from any source.
As I look back across the intervening years, I know not
whether to be more astonished or amused at our simplicity
Opposition began at once. In the State Legislature i
confronted us at every turn, and it was soon in full blaze
throughout the State--from the good Protestant bishop
who proclaimed that all professors should be in holy orders
since to the Church alone was given the command, "Go,
teach all nations," to the zealous priest who published a
charge that Goldwin Smith--a profoundly Christian scholar
--had come to Cornell in order to inculcate the "infidelity
of the _Westminster Review_"; and from the eminent divine
who went from city to city, denouncing the "atheistic and
pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the
perfervid minister who informed a denominational synod
that Agassiz, the last great opponent of Darwin, and a devou
theist, was "preaching Darwinism and atheism" in
the new institution.
As the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions wer
introduced into various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored
clergymen solemnly warned their flocks first against the
"atheism," then against the "infidelity," and finally against
the "indifferentism" of the university, as devoted pastors
endeavoured to dissuade young men from matriculation, I
took the defensive, and, in answer to various attacks fro
pulpits and religious newspapers, attempted to allay the
fears of the public. "Sweet reasonableness" was fully tried
There was established and endowed in the university perhaps
the most effective Christian pulpit, and one of the most
vigorous branches of the Christian Association, then in the
United States; but all this did nothing to ward off the attack.
The clause in the charter of the university forbidding
it to give predominance to the doctrines of any sect
and above all the fact that much prominence was given to
instruction in various branches of science, seemed to prevent
all compromise, and it soon became clear that to stand on
the defensive only made matters worse. Then it was that
there was borne in upon me a sense of the real difficulty-
the antagonism between the theological and scientific view
of the universe and of education in relation to it; therefore
it was that, having been invited to deliver a lecture in
the great hall of the Cooper Institute at New York, I too
as my subject _The Battlefields of Science_, maintaining this
thesis which follows:
_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 science, and invariably; and, on the other hand
all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerou
to religion some of its stages may have seemed for the tim
to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good both of religion
and science._
The lecture was next day published in the _New York
Tribune_ at the request of Horace Greeley, its editor,
who was also one of the Cornell University trustees. As
a result of this widespread publication and of sundry attacks
which it elicited, I was asked to maintain my thesis
before various university associations and literary clubs;
and I shall always remember with gratitude that among
those who stood by me and presented me on the lectur
platform with words of approval and cheer was my revered
instructor, the Rev. Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, at
that time President of Yale College
My lecture grew--first into a couple of magazine articles
and then into a little book called _The Warfare of Science_,
for which, when republished in England, Prof. John Tyndall
wrote a preface.
Sundry translations of this little book were published,
but the most curious thing in its history is the fact that a
very friendly introduction to the Swedish translation was
written by a Lutheran bishop.
Meanwhile Prof. John W. Draper published his book on
_The Conflict between Science and Religion_, a work of great
ability, which, as I then thought, ended the matter, so fa
as my giving it further attention was concerned.
But two things led me to keep on developing my own
work in this field: First, I had become deeply intereste
in it, and could not refrain from directing my observation
and study to it; secondly, much as I admired Draper'
treatment of the questions involved, his point of view and
mode of looking at history were different from mine.
He regarded the struggle as one between Science and
Religion. I believed then, and am convinced now, that it
was a struggle between Science and Dogmatic Theology
More and more I saw that it was the conflict betwee
two epochs in the evolution of human thought--the
theological and the scientific.
So I kept on, and from time to time published _New
Chapters in the Warfare of Science_ as magazine articles in
_The Popular Science Monthly_. This was done under many
difficulties. For twenty years, as President of Cornel
University and Professor of History in that institution, I was
immersed in the work of its early development. Besides this,
I could not hold myself entirely aloof from public affairs,
and was three times sent by the Government of the United
States to do public duty abroad: first as a commissione
to Santo Domingo, in 1870; afterward as minister to Germany
in 1879; finally, as minister to Russia, in 1892; and
was also called upon by the State of New York to do
considerable labor in connection with international exhibition
at Philadelphia and at Paris. I was also obliged from time
to time to throw off by travel the effects of overwork.
The variety of residence and occupation arising from
these causes may perhaps explain some peculiarities in this
book which might otherwise puzzle my reader.
While these journeyings have enabled me to collect materials
over a very wide range--in the New World, from
Quebec to Santo Domingo and from Boston to Mexico,
San Francisco, and Seattle, and in the Old World from
Trondhjem to Cairo and from St. Petersburg to Palermo--
they have often obliged me to write under circumstances
not very favorable: sometimes on an Atlantic steamer,
sometimes on a Nile boat, and not only in my own library
at Cornell, but in those of Berlin, Helsingfors, Munich,
Florence, and the British Museum. This fact will explain to the
benevolent reader not only the citation of different edition
of the same authority in different chapters, but som
iterations which in the steady quiet of my own library would
not have been made.
It has been my constant endeavour to write for the general
reader, avoiding scholastic and technical terms as much a
possible and stating the truth simply as it presents itself to me.
That errors of omission and commission will be found
here and there is probable--nay, certain; but the substance
of the book will, I believe, be found fully true. I am
encouraged in this belief by the fact that, of the three bitter
attacks which this work in its earlier form has already
encountered, one was purely declamatory, objurgatory, and
hortatory, and the others based upon ignorance of facts easily
pointed out
And here I must express my thanks to those who hav
aided me. First and above all to my former student and
dear friend, Prof. George Lincoln Burr, of Cornell University,
to whose contributions, suggestions, criticisms, and
cautions I am most deeply indebted; also to my friends
U. G. Weatherly, formerly Travelling Fellow of Cornell, and
now Assistant Professor in the University of Indiana,--Prof.
and Mrs. Earl Barnes and Prof. William H. Hudson, of Stanford
University,--and Prof. E. P. Evans, formerly of the
University of Michigan, but now of Munich, for extensive
aid in researches upon the lines I have indicated to them,
but which I could never have prosecuted without their
co-operation. In libraries at home and abroad they hav
all worked for me most effectively, and I am deeply grateful
to them.
This book is presented as a sort of _Festschrift_--a tribute
to Cornell University as it enters the second quarter-century
of its existence, and probably my last tribute.
The ideas for which so bitter a struggle was made at its
foundation have triumphed. Its faculty, numbering over
one hundred and, fifty; its students, numbering but little
short of two thousand; its noble buildings and equipment;
the munificent gifts, now amounting to millions of dollars
which it has received from public-spirited men and women;
the evidences of public confidence on all sides; and, above
all, the adoption of its cardinal principles and main features
by various institutions of learning in other States, show this
abundantly. But there has been a triumph far greater and
wider. Everywhere among the leading modern nations the
same general tendency is seen. During the quarter-century
just past the control of public instruction, not only in America
but in the leading nations of Europe, has passed more
and more from the clergy to the laity. Not only are the
presidents of the larger universities in the United States,
with but one or two exceptions, laymen, but the same thing
is seen in the old European strongholds of metaphysica
theology. At my first visit to Oxford and Cambridge, forty
years ago, they were entirely under ecclesiastical control.
Now, all this is changed. An eminent member of the presen
British Government has recently said, "A candidate for
high university position is handicapped by holy orders." I
refer to this with not the slightest feeling of hostilit
toward the clergy, for I have none; among them are many of
my dearest friends; no one honours their proper work more
than I; but the above fact is simply noted as proving th
continuance of that evolution which I have endeavoured to
describe in this series of monographs--an evolution, indeed,
in which the warfare of Theology against Science has been
one of the most active and powerful agents. My belief is
that in the field left to them--their proper field--the clergy
will more and more, as they cease to struggle against scientific
methods and conclusions, do work even nobler and more
beautiful than anything they have heretofore done. And
this is saying much. My conviction is that Science, though
it has evidently conquered Dogmatic Theology based on
biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in
hand with Religion; and that, although theological contro
will continue to diminish, Religion, as seen in the recognition
of "a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness," and in the love of God and of our neighbor,
will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the
American institutions of learning but in the world at large.
Thus may the declaration of Micah as to the requirements
of Jehovah, the definition by St. James of "pure religion
and undefiled," and, above all, the precepts and ideals of the
blessed Founder of Christianity himself, be brought to bea
more and more effectively on mankind.
I close this preface some days after its first lines were
written. The sun of spring has done its work on the Neva;
the great river flows tranquilly on, a blessing and a joy; the
_mujiks_ are forgotten.
A. D. W
LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, ST. PETERSBURG,
April 14,1894.
P. S.--Owing to a wish to give more thorough revision
to some parts of my work, it has been withheld from the
press until the present date.
A. D. W.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N. Y.,
August 15, 1895
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER I
FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.
I. The Visible Universe.
Ancient and medieval views regarding the manner of creation
Regarding the matter of creation
Regarding the time of creatio
Regarding the date of creatio
Regarding the Creator
Regarding light and darknes
Rise of the conception of an evolution: among the Chaldeans,
The Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans
Its survival through the Middle Ages, despite the disfavour of
the Church
Its development in modern times.--The nebular hypothesis and
its struggle with theology
The idea of evolution at last victoriou
Our sacred books themselves an illustration of its truth
The true reconciliation of Science and Theology
II. Theological Teachings regarding the Animals and Man.
Ancient and medieval representations of the creation of man
Literal acceptance of the book of Genesis by the Christian
father
By the Reformers
By modern theologians, Catholic and Protestant
Theological reasoning as to the divisions of the animal
kingdom
The Physiologus, the Bestiaries, the Exempila
Beginnings of sceptical observation
Development of a scientific method in the study of Nature
Breaking down of the theological theory of creatio
III. Theological and Scientific Theories of an Evolution in Animated Nature.
Ideas of evolution among the ancients
In the early Church
In the medieval Church
Development of these ideas from the sixteenth to the
eighteenth centuries
The work of De Maillet
Of Linneus
Of Buffon
Contributions to the theory of evolution at the close of th
eighteenth century
The work of Treviranus and Lamarck
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier
Development of the theory up to the middle of the nineteenth
century
The contributions of Darwin and Wallace
The opposition of Agassiz
IV. The Final Effort of Theology.
Attacks on Darwin and his theories in England
In America
Formation of sacro-scientific organizations to combat the
theory of evolution
The attack in France
In Germany
Conversion of Lyell to the theory of evolution
The attack on Darwin's Descent of Man
Difference between this and the former attack
Hostility to Darwinism in America
Change in the tone of the controversy.--Attempts at compromise
Dying-out of opposition to evolution
Last outbursts of theological hostility
Final victory of evolution
CHAPTER II.
GEOGRAPHY
I. The Form of the Earth
Primitive conception of the earth as flat
In Chaldea and Egypt
In Persia
Among the Hebrews
Evolution, among the Greeks, of the idea of its sphericity
Opposition of the early Church
Evolution of a sacred theory, drawn from the Bibl
Its completion by Cosmas Indicopleustes
Its influence on Christian thought
Survival of the idea of the earth's sphericity--its acceptanc
by Isidore and Bede
Its struggle and final victory
II. The Delineation of the Earth.
Belief of every ancient people that its own central place was
the centre of the eart
Hebrew conviction that the earth's centre was at Jerusalem
Acceptance of this view by Christianity
Influence of other Hebrew conceptions--Gog and Magog, the
"four winds," the waters "on an heap
III. The Inhabitants of the Earth.
The idea of antipode
Its opposition by the Christian Church--Gregory Nazianzen,
Lactantius, Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, Procopius of Gaza,
Cosmas, Isidore
Virgil of Salzburg's assertion of it in the eighth centur
Its revival by William of Conches and Albert the Great in the
thirteent
Surrender of it by Nicolas d'Oresme
Fate of Peter of Abano and Cecco d' Ascol
Timidity of Pierre d'Ailly and Tostatus
Theological hindrance of Columbus
Pope Alexander VI's demarcation line
Cautious conservatism.of Gregory Reysc
Magellan and the victory of science
IV. The Size of the Earth
Scientific attempts at measuring the eart
The sacred solution of the problem
Fortunate influence of the blunder upon Columbus
V. The Character of the Earth's Surface.
Servetus and the charge of denying the fertility of Judea
Contrast between the theological and the religious spirit in
their effects on science
CHAPTER III.
ASTRONOMY
I. The Old Sacred Theory of the Universe
The early Church's conviction of the uselessness of astronomy
The growth of a sacred theory--Origen, the Gnostics,
Philastrius, Cosmas, Isidore
The geocentric, or Ptolemaic, theory its origin, and its
acceptance by the Christian world
Development of the new sacred system of astronomy--the
pseudo-Dionysius, Peter Lombard. Thomas Aquinas
Its popularization by Dante
Its details
Its persistence to modern times
II. The Heliocentric Theory
Its rise among the Greeks--Pythagoras, Philolaus, Aristarchus
Its suppression by the charge of blasphemy
Its loss from sight for six hundred Years, then for a thousand
Its revival by Nicholas de Cusa and Nicholas Copernicus
Its toleration as a hypothesis
Its prohibition as soon as Galileo teaches it as a trut
Consequent timidity of scholars--Acosta, Apian
Protestantism not less zealous in opposition than
Catholicism--Luther
Melanchthon, Calvin, Turreti
This opposition especially persistent in England--Hutchinson,
Pike, Horne, Horsley, Forbes, Owen, Wesle
Resulting interferences with freedom of teaching
Giordano Bruno's boldness and his fate
The truth demonstrated by the telescope of Galileo
III. The War upon Galileo
Concentration of the war on this new champion
The first attack
Fresh attacks--Elci, Busaeus, Caccini, Lorini, Bellarmi
Use of epithets
Attempts to entrap Galileo
His summons before the Inquisition at Rome
The injunction to silence, and the condemnation of the theory
of the earth's motion,
The work of Copernicus placed on the Index
Galileo's seclusion
Renewed attacks upon Galileo--Inchofer, Fromundus
IV. Victory of the Church over Galileo
Publication of his Dialogo,
Hostility of Pope Urban VII
Galileo's second trial by the Inquisition
His abjuration
Later persecution of hi
Measures to complete the destruction of the Copernican theor
Persecution of Galileo's memory
Protestant hostility to the new astronomy and its champions
V. Results of the Victory over Galileo.
Rejoicings of churchmen over the victor
The silencing of Descartes
Persecution of Campanella and of Kepler
Persistence and victory of science
Dilemma of the theologians
Vain attempts to postpone the surrender
VI. The Retreat of the Church after its Victory over Galileo.
The easy path for the Protestant theologian
The difficulties of the older Church.--The papal infallibility
fully committed against the Copernican theor
Attempts at evasion--first plea: that Galileo was condemned
not for affirming the earth's motion, but for supportin
it from Scripture
Its easy refutation
Second plea: that he was condemned not for heresy, but for
contumac
Folly of this assertion
Third plea: that it was all a quarrel between Aristotelia
professors and those favouring the experimental method
Fourth plea: that the condemnation of Galileo was "provisory
Fifth plea: that he was no more a victim of Catholics than of
Protestants
Efforts to blacken Galileo's character
Efforts to suppress the documents of his trial
Their fruitlessness
Sixth plea: that the popes as popes had never condemned hi
theor
Its confutation from their own mouths
Abandonment of the contention by honest Catholics
Two efforts at compromise--Newman, De Bonald
Effect of all this on thinking men
The fault not in Catholicism more than in Protestantism--not
in religion, but in theology
CHAPTER IV.
FROM "SIGNS AND WONDERS" TO LAW IN THE HEAVENS.
I. The Theological View
Early beliefs as to comets, meteors, and eclipses
Their inheritance by Jews and Christians
The belief regarding comets especially harmful as a source of
superstitious terror
Its transmission through the Middle Ages
Its culmination under Pope Calixtus III
Beginnings of scepticism--Coperuicus, Paracelsus, Scalige
Firmness of theologians, Catholicand Protestant, in its
support
II. Theological Efforts to crush the Scientific View.
The effort through the universities.--The effort through the
pulpits
Heerbrand at Tubingen and Dieterich at Marburg
Maestlin at Heidelberg
Buttner, Vossius, Torreblanca, Fromundu
Father Augustin de Angelis at Rome
Reinzer at Linz
Celichius at Magdeburg
Conrad Dieterich's sermon at Ulm
Erni and others in Switzerlan
Comet doggerel
Echoes from New England--Danforth, Morton, Increase Mathe
III. The Invasion of Scepticism.
Rationalism of Cotton Mather, and its cause
Blaise de Vigenere
Erastu
Bekker, Lubienitzky, Pierre Petit
Bayle
Fontenelle
The scientific movement beneath all this
IV. Theological Efforts at Compromise.--The Final Victory of
Science
The admission that some comets are supralunar
Difference between scientific and theological reasoning
Development of the reasoning of Tycho and Kepler--Cassini,
Hevel, Doerfel, Bernouilli, Newto
Completion of the victory by Halley and Clairau
Survivals of the superstition--Joseph de Maistre, Forster
Arago'sstatistics
The theories of Whiston and Burnet, and their influence in
German
The superstition ended in America by the lectures of Winthrop
Helpful influence of John Wesley
Effects of the victory
CHAPTER V.
FROM GENESIS TO GEOLOGY.
I. Growth of Theological Explanations
Germs of geological truth among the Greeks and Romans
Attitude of the Church toward science
Geological theories of the early theologian
Attitude of the schoolmen
Contributions of the Arabian schools
Theories of the earlier Protestants
Influence of the revival of learnin
II. Efforts to Suppress the Scientific View.
Revival of scientific methods
Buffon and the Sorbonne
Beringer's treatise on fossils
Protestant opposition to the new geology---the works of
Burnet, Whiston, Wesley, Clark, Watson, Arnold, Cockburn,
and others
III. The First Great Effort of Compromise, based on the Flood of
Noah.
The theory that fossils were produced by the Deluge
Its acceptance by both Catholics and Protestants--Luther,
Calmet Burnet, Whiston, Woodward, Mazurier, Torrubia,
Increase Mathe
Scheuchzer
Voltaire's theory of fossils
Vain efforts of enlightened churchmen in behalf of the
scientific vie
Steady progress of science--the work of Cuvier and Brongniart
Granvile Penn's opposition
The defection of Buckland and Lyell to the scientific side
Surrender of the theologians
Remnants of the old belief
Death-blow given to the traditional theory of the Deluge by
the discovery of the Chaldean accounts
Results of the theological opposition to science
IV. Final Efforts at Compromise--The Victory of Scienee complete.
Efforts of Carl von Raumer, Wagner, and other
The new testimony of the caves and beds of drift as to th
antiquity of man
Gosse's effort to save the literal interpretation of Genesi
Efforts of Continental theologians
Gladstone's attempt at a compromise
Its demolition by Huxley
By Canon Drive
Dean Stanley on the reconciliation of Science and Scriptur
CHAPTER VI
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, EGYPTOLOGY, AND ASSYRIOLOGY.
I. The Sacred Chronology
Two fields in which Science has gained a definite victory over
Theolog
Opinious of the Church fathers on the antiquity of man
The chronology of Isidore
Of Bede
Of the medieval Jewish scholars
The views of the Reformers on the antiquity of ma
Of the Roman Church
Of Archbishop Usher
Influence of Egyptology on the belief in man's antiquity
La Peyrere's theory of the Pre-Adamites
Opposition in England to the new chronolog
II. The New Chronology.
Influence of the new science of Egyptology on biblica
chronology
Manetho's history of Egypt and the new chronology derived from
it
Evidence of the antiquity of man furnished by the monuments of
Egypt
By her art
By her scienc
By other elements of civilizatio
By the remains found in the bed of the Nile
Evidence furnished by the study of Assyriology
CHAPTER VII.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY
I. The Thunder-stones
Early beliefs regarding "thunder-stones"
Theories of Mercati and Tollius regarding the
Their identification with the implements of prehistoric man
Remains of man found in caverns
Unfavourable influence on scientific activity of the political
conditions of the early part of the nineteenth century
Change effected by the French Revolution of t
Rallying of the reactionary clerical influence against scienc
II. The Flint Weapons and Implements
Boucher de Perthes's contributions to the knowledge of
prehistoric man
His conclusions confirmed by Lyell and other
Cave explorations of Lartet and Christ
Evidence of man's existence furnished by rude carvings
Cave explorations in the British Islands
Evidence of man's existence in the Drift perio
In the early Quaternary and in the Tertiary periods
CHAPTER VIII
THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ANTHROPOLOGY.
The two antagonistic views regarding the life of man on the earth
The theory of "the Fall" among ancient peoples
Inheritance of this view by the Christian Church
Appearance among the Greeks and Romans of the theory of a rise of man
Its disappearance during the Middle Ages
Its development since the seventeenth century
The first blow at the doctrine of "the Fall" comes from geology
Influence of anthropology on the belief in this doctrin
The finding of human skulls in Quaternary deposits
Their significanc
Results obtained from the comparative study of the remains of
human handiwork
Discovery of human remains in shell-heaps on the shores of the
Baltic Se
In peat-beds
The lake-dwellers
Indications of the upward direction of man's developmen
Mr. Southall's attack on the theory of man's antiquity
An answer to it
Discovery of prehistoric human remains in Egypt
Hamard's attack on the new scientific conclusion
The survival of prehistoric implements in religious rites
Strength of the argument against the theory of "the Fall of Man"
CHAPTER IX.
THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ETHNOLOGY.
The beginnings of the science of Comparative Ethnology
Its testimony to the upward tendency of man from low beginning
Theological efforts to break its force--De Maistre and De
Bonald Whately's attemp
The attempt of the Duke of Argyll
Evidence of man's upward tendency derived from Comparative
Philology
From Comparative Literature and Folklor
From Comparative Ethnography
From Biology
CHAPTER X.
THE "FALL OF MAN" AND HISTORY.
Proof of progress given by the history of ar
Proofs from general histor
Development of civilization even under unfavourable
circumstances to, Advancement even through catastrophes
and the decay of civilizations
Progress not confined to man's material conditio
Theological struggle against the new scientific view
Persecution of prof. Winchel
Of Dr. Woodrow
Other interferences with freedom of teachin
The great harm thus done to religion
Rise of a better spirit
The service rendered to religion by Anthropology
CHAPTER XI.
FROM "THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR" TO METEOROLOGY.
I. Growth of a Theological Theory.
The beliefs of classical antiquity regarding storms, thunder,
and lightning
Development of a sacred science of meteorology by the fathers of
the Churc
Theories of Cosmas Indicopleustes
Of Isidore of Seville
Of Bede
Of Rabanus Mauru
Rational views of Honorius of Autun
Orthodox theories of John of San Geminian
Attempt of Albert the Great to reconcile the speculations of
Aristotle with the theological views
The monkish encyclopedists
Theories regarding the rainbow and the causes of storm
Meteorological phenomena attributed to the Almighty
II. Diabolical Agency in Storms.
Meteorological phenomena attributed to the devil--"the prince
of the power of the air
Propagation of this belief by the medieval theologian
Its transmission to both Catholics and Protestants--Eck,
Luther
The great work of Delrio
Guacci's Compendium
The employment of prayer against "the powers of the air"
Of exoreisms
Of fetiches and processions
Of consecrated church bell
III. The Agency of Witches.
The fearful results of the witch superstition
Its growth out of the doctrine of evil agency in atmospheric
phenomen
Archbishop Agobard's futile attempt to dispel it
Its sanction by the popes
Its support by confessions extracted by torture
Part taken in the persecution by Dominicans and Jesuit
Opponents of the witch theory--Pomponatius, Paracelsus,
Agrippa of Nettesheim
Jean Bodin's defence of the superstition
Fate of Cornelius Loo
Of Dietrich Flade
Efforts of Spee to stem the persecution
His posthumous influence
Upholders of the orthodox view--Bishop Binsfeld, Remigius
Vain protests of Wier
Persecution of Bekker for opposing the popular belief
Effect of the Reformation in deepening the superstition
The persecution in Great Britain and America
Development of a scientific view of the heaven
Final efforts to revive the old belief
IV. Franklin's Lightning-Rod
Franklin's experiments witlh the kite
Their effect on the old belief
Efforts at compromise between the scientific and theological
theories
Successful use of the lightning-rod
Religious scruples against it in Americ
In Englan
In Austria
In Italy
Victory of the scientific theory
This victory exemplified in the case of the church of the
monastery of Lerins
In the case of Dr. Moorhouse
In the case of the Missouri droughts
CHAPTER XII.
FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.
I. The Supremacy of Magic
Primitive tendency to belief in magi
The Greek conception of natura law
Influence of Plato and Aristotle on the growth of science
Effect of the establishment of Christianity on the development
of the physical sciences
The revival of thought in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
Albert the Great
Vincent of Beauvais
Thomas Aquinas
Roger Bacon's beginning of the experimental method brought to
nough
The belief that science is futile gives place to the belief
that it is dangerous
The two kinds of magi
Rarity of persecution for magic before the Christian er
The Christian theory of devil
Constantine's laws against magic
Increasing terror of magic and witchcraft
Papal enactments against them
Persistence of the belief in magi
Its effect on the development of science
Roger Baco
Opposition of secular rulers to science
John Baptist Porta
The opposition to scientific societies in italy
In Englan
The effort to turn all thought from science to religio
The development of mystic theology
Its harmful influence on science
Mixture of theological with scientific speculation
This shown in the case of Melanchthon
In that of Francis Bacon
Theological theory of gases
Growth of a scientific theory
Basil Valentine and his contributions to chemistry
Triumph of the scientific theory
II. The Triumph of Chemistry and Physics
New epoch in chemistry begun by Boyl
Attitude of the mob toward science
Effect on science of the reaction following the French
Revolution:
Development of chemistry since the middle of the nineteenth
century
Development of physics
Modern opposition to science in Catholic countries
Attack on scientific education in France
In England
In Prussia
Revolt against the subordination of education to science
Effect of the International Exhibition of ii at London
Of the endowment of State colleges in America by the Morrill
Act of 186
The results to religio
CHAPTER XIII.
FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE
I. THE EARLY AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE.
Naturalness of the idea of supernatural intervention in causin
and curing disease
Prevalence of this idea in ancient civilization
Beginnings of a scientific theory of medicin
The twofold influence of Christianity on the healing art
II. GROWTH OF LEGENDS OF HEALING.--THE LIFE OF XAVIER AS A TYPICAL EXAMPLE.
Growth of legends of miracles about the lives of great benefactors
of humanity
Sketch of Xavier's caree
Absence of miraculous accounts in his writings and those of his
contemporarie
Direct evidence that Xavier wrought no miracles
Growth of legends of miracles as shown in the early biographies
of him
As shown in the canonization proceedings
Naturalness of these legends
III. THE MEDIAEVAL MIRACLES OF HEALING CHECK MEDICAL SCIENCE.
Character of the testimony regarding miracles
Connection of mediaeval with pagan miracle
Their basis of fact
Various kinds of miraculous cure
Atmosphere of supernaturalism thrown about all cure
Influence of this atmosphere on medical scienc
IV. THE ATTRIBUTION OF DISEASE TO SATANIC INFLUENCE.--
"PASTORAL MEDICINE" CHECKS SCIENTIFIC EFFORT
Theological theory as to the cause of disease
Influence of self-interest on "pastoral medicine
Development of fetichism at Cologne and elsewhere
Other developments of fetich cur
V. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO ANATOMICAL STUDIES.
Medieval belief in the unlawfulness of meddling with the bodie
of the dea
Dissection objected to on the ground that "the Church abhors
the shedding of blood"
The decree of Boniface VIII and its results
VI. NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
Gale
Scanty development of medical science in the Church
Among Jews and Mohammedans
Promotion of medical science by various Christian laymen of
the Middle Age
By rare men of scienc
By various ecclesiastics
VII. THEOLOGICAL DISCOURAGEMENT OF MEDICINE.
Opposition to seeking cure from disease by natural means
Requirement of ecclesiastical advice before undertaking
medical treatmen
Charge of magic and Mohammedanism against men of science
Effect of ecclesiastical opposition to medicine
The doctrine of signatures
The doctrine of exorcism
Theological opposition to surger
Development of miracle and fetich cures
Fashion in pious cures
Medicinal properties of sacred places
Theological argument in favour of miraculous cure
Prejudice against Jewish physicians
VIII. FETICH CURES UNDER PROTESTANTISM.--THE ROYAL TOUCH
Luther's theory of disease
The royal touch
Cures wrought by Charles II
By James II
By William III
By Queen Anne
By Louis XIV
Universal acceptance of these miracles
IX. THE SCIENTIFIC STRUGGLE FOR ANATOMY.
Occasional encouragement of medical science in the Middle Ages
New impulse given by the revival of learning and the age of discovery
Paracelsus and Mundinus
Vesalius, the founder of the modem science of anatomy.--Hi
career and fat
X. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO INOCULATION, VACCINATION
AND THE USE OF ANAESTHETICS
Theological opposition to inoculation in Europe
In America
Theological opposition to vaccination
Recent hostility to vaccination in England
In Canada, during the smallpox epidemic
Theological opposition to the use of cocaine
To the use of quinine
Theological opposition to the Use of anesthetics
XI. FINAL BREAKING AWAY OF THE THEOLOGICAL THEORY IN MEDICINE.
Changes incorporated in the American Book of Common Prayer
Effect on the theological view of the growing knowledge of the
relation between imagination and medicin
Effect of the discoveries in hypnotism
In bacteriology
Relation between ascertained truth and the "ages of faith"
CHAPTER XIV
FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE.
I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EPIDEMICS AND SANITATION.
The recurrence of great pestilences
Their early ascription to the wrath or malice of unseen powers
Their real cause want of hygienic precaution
Theological apotheosis of filth
Sanction given to the sacred theory of pestilence by Pope
Gregory the Great
Modes of propitiating the higher powers
Modes of thwarting the powers of evil
Persecution of the Jews as Satan's emissaries
Persecution of witches as Satan's emissaries
Case of the Untori at Mila
New developments of fetichism.--The blood of St. Januarius at Naples
Appearance of better methods in Italy.--In Spai
II. GRADUAL DECAY OF THEOLOGICAL VIEWS REGARDING SANITATION.
Comparative freedom of England from persecutions for
plague-bringing, in spite of her wretched sanitary condition
Aid sought mainly through church services
Effects of the great fire in London
The jail fever
The work of John Howard
Plagues in the American colonies
In France.--The great plague at Marseilles
Persistence of the old methods in Austria
In Scotland
III. THE TRIUMPH OF SANITARY SCIENCE.
Difficulty of reconciling the theological theory of
pestilences with accumulating facts
Curious approaches to a right theory
The law governing the relation of theology to diseas
Recent victories of hygiene in all countries
In England.---Chadwick and his fellow
In France
IV. THE RELATION OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION.
The process of sanitary science not at the cost of religion
Illustration from the policy of Napoleon III in France
Effect of proper sanitation on epidemics in the United States
Change in the attitude of the Church toward the cause and cur
of pestilence
CHAPTER XV.
FROM "DEMONIACAL POSSESSION" TO INSANITY.
I. THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF LUNACY AND ITS TREATMENT.
The struggle for the scientific treatment of the insane
The primitive ascription of insanity to evil spirit
Better Greek and Roman theories--madness a disease
The Christian Church accepts the demoniacal theory of insanity
Yet for a time uses mild methods for the insane
Growth of the practice of punishing the indwelling demo
Two sources whence better things might have been hoped.--Th
reasons of their futility
The growth of exorcism
Use of whipping and torture
The part of art and literature in making vivid to the commo
mind the idea of diabolic activity
The effects of religious processions as a cure for mental disease
Exorcism of animals possessed of demons
Belief in the transformation of human beings into animals
The doctrine of demoniacal possession in the Reformed Church
II. BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
Rivalry between Catholics and Protestants in the casting out
of devil
Increased belief in witchcraft during the period following the
Reformation
Increase of insanity during the witch persecutions
Attitude of physicians toward witchcraf
Religious hallucinations of the insan
Theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into the possessed
Influence of monastic life on the development of insanity
Protests against the theological view of insanity--Wier, Montaigue
Bekke
Last struggles of the old superstitio
III. THE FINAL STRUGGLE AND VICTORY OF SCIENCE.--PINEL AND TUKE.
Influence of French philosophy on the belief in demoniacal possession
Reactionary influence of John Wesley
Progress of scientific ideas in Prussia
In Austria
In America
In South German
General indifference toward the sufferings of madmen
The beginnings of a more humane treatment
Jean Baptiste Pine
Improvement in the treatment of the insane in England.--William Tuke
The place of Pinel and Tuke in history
CHAPTER XVI.
FROM DIABOLISM TO HYSTERIA
I. THE EPIDEMICS OF "POSSESSION."
Survival of the belief in diabolic activity as the cause of
such epidemics
Epidemics of hysteria in classical times
In the Middle Ages
The dancing mania
Inability of science during the fifteenth century to cope wit
such disease
Cases of possession brought within the scope of medical
research during the sixteenth century
Dying-out of this form of mental disease in northern Europe
In Ital
Epidemics of hysteria in the convents
The case of Martha Brossier
Revival in France of belief in diabolic influenc
The Ursulines of Loudun and Urbain Grandie
Possession among the Huguenots
In New England.--The Salem witch persecution
At Paris.--Alleged miracles at the grave of Archdeacon Paris
In Germany.--Case of Maria Renata Sanger
More recent outbreaks
II. BEGINNINGS OF HELPFUL SCEPTICISM.
Outbreaks of hysteria in factories and hospitals
In places of religious excitement
The case at Morzine
Similar cases among Protestants and in Africa
III. THEOLOGICAL "RESTATEMENTS."--FINAL TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFI
VIEW AND METHODS.
Successful dealings of medical science with mental diseases
Attempts to give a scientific turn to the theory of diaboli
agency in disease
Last great demonstration of the old belief in England
Final triumph of science in the latter half of the present century
Last echoes of the old belief
CHAPTER XVII
FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.
I. THE SACRED THEORY IN ITS FIRST FORM.
Difference of the history of Comparative Philology from that
of other sciences as regards the attitude of theologians
Curiosity of early man regarding the origin, the primitive
form, and the diversity of language
The Hebrew answer to these questions
The legend of the Tower of Babel
The real reason for the building of towers by the Chaldean
and the causes of their ruin
Other legends of a confusion of tongues
Influence upon Christendom of the Hebrew legends
Lucretius's theory of the origin of language
The teachings of the Church fathers on this subjec
The controversy as to the divine origin of the Hebrew vowel point
Attitude of the reformers toward this question
Of Catholic scholars.--Marini
Capellus and his adversaries
The treatise of Danzius
II. THE SACRED THEORY OF LANGUAGE IN ITS SECOND FORM.
Theological theory that Hebrew was the primitive tongue
divinely revealed
This theory supported by all Christian scholars until the
beginning of the eighteenth century
Diasent of Prideaux and Cotton Mather
Apparent strength of the sacred theory of languag
III. BREAKING DOWN OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.
Reason for the Church's ready acceptance of the conclusions of
comparative philology
Beginnings of a scientific theory of languag
Hottinger
Leibnitz
The collections of Catharine the Great, of Hervas, and of Adelun
Chaotic period in philology between Leibnitz and the beginning
of the study of Sanskrit
Illustration from the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica
IV. TRIUMPH OF THE NEW SCIENCE
Effect of the discovery of Sanskrit on the old theory
Attempts to discredit the new learning
General acceptance of the new theory
Destruction of the belief that all created things were firs
named by Adam
Of the belief in the divine origin of letters
Attempts in England to support the old theory of language
Progress of philological science in Franc
In Germany
In Great Britain
Recent absurd attempts to prove Hebrew the primitive tongu
V. SUMMARY
Gradual disappearance of the old theories regarding the origin
of speech and writing
Full acceptance of the new theories by all Christian scholar
The result to religion, and to the Bible
CHAPTER XVIII.
FROM THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY
I. THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS
Growth of myths to account for remarkable appearances in
Nature--mountains. rocks, curiously marked stones, fossils,
products of volcanicaction
Myths of the transformation of living beings into natural objects
Development of the science of Comparative Mythology
II. MEDIAEVAL GROWTH OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.
Description of the Dead Sea
Impression made by its peculiar features on the early dwellers
in Palestin
Reasons for selecting the Dead Sea myths for stud
Naturalness of the growth of legend regarding the salt region
of Usdum
Universal belief in these legends
Concurrent testimony of early and mediaeval writers, Jewish and
Christian, respecting the existence of Lot's wife as a "pillar
of salt," and of the other wonders of the Dead Sea
Discrepancies in the various accounts and theological
explanations of them
Theological arguments respecting the statue of Lot's wife
Growth of the legend in the sixteenth century
III. POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION OF THE DEAD SEA
LEGENDS.--BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
Popularization of the older legends at the Reformation
Growth of new myths among scholar
Signs of scepticism among travellers near the end of the
sixteenth century
Effort of Quaresmio to check this tendency
Of Eugene Roge
Of Wedelius
Influence of these teachings
Renewed scepticism--the seventeenth and eighteenth centurie
Efforts of Briemle and Masius in support of the old myths
Their influence
The travels of Mariti and of Volney
Influence of scientific thought on the Dead Sea legends during
the eighteenth century
Reactionary efforts of Chateaubrian
Investigations of the naturalist Seetzen
Of Dr. Robinson
The expedition of Lieutenant Lynch
The investigations of De Saulcy
Of the Duc de Luynes.--Lartet's repor
Summary of the investigations of the nineteenth
century.--Ritter's verdict
IV. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--
TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.
Attempts to reconcile scientific facts with the Dead Sea legends
Van de Velde's investigations of the Dead Sea region
Canon Tristram'
Mgr. Mislin's protests against the growing rationalism
The work of Schaff and Osborn
Acceptance of the scientific view by leaders in the Church
Dr. Geikie's ascription of the myths to the Arabs
Mgr. Haussmann de Wandelburg and.his rejection of the scientific view
Service of theologians to religion in accepting the conclusions
of silence in this field
CHAPTER XIX.
FROM LEVITICUS TO POLITICAL ECONOM
I. ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF HOSTILITY TO LOANS AT INTEREST
Universal belief in the sin of loaning money at interest
The taking of interest among the Greeks and Roman
Opposition of leaders of thought, especially Aristotle
Condemnation of the practice by the Old and New Testament
By the Church fathers
In ecclesiastical and secular legislation
Exception sometimes made in behalf of the Jews
Hostility of the pulpit
Of the canon law
Evil results of the prohibition of loans at interest
Efforts to induce the Church to change her positio
Theological evasions of the rule
Attitude of the Reformers toward the taking of interest
Struggle in England for recognition of the right to accept interes
Invention of a distinction between usury and interest
II. RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC
Sir Robert Filmer's attack on the old doctrine
Retreat of the Protestant Church in Hollan
In Germany and America
Difficulties in the way of compromise in the Catholic Church
Failure of such attempts in France
Theoretical condemnation of usury in Italy
Disregard of all restrictions in practic
Attempts of Escobar and Liguori to reconcile the taking of
interest with the teachings of the Church
Montesquieu's attack on the old theory
Encyclical of Benedict XIV permitting the taking of interest
Similar decision of the Inquisition at Rome
Final retreat of the Catholic Churc
Curious dealings of theology with public economy in other fields
CHAPTER XX.
FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM
I. THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.
Character of the great sacred books of the worl
General laws governing the development and influence of sacred
literature.--The law of its origin
Legends concerning the Septuagint
The law of wills and causes
The law of inerrancy
Hostility to the revision of King James's translation of the Bible
The law of unity
Working of these laws seen in the great rabbinical school
The law of allegorical interpretation
Philo Judaeu
Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
Occult significance of numbers
Origen
Hilary of Poitiers and Jerome
Augustine
Gregory the Great
Vain attempts to check the flood of allegorical interpretations
Bede.--Savonarola
Methods of modern criticism for the first time employed by Lorenzo Valla
Erasmus
Influence of the Reformation on the belief in the infallibilit
of the sacred books.--Luther and Melanchthon
Development of scholasticism in the Reformed Church
Catholic belief in the inspiration of the Vulgat
Opposition in Russia to the revision of the Slavonic Scriptures
Sir Isaac Newton as a commentator
Scriptural interpretation at the beginning of the eighteenth century
II. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
Theological beliefs regarding the Pentateuch
The book of Genesis
Doubt thrown on the sacred theory by Aben Ezra
By Carlstadt and Maes
Influence of the discovery that the Isidorian Decretals were forgeries
That the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite were serious
Hobbes and La Peyrere
Spinoza
Progress of biblical criticism in France.--Richard Simo
LeClerc
Bishop Lowt
Astruc
Eichhorn's application of the "higher criticism" to biblical research
Isenbieh
Herder
Alexander Gedde
Opposition to the higher criticism in Germany
Hupfel
Vatke and Reuss
Kuenen
Wellhause
III. THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
Progress of the higher criticism in Germany and Holland
Opposition to it in England
At the University of Oxford
Puse
Bentle
Wolf
Niebuhr and Arnol
Milman
Thirlwall and Grote
The publication of Essays and Reviews, and the storm raised by book
IV. THE CLOSING STRUGGLE.
Colenso's work on the Pentateuch
The persecution of hi
Bishop Wilberforce's part in it
Dean Stanley's
Bishop Thirlwall's
Results of Colenso's work
Sanday's Bampton Lectures
Keble College and Lux Mundi
Progress of biblical criticism among the dissenters
In France.--Renan
In the Roman Catholic Church
The encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII
In America.--Theodore Parker
Apparent strength of the old theory of inspiration
Real strength of the new movement
V. VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS
Confirmation of the conclusions of the higher criticism by
Assyriology and Egyptology
Light thrown upon Hebrew religion by the translation of the
sacred books of the East
The influence of Persian thought.--The work of the Rev. Dr. Mills
The influence of Indian thought.--Light thrown by the study o
Brahmanism and Buddhism
The work of Fathers Huc and Gabet
Discovery that Buddha himself had been canonized as a Christian saint
Similarity between the ideas and legends of Buddhism and those
of Christianity
The application of the higher criticism to the New Testament
The English "Revised Version" of Studies on the formation of
the canon of Scripture
Recognition of the laws governing its developmen
Change in the spirit of the controversy over the higher criticism
VI. RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM
Development of a scientific atmosphere during the last three centuries
Action of modern science in reconstruction of religious truth
Change wrought by it in the conception of a sacred literatur
Of the Divine Power.--Of man.---Of the world at large
Of our Bibl
I. THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.
AMONG those masses of cathedral sculpture which preserve so much of
medieval theology, one frequently recurring group is noteworthy fo
its presentment of a time-honoured doctrine regarding the origin of
the universe.
The Almighty, in human form, sits benignly, making the sun, moon,
and stars, and hanging them from the solid firmament which support
the "heaven above" and overarches the "earth beneath."
The furrows of thought on the Creator's brow show that in this work
he is obliged to contrive; the knotted muscles upon his arms sho
that he is obliged to toil; naturally, then, the sculptors and
painters of the medieval and early modern period frequently
represented him as the writers whose conceptions they embodied had
done--as, on the seventh day, weary after thought and toil,
enjoying well-earned repose and the plaudits of the hosts of heaven.
In these thought-fossils of the cathedrals, and in other
revelations of the same idea through sculpture, painting,
glass-staining, mosaic work, and engraving, during the Middle Ages
and the two centuries following, culminated a belief which had been
developed through thousands of years, and which has determined the
world's thought until our own time.
Its beginnings lie far back in human history; we find them among
the early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and the
hold a most prominent place in the various sacred books of the
world. In nearly all of them is revealed the conception of a
Creator of whom man is an imperfect image, and who literally and
directly created the visible universe with his hands and fingers.
Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which
controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian
inscriptions which have been recently recovered and given to the
English-speaking peoples by Layard, George Smith, Sayce, and
others, show that in the ancient religions of Chaldea and Babyloni
there was elaborated a narrative of the creation which, in its most
important features, must have been the source of that in our own
sacred books. It has now become perfectly clear that from the same
sources which inspired the accounts of the creation of the univers
among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Phoenician, and
other ancient civilizations came the ideas which hold so prominent
a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In the two accounts
imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also in the account of
which we have indications in the book of Job and in the Proverbs,
there, is presented, often with the greatest sublimity, the same
early conception of the Creator and of the creation--the
conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a
Creator who is an enlarged human being working literally with his
own hands, and of a creation which is "the work of his fingers." To
supplement this view there was developed the belief in this Creator
as one who, havin
. . . "from his ample palm
Launched forth the rolling planets into space."
sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens,
perpetually controlling and directing them.
From this idea of creation was evolved in time a somewhat noble
view. Ancient thinkers, and especially, as is now found, in Egypt,
suggested that the main agency in creation was not the hands and
fingers of the Creator, but his _voice_. Hence was mingled with th
earlier, cruder belief regarding the origin of the earth and
heavenly bodies by the Almighty the more impressive idea that "he
spake and they were made"--that they were brought into existence
by his _word_.[3]
Among the early fathers of the Church this general view of creatio
became fundamental; they impressed upon Christendom more and more
strongly the belief that the universe was created in a perfectly
literal sense by the hands or voice of God. Here and there sundry
theologians of larger mind attempted to give a more spiritual view
regarding some parts of the creative work, and of these were St.
Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine. Ready as they were to accept
the literal text of Scripture, they revolted against the conception
of an actual creation of the universe by the hands and fingers o
a Supreme Being, and in this they were followed by Bede and a few
others; but the more material conceptions prevailed, and we find
these taking shape not only in the sculptures and mosaics and
stained glass of cathedrals, and in the illuminations of missals
and psalters, but later, at the close of the Middle Ages, in the
pictured Bibles and in general literature.
Into the Anglo-Saxon mind this ancient material conception of the
creation was riveted by two poets whose works appealed especially
to the deeper religious feelings. In the seventh century Caedmon
paraphrased the account given in Genesis, bringing out this
material conception in the most literal form; and a thousand years
later Milton developed out of the various statements in the Old
Testament, mingled with a theology regarding "the creative Word"
which had been drawn from the New, his description of the creation
by the second person in the Trinity, than which nothing could b
more literal and material:
"He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe and all created things
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, `Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds:
This be thy just circumference, O world!'"[4]
So much for the orthodox view of the _manner_ of creation.
The next point developed in this theologic evolution had referenc
to the _matter_ of which the universe was made, and it was decided by
an overwhelming majority that no material substance existed before
the creation of the material universe--that "God created everything
out of nothing." Some venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning
upon the first verses of Genesis, hinted at a different
view--namely, that the mass, "without form and void," existed
before the universe; but this doctrine was soon swept out of sight
The vast majority of the fathers were explicit on this point.
Tertullian especially was very severe against those who took any
other view than that generally accepted as orthodox: he declared
that, if there had been any pre-existing matter out of which the
world was formed, Scripture would have mentioned it; that by not
mentioning it God has given us a clear proof that there was no such
thing; and, after a manner not unknown in other theological
controversies, he threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposit
view, with the woe which impends on all who add to or take away
from the written word."
St. Augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-existence of
matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple
reasoning that, "although the world has been made of some material
that very same material must have been made out of nothing."
In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadil
followed. The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created
everything out of nothing; and at the present hour the vast
majority of the faithful--whether Catholic or Protestant--are
taught the same doctrine; on this point the syllabus of Pius IX and
the Westminster Catechism fully agree.[5]
Having thus disposed of the manner and matter of creation, the next
subject taken up by theologians was the _time_ required for the
great work.
Here came a difficulty. The first of the two accounts given in
Genesis extended the creative operation through six days, each of
an evening and a morning, with much explicit detail regarding the
progress made in each. But the second account spoke of "_the day_"
in which "the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." The
explicitness of the first account and its naturalness to the minds
of the great mass of early theologians gave it at first a decided
advantage; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo, and Christian thinkers
like Origen, forming higher conceptions of the Creator and his
work, were not content with this, and by them was launched upon the
troubled sea of Christian theology the idea that the creation was
instantaneous, this idea being strengthened not only by the second
of the Genesis legends, but by the great text, "He spake, and it
was done; he commanded, and it stood fast"--or, as it appears in
the Vulgate and in most translations, "He spake, and they were
made; he commanded, and they were created."
As a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper course
was to believe literally _both_ statements; that in some mysteriou
manner God created the universe in six days, and yet brought it all
into existence in a moment. In spite of the outcries of sundry
great theologians, like Ephrem Syrus, that the universe was created
in exactly six days of twenty-four hours each, this compromise was
promoted by St. Athanasius and St. Basil in the East, and by St.
Augustine and St. Hilary in the West.
Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views,
which to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by
ingenious manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases,
and by the abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a
reconciliation was effected, and men came at least to believe that
they believed in a creation of the universe instantaneous and at
the same time extended through six days.[6
Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were s
fruitful as to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and
Western, developed out of the double account in Genesis, and the
indications in the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the book of Job,
vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point. As regards the
whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain occult power
in numerals. Philo Judaeus, while believing in an instantaneous
creation, had also declared that the world was created in six days
because "of all numbers six is the most productive"; he had
explained the creation of the heavenly bodies on the fourth day by
"the harmony of the number four"; of the animals on the fifth day
by the five senses; of man on the sixth day by the same virtues in
the number six which had caused it to be set as a limit to the
creative work; and, greatest of all, the rest on the seventh day by
the vast mass of mysterious virtues in the number seven.
St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce the work
of the second day "good" is to be found in the fact that there is
something essentially evil in the number two, and this was echoed
centuries afterward, afar off in Britain, by Bede.
St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church in th
following statement: "There are three classes of numbers--the more
than perfect, the perfect, and the less than perfect, according as
the sum of them is greater than, equal to, or less than the
original number. Six is the first perfect number: wherefore we mus
not say that six is a perfect number because God finished all hi
works in six days, but that God finished all his works in six days
because six is a perfect number."
Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the mediaeval Church
until a year after the discovery of America, when the _Nuremberg
Chronicle_ re-echoed it as follows: "The creation of things is
explained by the number six, the parts of which, one, two, and
three, assume the form of a triangle."
This view of the creation of the universe as instantaneous and also
as in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, became
virtually universal. Peter Lombard and Hugo of St. Victor
authorities of Vast weight, gave it their sanction in the twelfth
century, and impressed it for ages upon the mind of the Church.
Both these lines of speculation--as to the creation of everything
out of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous creatio
of the universe with its creation in six days--were still further
developed by other great thinkers of the Middle Ages.
St. Hilary of Poictiers reconciled the two conceptions as follows:
"For, although according to Moses there is an appearance of regular
order in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare of the dry
land, the gathering together of the waters, the formation of the
heavenly bodies, and the arising of living things from land and
water, yet the creation of the heavens, earth, and other elements
is seen to be the work of a single moment."
St. Thomas Aquinas drew from St. Augustine a subtle distinction
which for ages eased the difficulties in the case: he taught in
effect that God created the substance of things in a moment, but
gave to the work of separating, shaping, and adorning this
creation, six days.[8]
The early reformers accepted and developed the same view, and
Luther especially showed himself equal to the occasion. With his
usual boldness he declared, first, that Moses "spoke properly an
plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively," and that
therefore "the world with all creatures was created in six days."
And he then goes on to show how, by a great miracle, the whole
creation was also instantaneous.
Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of
nothing and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six
days, citing the text: "He spake, and they were made.
Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid
especial stress on the creation in six days: having called
attention to the fact that the biblical chronology shows the world
to be not quite six thousand years old and that it is now near its
end, he says that "creation was extended through six days that it
might not be tedious for us to occupy the whole of life in the
consideration of it."
Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring: "So important is it
to comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of the
Church take this as its starting point. Were this article taken
away there would be no original sin, the promise of Christ would
become void, and all the vital force of our religion would be
destroyed." The Westminster divines in drawing up their Confession
of Faith specially laid it down as necessary to believe that al
things visible and invisible were created not only out of nothing
but in exactly six days.
Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the Protestant
reformers regarding the necessity of holding closely to the
so-called Mosaic account of creation. As late as the middle of th
eighteenth century, when Buffon attempted to state simple
geological truths, the theological faculty of the Sorbonne forced
him to make and to publish a most ignominious recantation which
ended with these words: "I abandon everything in my book respecting
the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be Contrary
to the narrative of Moses."
Theologians, having thus settled the manner of the creation, the
matter used in it, and the time required for it, now exerted
themselves to fix its _date_.
The long series of efforts by the greatest minds in the Church,
from Eusebius to Archbishop Usher, to settle this point are
presented in another chapter. Suffice it here that the general
conclusion arrived at by an overwhelming majority of the most
competent students of the biblical accounts was that the date of
creation was, in round numbers, four thousand years before our era;
and in the seventeenth century, in his great work, Dr. John
Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and one
of the most eminent Hebrew scholars of his time, declared, as the
result of his most profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures
that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all
together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that
"this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October
23, 4004 B. C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
Here was, indeed, a triumph of Lactantius's method, the result of
hundreds of years of biblical study and theological thought since
Bede in the eighth century, and Vincent of Beauvais in the
thirteenth, had declared that creation must have taken place in the
spring. Yet, alas! within two centuries after Lightfoot's great
biblical demonstration as to the exact hour of creation, it wa
discovered that at that hour an exceedingly cultivated people
enjoying all the fruits of a highly developed civilization, had
long been swarming in the great cities of Egypt, and that other
nations hardly less advanced had at that time reached a high
development in Asia.[10]
But, strange as it may seem, even after theologians had thus
settled the manner of creation, the matter employed in it, the tim
required for it, and the exact date of it, there remained virtually
unsettled the first and greatest question of all; and this was
nothing less than the question, WHO actually created the universe?
Various theories more or less nebulous, but all centred in texts of
Scripture, had swept through the mind of the Church. By some
theologians it was held virtually that the actual creative agent
was the third person of the Trinity, who, in the opening words of
our sublime creation poem, "moved upon the face of the waters." B
others it was held that the actual Creator was the second person of
the Trinity, in behalf of whose agency many texts were cited fro
the New Testament. Others held that the actual Creator was the
first person, and this view was embodied in the two great formulas
known as the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, which explicitly assigned
the work to "God the Father Almighty" Maker of heaven and earth.
Others, finding a deep meaning in the words "Let _us_ make," ascribed
in Genesis to the Creator, held that the entire Trinity directl
created all things; and still others, by curious metaphysical
processes, seemed to arrive at the idea that peculiar combinations
of two persons of the Trinity achieved the creation.
In all this there would seem to be considerable courage in view of
the fearful condemnations launched in the Athanasian Creed against
all who should "confound the persons" or "divide the substance of
the Trinity."
These various stages in the evolution of scholastic theology wer
also embodied in sacred art, and especially in cathedral sculpture,
in glass-staining, in mosaic working, and in missal painting.
The creative Being is thus represented sometimes as the third
person of the Trinity, in the form of a dove brooding over chaos
sometimes as the second person, and therefore a youth; sometimes as
the first person, and therefore fatherly and venerable; sometimes
as the first and second persons, one being venerable and the other
youthful; and sometimes as three persons, one venerable and on
youthful, both wearing papal crowns, and each holding in his lip
a tip of the wing of the dove, which thus seems to proceed from
both and to be suspended between them.
Nor was this the most complete development of the medieval idea.
The Creator was sometimes represented with a single body, but with
three faces, thus showing that Christian belief had in some piou
minds gone through substantially the same cycle which an earlie
form of belief had made ages before in India, when the Supreme
Being was represented with one body but with the three faces o
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.
But at the beginning of the modern period the older view in it
primitive Jewish form was impressed upon Christians by the most
mighty genius in art the world has known; for in 1512, after four
years of Titanic labour, Michael Angelo uncovered his frescoe
within the vault of the Sistine Chapel.
They had been executed by the command and under the sanction of the
ruling Pope, Julius II, to represent the conception of Christian
theology then dominant, and they remain to-day in all their majesty
to show the highest point ever attained by the older thought upon
the origin of the visible universe.
In the midst of the expanse of heaven the Almighty Father--the
first person of the Trinity--in human form, august and venerable,
attended by angels and upborne by mighty winds, sweeps over the
abyss, and, moving through successive compartments of the great
vault, accomplishes the work of the creative days. With a simple
gesture he divides the light from the darkness, rears on high the
solid firmament, gathers together beneath it the seas, or summons
into existence the sun, moon, and planets, and sets them circlin
about the earth
In this sublime work culminated the thought of thousands of years;
the strongest minds accepted it or pretended to accept it, and
nearly two centuries later this conception, in accordance with the
first of the two accounts given in Genesis, was especially enforced
by Bossuet, and received a new lease of life in the Church, both
Catholic and Protestant.[12]
But to these discussions was added yet another, which, beginning in
the early days of the Church, was handed down the ages until it ha
died out among the theologians of our own time.
In the first of the biblical accounts light is created and the
distinction between day and night thereby made on the first day,
while the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day. Masses
of profound theological and pseudo-scientific reasoning have bee
developed to account for this--masses so great that for ages they
have obscured the simple fact that the original text is a precious
revelation to us of one of the most ancient of recorded
beliefs--the belief that light and darkness are entities
independent of the heavenly bodies, and that the sun, moon, and
stars exist not merely to increase light but to "divide the day
from the night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and
for years," and "to rule the day and the night."
Of this belief we find survivals among the early fathers, an
especially in St. Ambrose. In his work on creation he tells us: "W
must remember that the light of day is one thing and the light of
the sun, moon, and stars another--the sun by his rays appearing to
add lustre to the daylight. For before sunrise the day dawns, but
is not in full refulgence, for the sun adds still further to it
splendour." This idea became one of the "treasures of sacred
knowledge committed to the Church," and was faithfully received by
the Middle Ages. The medieval mysteries and miracle plays give
curious evidences of this: In a performance of the creation, when
God separates light from darkness, the stage direction is, "Now a
painted cloth is to be exhibited, one half black and the other half
white." It was also given more permanent form. In the mosaics of
San Marco at Venice, in the frescoes of the Baptistery at Florence
and of the Church of St. Francis at Assisi, and in the altar
carving at Salerno, we find a striking realization of it--the
Creator placing in the heavens two disks or living figures of equal
size, each suitably coloured or inscribed to show that one
represents light and the other darkness. This conception was
without doubt that of the person or persons who compiled from the
Chaldean and other earlier statements the accounts of the creation
in the first of our sacred books.[13]
Thus, down to a period almost within living memory, it was held,
virtually "always, everywhere, and by all," that the universe, a
we now see it, was created literally and directly by the voice or
hands of the Almighty, or by both--out of nothing--in an instant
or in six days, or in both--about four thousand years before the
Christian era--and for the convenience of the dwellers upon th
earth, which was at the base and foundation of the whole structure.
But there had been implanted along through the ages germs of
another growth in human thinking, some of them even as early as the
Babylonian period. In the Assyrian inscriptions we find recorded
the Chaldeo-Babylonian idea of _an evolution_ of the universe out of
the primeval flood or "great deep," and of the animal creation out
of the earth and sea. This idea, recast, partially at least, into
monotheistic form, passed naturally into the sacred books of the
neighbours and pupils of the Chaldeans--the Hebrews; but its growth
in Christendom afterward was checked, as we shall hereafter find,
by the more powerful influence of other inherited statements which
appealed more intelligibly to the mind of the Church
Striking, also, was the effect of this idea as rewrought by the
early Ionian philosophers, to whom it was probably transmitted fro
the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians. In the minds of Ionians lik
Anaximander and Anaximenes it was most clearly developed: the first
of these conceiving of the visible universe as the result of
processes of evolution, and the latter pressing further the same
mode of reasoning, and dwelling on agencies in cosmic development
recognised in modern science.
This general idea of evolution in Nature thus took strong hold upo
Greek thought and was developed in many ways, some ingenious, some
perverse. Plato, indeed, withstood it; but Aristotle sometimes
developed it in a manner which reminds us of modern views
Among the Romans Lucretius caught much from it, extending the
evolutionary process virtually to all things.
In the early Church, as we have seen, the idea of a creation
direct, material, and by means like those used by man, wa
all-powerful for the exclusion of conceptions based on evolution.
From the more simple and crude of the views of creation given in
the Babylonian legends, and thence incorporated into Genesis, rose
the stream of orthodox thought on the subject, which grew into a
flood and swept on through the Middle Ages and into modern times.
Yet here and there in the midst of this flood were high grounds of
thought held by strong men. Scotus Erigena and Duns Scotus, among
the schoolmen, bewildered though they were, had caught some rays of
this ancient light, and passed on to their successors, in modified
form, doctrines of an evolutionary process in the universe
In the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolutionary
theories seemed to take more definite form in the mind of Giordano
Bruno, who evidently divined the fundamental idea of what is no
known as the "nebular hypothesis"; but with his murder by the
Inquisition at Rome this idea seemed utterly to
disappear--dissipated by the flames which in 1600 consumed his body
on the Campo dei Fiori.
Yet within the two centuries divided by Bruno's death the world wa
led into a new realm of thought in which an evolution theory of the
visible universe was sure to be rapidly developed. For there came,
one after the other, five of the greatest men our race has
produced--Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton--and
when their work was done the old theological conception of the
universe was gone. "The spacious firmament on high"--"the
crystalline spheres"--the Almighty enthroned upon "the circle of
the heavens," and with his own lands, or with angels as his agents,
keeping sun, moon, and planets in motion for the benefit of the
earth, opening and closing the "windows of heaven," letting down
upon the earth the "waters above the firmament," "setting his bow
in the cloud," hanging out "signs and wonders," hurling comets,
"casting forth lightnings" to scare the wicked, and "shaking the
earth" in his wrath: all this had disappeared.
These five men had given a new divine revelation to the world; and
through the last, Newton, had come a vast new conception, destined
to be fatal to the old theory of creation, for he had shown
throughout the universe, in place of almighty caprice,
all-pervading law. The bitter opposition of theology to the first
four of these men is well known; but the fact is not so widely
known that Newton, in spite of his deeply religious spirit, was
also strongly opposed. It was vigorously urged against him that by
his statement of the law of gravitation he "took from God that
direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in
Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism," and that he
"substituted gravitation for Providence." But, more than this,
these men gave a new basis for the theory of evolution as
distinguished from the theory of creation.
Especially worthy of note is it that the great work of Descartes,
erroneous as many of its deductions were, and, in view of the lac
of physical knowledge in his time, must be, had done much to weaken
the old conception. His theory of a universe brought out of
all-pervading matter, wrought into orderly arrangement by movements
in accordance with physical laws--though it was but a provisional
hypothesis--had done much to draw men's minds from the old
theological view of creation; it was an example of intellectual
honesty arriving at errors, but thereby aiding the advent of
truths. Crippled though Descartes was by his almost morbid fear of
the Church, this part of his work was no small factor in bringing
in that attitude of mind which led to a reception of the thoughts
of more unfettered thinkers.
Thirty years later came, in England, an effort of a different sort,
but with a similar result. In 1678 Ralph Cudworth published his
_Intellectual System of the Universe_. To this day he remains, in
breadth of scholarship, in strength of thought, in tolerance, an
in honesty, one of the greatest glories of the English Church, and
his work was worthy of him. He purposed to build a fortress which
should protect Christianity against all dangerous theories of the
universe, ancient or modern. The foundations of the structure wer
laid with old thoughts thrown often into new and striking forms;
but, as the superstructure arose more and more into view, while
genius marked every part of it, features appeared which gave the
rigidly orthodox serious misgivings. From the old theories o
direct personal action on the universe by the Almighty he broke
utterly. He dwelt on the action of law, rejected the continuous
exercise of miraculous intervention, pointed out the fact that in
the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles," and argued
vigorously in favour of the origin and maintenance of the universe
as a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an
inward principle. The Balaks of seventeenth-century orthodoxy might
well condemn this honest Balaam.
Toward the end of the next century a still more profound genius,
Immanuel Kant, presented the nebular theory, giving it, in th
light of Newton's great utterances, a consistency which it neve
before had; and about the same time Laplace gave it yet greater
strength by mathematical reasonings of wonderful power and extent,
thus implanting firmly in modern thought the idea that our ow
solar system and others--suns, planets, satellites, and their
various movements, distances, and magnitudes--necessarily resul
from the obedience of nebulous masses to natural laws.
Throughout the theological world there was an outcry at once
against "atheism," and war raged fiercely. Herschel and others
pointed out many nebulous patches apparently gaseous. They showed
by physical and mathematical demonstrations that the hypothesis
accounted for the great body of facts, and, despite clamour, were
gaining ground, when the improved telescopes resolved some of th
patches of nebulous matter into multitudes of stars. The opponents
of the nebular hypothesis were overjoyed; they now sang paans to
astronomy, because, as they said, it had proved the truth of
Scripture. They had jumped to the conclusion that all nebula 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 halted for a time. The accepted doctrine became this: that
the only reason why all the nebula are not resolved into distinct
stars is that our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. But in
time came the discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum analysis,
and thence Fraunhofer's discovery that the spectrum of an ignite
gaseous body is non-continuous, with interrupting lines; an
Draper's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited solid i
continuous, with no interrupting lines. And now the spectroscope
was turned upon the nebula, and many of them were found to be
gaseous. Here, then, was ground for the inference that in these
nebulous masses at different stages of condensation--some
apparently mere pitches of mist, some with luminous centres--we
have the process of development actually going on, and observations
like those of Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confirmation
to this view. Then came the great contribution of the nineteenth
century to physics, aiding to explain important parts of the vast
process by the mechanical theory of heat.
Again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than ever, and
about 1850 the beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rotation of
a fluid globe came in apparently to illustrate if not to confirm
it. Even so determined a defender of orthodoxy as Mr. Gladstone at
last acknowledged some form of a nebular hypothesis as probably true
Here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theological
views to science under the claim that science concurs with
theology, which we have seen in so many other fields; and, as
typical, an example may be given, which, however restricted in its
scope, throws light on the process by which such surrenders are
obtained. A few years since one of the most noted professors of
chemistry in the city of New York, under the auspices of one of its
most fashionable churches, gave a lecture which, as was claimed in
the public prints and in placards posted in the streets, was t
show that science supports the theory of creation given in the
sacred books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assembled, and a
brilliant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen
and carbonic acid was concluded by the Plateau demonstration. It
was beautifully made. As the coloured globule of oil, representing
the earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal density,
as it became flattened at the poles, as rings then broke forth fro
it and revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings
broke into satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about
the central mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and burst
into rapturous applause.
Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of the
audience to the eminent professor for "this perfect demonstratio
of the exact and literal conformity of the statements given in Holy
Scripture with the latest results of science." The motion was
carried unanimously and with applause, and the audience dispersed
feeling that a great service had been rendered to orthodoxy.
_Sancta simplicitas!_
What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen
elsewhere with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage.
Scores of theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in
knowledge, has been Mr. Gladstone, have endeavoured to "reconcile"
the two accounts in Genesis with each other and with the truths
regarding the origin of the universe gained by astronomy, geology,
geography, physics, and chemistry. The result has been recently
stated by an eminent theologian, the Hulsean Professor of Divinity
at the University of Cambridge. He declares, "No attempt at
reconciling genesis with the exacting requirements of modern
sciences has ever been known to succeed without entailing a degree
of special pleading or forced interpretation to which, in such
question, we should be wise to have no recourse."[19]
The revelations of another group of sciences, though sometimes
bitterly opposed and sometimes "reconciled" by theologians, have
finally set the whole question at rest. First, there have come the
biblical critics--earnest Christian scholars, working for the sake
of truth--and these have revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable
doubt the existence of at least two distinct accounts of creation
in our book of Genesis, which can sometimes be forced to agree, but
which are generally absolutely at variance with each other. Thes
scholars have further shown the two accounts to be not the
cunningly devised fables of priestcraft, but evidently fragments of
earlier legends, myths, and theologies, accepted in good faith and
brought together for the noblest of purposes by those who put in
order the first of our sacred books
Next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the devoted
students of ancient monuments and records; of these are such as
Rawlinson, George Smith, Sayce, Oppert, Jensen, Schrader,
Delitzsch, and a phalanx of similarly devoted scholars, who have
deciphered a multitude of ancient texts, especially th
inscriptions found in the great library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh,
and have discovered therein an account of the origin of the world
identical in its most important features with the later accounts in
our own book of Genesis.
These men have had the courage to point out these facts and to
connect them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylonian
myths, legends, and theories were far earlier than those of the
Hebrews, which so strikingly resemble them, and which we have i
our sacred books; and they have also shown us how natural it was
that the Jewish accounts of the creation should have been obtained
at that remote period when the earliest Hebrews were among the
Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew poetic accounts of creatio
were drawn either from the sacred traditions of these earlier
peoples or from antecedent sources common to various ancient nations.
In a summary which for profound thought and fearless integrity does
honour not only to himself but to the great position which he
holds, the Rev. Dr. Driver, Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ
Church at Oxford, has recently stated the case fully and fairly
Having pointed out the fact that the Hebrews were one people out of
many who thought upon the origin of the universe, he says that they
"framed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth and man"
that "they either did this for themselves or borrowed those of
their neighbours"; that "of the theories current in Assyria and
Phoenicia fragments have been preserved, and these exhibit points
of resemblance with the biblical narrative sufficient to warrant
the inference that both are derived from the same cycle of tradition.
After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation tablets he
says: "In the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same
source as these other records. The biblical historians, it is
plain, derived their materials from the best human sources
available.... The materials which with other nations were combined
into the crudest physical theories or associated with a grotesque
polytheism were vivified and transformed by the inspired genius of
the Hebrew historians, and adapted to become the vehicle o
profound religious truth."
Not less honourable to the sister university and to himself is the
statement recently made by the Rev. Dr. Ryle, Hulsean Professor of
Divinity at Cambridge. He says that to suppose that a Christian
"must either renounce his confidence in the achievements of
scientific research or abandon his faith in Scripture is
monstrous perversion of Christian freedom." He declares: "The ol
position is no longer tenable; a new position has to be taken up
at once, prayerfully chosen, and hopefully held." He then goes on
to compare the Hebrew story of creation with the earlier stories
developed among kindred peoples, and especially with the
pre-existing Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they ar
from the same source. He points out that any attempt to explain
particular features of the story into harmony with the modern
scientific ideas necessitates "a non-natural" interpretation; but
he says that, if we adopt a natural interpretation, "we shall
consider that the Hebrew description of the visible universe is
unscientific as judged by modern standards, and that it shares the
limitations of the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was
committed to writing." Regarding the account in Genesis of man's
physical origin, he says that it "is expressed in the simple terms
of prehistoric legend, of unscientific pictorial description."
In these statements and in a multitude of others made by eminent
Christian investigators in other countries is indicated what the
victory is which has now been fully won over the older theology.
Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other sources
it has come to be acknowledged by the most eminent scholars at the
leading seats of Christian learning that the accounts of creation
with which for nearly two thousand years all scientific discoveries
have had to be "reconciled"--the accounts which blocked the way of
Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and Laplace--were simply
transcribed or evolved from a mass of myths and legends largely
derived by the Hebrews from their ancient relations with Chaldea,
rewrought in a monotheistic sense, imperfectly welded together, and then
thrown into poetic forms in the sacred books which we have inherited.
On one hand, then, we have the various groups of men devoted to the
physical sciences all converging toward the proofs that the
universe, as we at present know it, is the result of an
evolutionary process--that is, of the gradual working of physical
laws upon an early condition of matter; on the other hand, we have
other great groups of men devoted to historical, philological, and
archaeological science whose researches all converge toward th
conclusion that our sacred accounts of creation were the result o
an evolution from an early chaos of rude opinion.
The great body of theologians who have so long resisted th
conclusions of the men of science have claimed to be fightin
especially for "the truth of Scripture," and their final answer to
the simple conclusions of science regarding the evolution of the
material universe has been the cry, "The Bible is true." And they
are right--though in a sense nobler than they have dreamed.
Science, while conquering them, has found in our Scriptures a far
nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for which
theologians have so long and so vainly contended. More and more a
we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are
brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great
sacred books of the world is found in their revelation of the
steady striving of our race after higher conceptions, beliefs, and
aspirations, both in morals and religion. Unfolding and exhibiting
this long-continued effort, each of the great sacred books of the
world is precious, and all, in the highest sense, are true. Not one
of them, indeed, conforms to the measure of what mankind has now
reached in historical and scientific truth; to make a claim to suc
conformity is folly, for it simply exposes those who make it and
the books for which it is made to loss of their just influence.
That to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and ou
own most of all, is the evolution of the highest conceptions,
beliefs, and aspirations of our race from its childhood through the
great turning-points in its history. Herein lies the truth of all
bibles, and especially of our own. Of vast value they indeed often
are as a record of historical outward fact; recent researches in
the East are constantly increasing this value; but it is not for
this that we prize them most: they are eminently precious, not as
a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart,
mind, and soul of man. They are true because they have bee
developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of
truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle, code,
legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of
what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are
not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a
planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the
universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book
of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere,
the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration,
whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Persia, the compilers of
our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming
more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new
heaven and a new earth for the old--the reign of law for the reign
of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation--has
added and is steadily adding a new revelation divinely inspired
In the light of these two evolutions, then--one of the visible
universe, the other of a sacred creation-legend--science and
theology, if the master minds in both are wise, may at last be
reconciled. A great step in this reconciliation was recently seen
at the main centre of theological thought among English-speaking
people, when, in the collection of essays entitled _Lux Mundi_,
emanating from the college established in these latter days as a
fortress of orthodoxy at Oxford, the legendary character of the
creation accounts in our sacred books was acknowledged, and when
the Archbishop of Canterbury asked, "May not the Holy Spirit at
times have made use of myth and legend?"[24]
II. THEOLOGICAL TEACHINGS REGARDING THE ANIMALS AND MAN.
IN one of the windows of the cathedral at Ulm a mediaeval
glass-stainer has represented the Almighty as busily engaged in
creating the animals, and there has just left the divine hands a
elephant fully accoutred, with armour, harness, and housings
ready-for war. Similar representations appear in illuminate
manuscripts and even in early printed books, and, as the
culmination of the whole, the Almighty is shown as fashioning the
first man from a hillock of clay and extracting from his side,
with evident effort, the first woman.
This view of the general process of creation had come from far,
appearing under varying forms in various ancient cosmogonies. In
the Egyptian temples at Philae and Denderah may still be seen
representations of the Nile gods modelling lumps of clay into men,
and a similar work is ascribed in the Assyrian tablets to the gods
of Babylonia. Passing into our own sacred books, these ideas became
the starting point of a vast new development of theology[25]
The fathers of the Church generally received each of the two
conflicting creation legends in Genesis literally, and then, having
done their best to reconcile them with each other and to mould them
together, made them the final test of thought upon the universe and
all things therein. At the beginning of the fourth centur
Lactantius struck the key-note of this mode of subordinating all
other things in the study of creation to the literal text of
Scripture, and he enforces his view of the creation of man by a bit
of philology, saying the final being created "is called man because
he is made from the ground--_homo ex humo_."
In the second half of the same century this view as to the literal
acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by St. Ambrose, who
in his work on the creation, declared that "Moses opened his mouth
and poured forth what God had said to him." But a greater than
either of them fastened this idea into the Christian theologies.
St. Augustine, preparing his _Commentary on the Book of Genesis_,
laid down in one famous sentence the law which has lasted in the
Church until our own time: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the
authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all
the powers of the human mind." The vigour of the sentence in its
original Latin carried it ringing down the centuries: "_Major est
Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas_."
Through the mediaeval period, in spite of a revolt led by no other
than St. Augustine himself, and followed by a series of influential
churchmen, contending, as we shall hereafter see, for a
modification of the accepted view of creation, this phrase held the
minds of men firmly. The great Dominican encyclopaedist, Vincent of
Beauvais, in his _Mirror of Nature_, while mixing ideas brought fro
Aristotle with a theory drawn from the Bible, stood firmly by the
first of the accounts given in Genesis, and assigned the special
virtue of the number six as a reason why all things were created i
six days; and in the later Middle Ages that eminent authority,
Cardinal d' Ailly, accepted everything regarding creation in the
sacred books literally. Only a faint dissent is seen in Gregory
Reisch, another authority of this later period, who, while giving,
in his book on the beginning of things, a full length woodcut
showing the Almighty in the act of extracting Eve from Adam's side,
with all the rest of new-formed Nature in the background, leans in
his writings, like St. Augustine, toward a belief in the
pre-existence of matter.
At the Reformation the vast authority of Luther was thrown in
favour of the literal acceptance of Scripture as the main source of
natural science. The allegorical and mystical interpretations of
earlier theologians he utterly rejected. "Why," he asks, "should
Moses use allegory when he is not speaking of allegorical creature
or of an allegorical world, but of real creatures and of a visible
world, which can be seen, felt, and grasped? Moses calls things by
their right names, as we ought to do.... I hold that the animals
took their being at once upon the word of God, as did also the
fishes in the sea."
Not less explicit in his adherence to the literal account o
creation given in Genesis was Calvin. He warns those who, by taking
another view than his own, "basely insult the Creator, to expect a
judge who will annihilate them." He insists that all species of
animals were created in six days, each made up of an evening and a
morning, and that no new species has ever appeared since. He dwells
on the production of birds from the water as resting upon certain
warrant of Scripture, but adds, "If the question is to be argued on
physical grounds, we know that water is more akin to air than the
earth is." As to difficulties in the scriptural account of
creation, he tells us that God "wished by these to give proofs of
his power which should fill us with astonishment."
The controlling minds in the Roman Church steadfastly held thi
view. In the seventeenth century Bossuet threw his vast authority
in its favour, and in his _Discourse on Universal History_, which
has remained the foundation not only of theological but of general
historical teaching in France down to the present republic, we fin
him calling attention to what he regards as the culminating act of
creation, and asserting that, literally, for the creation of man
earth was used, and "the finger of God applied to corruptible matter."
The Protestant world held this idea no less persistently. In the
seventeenth century Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of th
University of Cambridge, the great rabbinical scholar of his time,
attempted to reconcile the two main legends in Genesis by saying
that of the "clean sort of beasts there were seven of every kind
created, three couples for breeding and the odd one for Adam's
sacrifice on his fall, which God foresaw"; and that of unclean
beasts only one couple was created.
So literal was this whole conception of the work of creation that
in these days it can scarcely be imagined. The Almighty was
represented in theological literature, in the pictured Bibles, and
in works of art generally, as a sort of enlarged and venerable
Nuremberg toymaker. At times the accounts in Genesis were
illustrated with even more literal exactness; thus, in connection
with a well-known passage in the sacred text, the Creator was shown
as a tailor, seated, needle in hand, diligently sewing together
skins of beasts into coats for Adam and Eve. Such representations
presented no difficulties to the docile minds of the Middle Ages
and the Reformation period; and in the same spirit, when the
discovery of fossils began to provoke thought, these were declare
to be "models of his works approved or rejected by the grea
Artificer," "outlines of future creations," "sports of Nature," o
"objects placed in the strata to bring to naught human curiosity";
and this kind of explanation lingered on until in our own time an
eminent naturalist, in his anxiety to save the literal account in
Genesis, has urged that Jehovah tilted and twisted the strata,
scattered the fossils through them, scratched the glacial furrows
upon them, spread over them the marks of erosion by water, and set
Niagara pouring--all in an instant--thus mystifying the world "fo
some inscrutable purpose, but for his own glory."[28]
The next important development of theological reasoning had regard
to the _divisions_ of the animal kingdom.
Naturally, one of the first divisions which struck the inquiring
mind was that between useful and noxious creatures, and th
question therefore occurred, How could a good God create tigers an
serpents, thorns and thistles? The answer was found in theological
considerations upon _sin_. To man's first disobedience all woes were
due. Great men for eighteen hundred years developed the theory that
before Adam's disobedience there was no death, and therefor
neither ferocity nor venom
Some typical utterances in the evolution of this doctrine are
worthy of a passing glance. St. Augustine expressly confirmed and
emphasized the view that the vegetable as well as the animal
kingdom was cursed on account of man's sin. Two hundred years later
this utterance had been echoed on from father to father of the
Church until it was caught by Bede; he declared that before man's
fall animals were harmless, but were made poisonous or hurtful by
Adam's sin, and he said, "Thus fierce and poisonous animals were
created for terrifying man (because God foresaw that he would sin),
in order that he might be made aware of the final punishment of hell."
In the twelfth century this view was incorporated by Peter Lombard
into his great theological work, the _Sentences_, which became a
text-book of theology through the middle ages. He affirmed that "no
created things would have been hurtful to man had he not sinned;
they became hurtful for the sake of terrifying and punishing vice
or of proving and perfecting virtue; they were created harmless,
and on account of sin became hurtful.
This theological theory regarding animals was brought out in the
eighteenth century with great force by John Wesley. He declared
that before Adam's sin "none of these attempted to devour or in
any wise hurt one another"; "the spider was as harmless as the
fly, and did not lie in wait for blood." Not only Wesley, but the
eminent Dr. Adam Clarke and Dr. Richard Watson, whose ideas had the
very greatest weight among the English Dissenters, and even among
leading thinkers in the Established Church, held firmly to thi
theory; so that not until, in our own time, geology revealed the
remains of vast multitudes of carnivorous creatures, many of them
with half-digested remains of other animals in their stomachs, al
extinct long ages before the appearance of man upon earth, was a
victory won by science over theology in this field.
A curious development of this doctrine was seen in the belief drawn
by sundry old commentators from the condemnation of the serpent in
Genesis--a belief, indeed, perfectly natural, since it was
evidently that of the original writers of the account preserved in
the first of our sacred books. This belief was that, until the
tempting serpent was cursed by the Almighty, all serpents stood
erect, walked, and talked
This belief was handed down the ages as part of "the sacred
deposit of the faith" until Watson, the most prolific writer of
the evangelical reform in the eighteenth century and the standard
theologian of the evangelical party, declared: "We have no reason
at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode
or degree until its transformation; that he was then degraded to a
reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the contrary, an entire
loss and alteration of the original form." Here, again, was a ripe
result of the theologic method diligently pursued by the strongest
thinkers in the Church during nearly two thousand years; but this
"sacred deposit" also faded away when the geologists found
abundant remains of fossil serpents dating from periods long before
the appearance of man.
Troublesome questions also arose among theologians regarding
animals classed as "superfluous." St. Augustine was especially
exercised thereby. He says: "I confess I am ignorant why mice and
frogs were created, or flies and worms.... All creatures are eithe
useful, hurtful, or superfluous to us.... As for the hurtful
creatures, we are either punished, or disciplined, or terrified by
them, so that we may not cherish and love this life." As to the
"superfluous animals," he says, "Although they are not necessary
for our service, yet the whole design of the universe is thereby
completed and finished." Luther, who followed St. Augustine in so
many other matters, declined to follow him fully in this. To him a
fly was not merely superfluous, it was noxious--sent by the devil
to vex him when reading.
Another subject which gave rise to much searching of Scripture and
long trains of theological reasoning was the difference between th
creation of man and that of other living beings.
Great stress was laid by theologians, from St. Basil and St
Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet, and from Luther t
Wesley, on the radical distinction indicated in Genesis, God having
created man "in his own image." What this statement meant was seen
in the light of the later biblical statement that "Adam begat Seth
in his own likeness, after his image."
In view of this and of well-known texts incorporated from older
creation legends into the Hebrew sacred books it came to be widely
held that, while man was directly moulded and fashioned separately
by the Creator's hand, the animals generally were evoked in numbers
from the earth and sea by the Creator's voice
A question now arose naturally as to the _distinctions of species
among animals. The Vast majority of theologians agreed in
representing all animals as created "in the beginning," and named
by Adam, preserved in the ark, and continued ever afterward under
exactly the same species. This belief ripened into a dogma. Like so
many other dogmas in the Church, Catholic and Protestant, its real
origins are to be found rather in pagan philosophy than in th
Christian Scriptures; it came far more from Plato and Aristotle
than from Moses and St. Paul. But this was not considered: more and
more it became necessary to believe that each and every difference
of species was impressed by the Creator "in the beginning," and
that no change had taken place or could have taken place since.
Some difficulties arose here and there as zoology progressed an
revealed ever-increasing numbers of species; but through the Middle
Ages, and indeed long after the Reformation, these difficulties
were easily surmounted by making the ark of Noah larger and larger,
and especially by holding that there had been a human error in
regard to its measurement.[31]
But naturally there was developed among both ecclesiastics and
laymen a human desire to go beyond these special points in the
history of animated beings--a desire to know what the creation
really _is_.
Current legends, stories, and travellers' observations, poor as
they were, tended powerfully to stimulate curiosity in this field.
Three centuries before the Christian era Aristotle had made the
first really great attempt to satisfy this curiosity, and had begun
a development of studies in natural history which remains one of
the leading achievements in the story of our race
But the feeling which we have already seen so strong in the earl
Church--that all study of Nature was futile in view of the
approaching end of the world--indicated so clearly in the New
Testament and voiced so powerfully by Lactantius and St.
Augustine--held back this current of thought for many centuries.
Still, the better tendency in humanity continued to assert itself.
There was, indeed, an influence coming from the Hebrew Scriptures
themselves which wrought powerfully to this end; for, in spite of
all that Lactantius or St. Augustine might say as to the futility
of any study of Nature, the grand utterances in the Psalms
regarding the beauties and wonders of creation, in all the glow of
the truest poetry, ennobled the study even among those whom logic
drew away from it.
But, as a matter of course, in the early Church and throughout the
Middle Ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mould.
Without some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual
edification they were considered futile too much prying into th
secrets of Nature was very generally held to be dangerous both t
body and soul; only for showing forth God's glory and his purposes
in the creation were such studies praiseworthy. The great work of
Aristotle was under eclipse. The early Christian thinkers gave
little attention to it, and that little was devoted to transforming
it into something absolutely opposed to his whole spirit and
method; in place of it they developed the _Physiologus_ and the
Bestiaries, mingling scriptural statements, legends of the saints,
and fanciful inventions with pious intent and childlike simplicity.
In place of research came authority--the authority of the
Scriptures as interpreted by the _Physio Cogus_ and the
Bestiaries--and these remained the principal source of thought on
animated Nature for over a thousand years
Occasionally, indeed, fear was shown among the rulers in th
Church, even at such poor prying into the creation as this, and in
the fifth century a synod under Pope Gelasius administered a rebuke
to the _Physiologus_; but the interest in Nature was too strong:
the great work on _Creation_ by St. Basil had drawn from the
_Physiologus_ precious illustrations of Holy Writ, and the strongest
of the early popes, Gregory the Great, virtually sanctioned it.
Thus was developed a sacred science of creation and of the divine
purpose in Nature, which went on developing from the fourth century
to the nineteenth--from St. Basil to St. Isidore of Seville, from
Isidore to Vincent of Beauvais, and from Vincent to Archdeaco
Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises
Like all else in the Middle Ages, this sacred science was developed
purely by theological methods. Neglecting the wonders which the
dissection of the commonest animals would have afforded them, these
naturalists attempted to throw light into Nature by ingenious use
of scriptural texts, by research among the lives of the saints, and
by the plentiful application of metaphysics. Hence even such strong
men as St. Isidore of Seville treasured up accounts of the unicorn
and dragons mentioned in the Scriptures and of the phoenix and
basilisk in profane writings. Hence such contributions to knowledge
as that the basilisk kills serpents by his breath and men by his
glance, that the lion when pursued effaces his tracks with the end
of his tail, that the pelican nourishes her young with her own
blood, that serpents lay aside their venom before drinking, that
the salamander quenches fire, that the hyena can talk with
shepherds, that certain birds are born of the fruit of a certain
tree when it happens to fall into the water, with other masses of
science equally valuable.
As to the method of bringing science to bear on Scripture, the
_Physiologus_ gives an example, illustrating the passage in the book
of Job which speaks of the old lion perishing for lack of prey. Out
of the attempt to explain an unusual Hebrew word in the text there
came a curious development of error, until we find fully evolved a
account of the "ant-lion," which, it gives us to understand, was
the lion mentioned by Job, and it says: "As to the ant-lion, his
father hath the shape of a lion, his mother that of an ant; the
father liveth upon flesh and the mother upon herbs; these bring
forth the ant-lion, a compound of both and in part like to either;
for his fore part is like that of a lion and his hind part like
that of an ant. Being thus composed, he is neither able to eat
flesh like his father nor herbs like his mother, and so he perisheth."
In the middle of the thirteenth century we have a triumph of this
theological method in the great work of the English Francisca
Bartholomew on _The Properties of Things_. The theological method as
applied to science consists largely in accepting tradition and in
spinning arguments to fit it. In this field Bartholomew was a
master. Having begun with the intent mainly to explain the
allusions in Scripture to natural objects, he soon rises logically
into a survey of all Nature. Discussing the "cockatrice" of
Scripture, he tells us: "He drieth and burneth leaves with his
touch, and he is of so great venom and perilous that he slayeth and
wasteth him that nigheth him without tarrying; and yet the weasel
overcometh him, for the biting of the weasel is death to the
cockatrice. Nevertheless the biting of the cockatrice is death to
the weasel if the weasel eat not rue before. And though the
cockatrice be venomous without remedy while he is alive, yet he
looseth all the malice when he is burnt to ashes. His ashes be
accounted profitable in working of alchemy, and namely in turning
and changing of metals."
Bartholomew also enlightens us on the animals of Egypt, and says,
"If the crocodile findeth a man by the water's brim he slayeth
him, and then he weepeth over him and swalloweth him."
Naturally this good Franciscan naturalist devotes much thought t
the "dragons" mentioned in Scripture. He says: "The dragon is
most greatest of all serpents, and oft he is drawn out of his den
and riseth up into the air, and the air is moved by him, and also
the sea swelleth against his venom, and he hath a crest, and
reareth his tongue, and hath teeth like a saw, and hath strength,
and not only in teeth but in tail, and grieveth with biting and
with stinging. Whom he findeth he slayeth. Oft four or five of them
fasten their tails together and rear up their heads, and sail over
the sea to get good meat. Between elephants and dragons is
everlasting fighting; for the dragon with his tail spanneth the
elephant, and the elephant with his nose throweth down the
dragon.... The cause why the dragon desireth his blood is the
coldness thereof, by the which the dragon desireth to cool himself.
Jerome saith that the dragon is a full thirsty beast, insomuch that
he openeth his mouth against the wind to quench the burning of his
thirst in that wise. Therefore, when he seeth ships in great wind
he flieth against the sail to take the cold wind, and overthroweth
the ship."
These ideas of Friar Bartholomew spread far and struck deep into
the popular mind. His book was translated into the principal
languages of Europe, and was one of those most generally read
during the Ages of Faith. It maintained its position nearly three
hundred years; even after the invention of printing it held its
own, and in the fifteenth century there were issued no less than
ten editions of it in Latin, four in French, and various versions
of it in Dutch, Spanish, and English. Preachers found it especially
useful in illustrating the ways of God to man. It was only when the
great voyages of discovery substituted ascertained fact fo
theological reasoning in this province that its authority was broken.
The same sort of science flourished in the _Bestiaries_, which were
used everywhere, and especially in the pulpits, for the edification
of the faithful. In all of these, as in that compiled early in the
thirteenth century by an ecclesiastic, William of Normandy, we have
this lesson, borrowed from the _Physiologus_: "The lioness giveth
birth to cubs which remain three days without life. Then cometh the
lion, breatheth upon them, and bringeth them to life.... Thus it is
that Jesus Christ during three days was deprived of life, but Go
the Father raised him gloriously."
Pious use was constantly made of this science, especially by
monkish preachers. The phoenix rising from his ashes proves the
doctrine of the resurrection; the structure and mischief of monkeys
proves the existence of demons; the fact that certain monkeys have
no tails proves that Satan has been shorn of his glory; the weasel,
which "constantly changes its place, is a type of the man
estranged from the word of God, who findeth no rest."
The moral treatises of the time often took the form of works on
natural history, in order the more fully to exploit these religious
teachings of Nature. Thus from the book _On Bees_, the Dominican
Thomas of Cantimpre, we learn that "wasps persecute bees and make war
on them out of natural hatred"; and these, he tells us, typify the
demons who dwell in the air and with lightning and tempest assail
and vex mankind--whereupon he fills a long chapter with anecdotes
of such demonic warfare on mortals. In like manner hi
fellow-Dominican, the inquisitor Nider, in his book _The Ant Hill_,
teaches us that the ants in Ethiopia, which are said to have horns
and to grow so large as to look like dogs, are emblems of atrocious
heretics, like Wyclif and the Hussites, who bark and bite against
the truth; while the ants of India, which dig up gold out of the
sand with their feet and hoard it, though they make no use of it,
symbolize the fruitless toil with which the heretics dig out the
gold of Holy Scripture and hoard it in their books to no purpose.
This pious spirit not only pervaded science; it bloomed out in art,
and especially in the cathedrals. In the gargoyles overhanging the
walls, in the grotesques clambering about the towers or perche
upon pinnacles, in the dragons prowling under archways or lurkin
in bosses of foliage, in the apocalyptic beasts carved upon the
stalls of the choir, stained into the windows, wrought into the
tapestries, illuminated in the letters and borders of psalters and
missals, these marvels of creation suggested everywhere morals from
the Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and the Exempla.[36
Here and there among men who were free from church control we have
work of a better sort. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Abd
Allatif made observations upon the natural history of Egypt which
showed a truly scientific spirit, and the Emperor Frederick II
attempted to promote a more fruitful study of Nature; but one of
these men was abhorred as a Mussulman and the other as an infidel.
Far more in accordance with the spirit of the time was the
ecclesiastic Giraldus Cambrensis, whose book on the topography of
Ireland bestows much attention upon the animals of the island, and
rarely fails to make each contribute an appropriate moral. For
example, he says that in Ireland "eagles live for so many ages tha
they seem to contend with eternity itself; so also the saints,
having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed
fruit of everlasting life." Again, he tells us: "Eagles often fly
so high that their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in
the Holy Scriptures strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets
of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what is allowed, fall below, a
if the wings of the presumptuous imaginations on which they are
borne were scorched."
In one of the great men of the following century appeared a gleam
of healthful criticism: Albert the Great, in his work on the
animals, dissents from the widespread belief that certain bird
spring from trees and are nourished by the sap, and also from the
theory that some are generated in the sea from decaying wood.
But it required many generations for such scepticism to produce
much effect, and we find among the illustrations in an edition of
Mandeville published just before the Reformation not only careful
accounts but pictured representations both of birds and of beasts
produced in the fruit of trees.[37]
This general employment of natural science for pious purposes went
on after the Reformation. Luther frequently made this use of it,
and his example controlled his followers. In 1612, Wolfgang Franz,
Professor of Theology at Luther's university, gave to the world hi
sacred history of animals, which went through many editions. It
contained a very ingenious classification, describing "natural
dragons," which have three rows of teeth to each jaw, and he
piously adds, "the principal dragon is the Devil."
Near the end of the same century, Father Kircher, the great Jesuit
professor at Rome, holds back the sceptical current, insists upon
the orthodox view, and represents among the animals entering the
ark sirens and griffins.
Yet even among theologians we note here and there a sceptica
spirit in natural science. Early in the same seventeenth centur
Eugene Roger published his _Travels in Palestine_. As regards the
utterances of Scripture he is soundly orthodox: he prefaces his
work with a map showing, among other important points referred to
in biblical history, the place where Samson slew a thousand
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, the cavern which Adam and
Eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise, the spot where
Balaam's ass spoke, the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel,
the steep place down which the swine possessed of devils plunged
into the sea, the position of the salt statue which was once Lot's
wife, the place at sea where Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "the
exact spot where St. Peter caught one hundred and fifty-three fishes."
As to natural history, he describes and discusses with great
theological acuteness the basilisk. He tells us that the animal is
about a foot and a half long, is shaped like a crocodile, and kills
people with a single glance. The one which he saw was dead,
fortunately for him, since in the time of Pope Leo IV--as he tells
us--one appeared in Rome and killed many people by merely looking
at them; but the Pope destroyed it with his prayers and the sign of
the cross. He informs us that Providence has wisely and mercifull
protected man by requiring the monster to cry aloud two or three
times whenever it leaves its den, and that the divine wisdom in
creation is also shown by the fact that the monster is obliged to
look its victim in the eye, and at a certain fixed distance, before
its glance can penetrate the victim's brain and so pass to his
heart. He also gives a reason for supposing that the same divine
mercy has provided that the crowing of a cock will kill the basilisk.
Yet even in this good and credulous missionary we see the
influence of Bacon and the dawn of experimental science; for,
having been told many stories regarding the salamander, he secured
one, placed it alive upon the burning coals, and reports to us that
the legends concerning its power to live in the fire are untrue. He
also tried experiments with the chameleon, and found that the storie
told of it were to be received with much allowance: while, then, h
locks up his judgment whenever he discusses the letter of Scripture,
he uses his mind in other things much after the modern method.
In the second half of the same century Hottinger, in hi
_Theological Examination of the History of Creation_, breaks from
the belief in the phoenix; but his scepticism is carefully kept
within the limits imposed by Scripture. He avows his doubts, first,
"because God created the animals in couples, while the phoenix is
represented as a single, unmated creature"; secondly, "because
Noah, when he entered the ark, brought the animals in by sevens,
while there were never so many individuals of the phoenix species"
thirdly, because "no man is known who dares assert that he has
ever seen this bird"; fourthly, because "those who assert there
is a phoenix differ among themselves."
In view of these attacks on the salamander and the phoenix, we are
not surprised to find, before the end of the century, scepticism
regarding the basilisk: the eminent Prof. Kirchmaier, at the
University of Wittenberg, treats phoenix and basilisk alike as old
wives' fables. As to the phoenix, he denies its existence, not only
because Noah took no such bird into the ark, but also because, a
he pithily remarks, "birds come from eggs, not from ashes." Bu
the unicorn he can not resign, nor will he even concede that the
unicorn is a rhinoceros; he appeals to Job and to Marco Polo to
prove that this animal, as usually conceived, really exists, and
says, "Who would not fear to deny the existence of the unicorn,
since Holy Scripture names him with distinct praises?" As to the
other great animals mentioned in Scripture, he is so rationalisti
as to admit that behemoth was an elephant and leviathan a whale.
But these germs of a fruitful scepticism grew, and we soon find
Dannhauer going a step further and declaring his disbelief even in
the unicorn, insisting that it was a rhinoceros--only that an
nothing more. Still, the main current continued strongly
theological. In 1712 Samuel Bochart published his great work upo
the animals of Holy Scripture. As showing its spirit we may take
the titles of the chapters on the horse:
"Chapter VI. Of the Hebrew Name of the Horse."
"Chapter VII. Of the Colours of the Six Horses in Zechariah."
"Chapter VIII. Of the Horses in Job."
"Chapter IX. Of Solomon's Horses, and of the Texts wherein the
Writers praise the Excellence of Horses."
"Chapter X. Of the Consecrated Horses of the Sun."
Among the other titles of chapters are such as: Of Balaam's Ass; Of
the Thousand Philistines slain by Samson with the Jawbone of an
Ass; Of the Golden Calves of Aaron and Jeroboam; Of the Bleating,
Milk, Wool, External and Internal Parts of Sheep mentioned in
Scripture; Of Notable Things told regarding Lions in Scripture; O
Noah's Dove and of the Dove which appeared at Christ's Baptism.
Mixed up in the book, with the principal mass drawn from Scripture,
were many facts and reasonings taken from investigations by
naturalists; but all were permeated by the theological spirit.[40
The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two
thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the
sixteenth century some promising beginnings of a different
method--the method of inquiry into Nature scientifically--th
method which seeks not plausibilities but facts. At that time
Edward Wotton led the way in England and Conrad Gesner on th
Continent, by observations widely extended, carefully noted, and
thoughtfully classified.
This better method of interrogating Nature soon led to the
formation of societies for the same purpose. In 1560 was founded an
Academy for the Study of Nature at Naples, but theologians
becoming alarmed, suppressed it, and for nearly one hundred years
there was no new combined effort of that sort, until in 1645 began
the meetings in London of what was afterward the Royal Society
Then came the Academy of Sciences in France, and the Accademia del
Cimento in Italy; others followed in all parts of the world, and a
great new movement was begun.
Theologians soon saw a danger in this movement. In Italy, Prince
Leopold de' Medici, a protector of the Florentine Academy, was
bribed with a cardinal's hat to neglect it, and from the days of
Urban VIII to Pius IX a similar spirit was there shown. In France,
there were frequent ecclesiastical interferences, of which Buffon's
humiliation for stating a simple scientific truth was a note
example. In England, Protestantism was at first hardly more
favourable toward the Royal Society, and the great Dr. South
denounced it in his sermons as irreligious
Fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between theology
and science: while new investigators had mainly given up the
medieval method so dear to the Church, they had very generally
retained the conception of direct creation and of design throughou
creation--a design having as its main purpose the profit,
instruction, enjoyment, and amusement of man.
On this the naturally opposing tendencies of theology and science
were compromised. Science, while somewhat freed from its old
limitations, became the handmaid of theology in illustrating the
doctrine of creative design, and always with apparent deference t
the Chaldean and other ancient myths and legends embodied in the
Hebrew sacred books.
About the middle of the seventeenth century came a great victory of
the scientific over the theologic method. At that time Francesco
Redi published the results of his inquiries into the doctrine of
spontaneous generation. For ages a widely accepted doctrine had
been that water, filth, and carrion had received power from the
Creator to generate worms, insects, and a multitude of the smaller
animals; and this doctrine had been especially welcomed by St.
Augustine and many of the fathers, since it relieved the Almighty
of making, Adam of naming, and Noah of living in the ark with these
innumerable despised species. But to this fallacy Redi put an end
By researches which could not be gainsaid, he showed that every one
of these animals came from an egg; each, therefore, must be the
lineal descendant of an animal created, named, and preserved from
"the beginning."
Similar work went on in England, but under more distinctly
theological limitations. In the same seventeenth century a very
famous and popular English book was published by the naturalist
John Ray, a fellow of the Royal Society, who produced a number o
works on plants, fishes, and birds; but the most widely read of all
was entitled _The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of
Creation_. Between the years 1691 and 1827 it passed through nearly
twenty editions
Ray argued the goodness and wisdom of God from the adaptation of the
animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives and surroundings.
In the first years of the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew, of
the Royal Society, published his _Cosmologia Sacra_ to refute
anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design.
Discussing "the ends of Providence," he says, "A crane, which is
scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheasant and
partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or twenty."
He points to the fact that "those of value which lay few at a time
sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove." He breaks decidedly
from the doctrine that noxious things in Nature are caused by sin,
and shows that they, too, are useful; that, "if nettles sting, it
is to secure an excellent medicine for children and cattle";
that, "if the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better hedge";
and that, "if it chances to prick the owner, it tears the thief."
"Weasels, kites, and other hurtful animals induce us to
watchfulness; thistles and moles, to good husbandry; lice oblige
us to cleanliness in our bodies, spiders in our houses, and the
moth in our clothes." This very optimistic view, triumphing over
the theological theory of noxious animals and plants as effects of
sin, which prevailed with so much force from St. Augustine to
Wesley, was developed into nobler form during the century by
various thinkers, and especially by Archdeacon Paley, whose
_Natural Theology_ exercised a powerful influence down to recent
times. The same tendency appeared in other countries, though
various philosophers showed weak points in the argument, and Goethe
made sport of it in a noted verse, praising the forethought of the
Creator in foreordaining the cork tree to furnish stoppers fo
wine-bottles.
Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century the main
movement culminated in the _Bridgewater Treatises_. Pursuant to th
will of the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, the President of the Royal
Society selected eight persons, each to receive a thousand pounds
sterling for writing and publishing a treatise on the "power,
wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation." O
these, the leading essays in regard to animated Nature were those
of Thomas Chalmers, on _The Adaptation of External Nature to the
Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man_; of Sir Charles Bell, on
_The Hand as evincing Design_; of Roget, on _Animal and Vegetabl
Physiology with reference to Natural Theology_; and of Kirby, on _The
Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural Theology_.
Besides these there were treatises by Whewell, Buckland, Kidd, and
Prout. The work was well done. It was a marked advance on all that
had appeared before, in matter, method, and spirit. Looking back
upon it now we can see that it was provisional, but that it was
none the less fruitful in truth, and we may well remember Darwin's
remark on the stimulating effect of mistaken _theories_, as
compared with the sterilizing effect of mistaken _observations_:
mistaken observations lead men astray, mistaken theories suggest
true theories.
An effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the
ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it.
Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms
has been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of
orthodoxy. No less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than th
Rev. Prof. Zoeckler says of this movement to demonstrate creative
purpose and design, and of the men who took part in it, "The earth
appeared in their representation of it like a great clothing shop
and soup kitchen, and God as a glorified rationalistic professor.
Such a statement as this is far from just to the conceptions o
such men as Butler, Paley, and Chalmers, no matter how fully th
thinking world has now outlived them.[44]
But, noble as the work of these men was, the foundation of fact on
which they reared it became evidently more and more insecure.
For as far back as the seventeenth century acute theologians had
begun to discern difficulties more serious than any that had before
confronted them. More and more it was seen that the number of
different species was far greater than the world had hitherto
imagined. Greater and greater had become the old difficulty in
conceiving that, of these innumerable species, each had bee
specially created by the Almighty hand; that each had been brought
before Adam by the Almighty to be named; and that each, in couple
or in sevens, had been gathered by Noah into the ark. But the
difficulties thus suggested were as nothing compared to those
raised by the _distribution_ of animals.
Even in the first days of the Church this had aroused serious
thought, and above all in the great mind of St. Augustine. In his
_City of God_ he had stated the difficulty as follows: "But there
is a question about all these kinds of beasts, which are neither
tamed by man, nor spring from the earth like frogs, such as wolve
and others of that sort,... as to how they could find their way to
the islands after that flood which destroyed every living thing not
preserved in the ark.... Some, indeed, might be thought to reach
islands by swimming, in case these were very near; but some islands
are so remote from continental lands that it does not seem possible
that any creature could reach them by swimming. It is not an
incredible thing, either, that some animals may have been captured
by men and taken with them to those lands which they intended to
inhabit, in order that they might have the pleasure of hunting; and
it can not be denied that the transfer may have been accomplished
through the agency of angels, commanded or allowed to perform this
labour by God.
But this difficulty had now assumed a magnitude of which St.
Augustine never dreamed. Most powerful of all agencies to increas
it were the voyages of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Amerigo
Vespucci, and other navigators of the period of discovery. Still
more serious did it become as the great islands of the southern
seas were explored. Every navigator brought home tidings of new
species of animals and of races of men living in parts of the world
where the theologians, relying on the statement of St. Paul tha
the gospel had gone into all lands, had for ages declared there
could be none; until finally it overtaxed even the theological
imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to the divine
command, distributing the various animals over the earth, dropping
the megatherium in South America, the archeopteryx in Europe, th
ornithorhynchus in Australia, and the opossum in North America.
The first striking evidence of this new difficulty was shown by the
eminent Jesuit missionary, Joseph Acosta. In his _Natural and Moral
History of the Indies_, published in 1590, he proved himself honest
and lucid. Though entangled in most of the older scriptural views,
he broke away from many; but the distribution of animals gave him
great trouble. Having shown the futility of St. Augustine's other
explanations, he quaintly asks: "Who can imagine that in so long
a voyage men woulde take the paines to carrie Foxes to Peru,
especially that kinde they call `Acias,' which is the filthiest
have seene? Who woulde likewise say that they have carried Tygers
and Lyons? Truly it were a thing worthy the laughing at to thinke
so. It was sufficient, yea, very much, for men driven against their
willes by tempest, in so long and unknowne a voyage, to escape with
their owne lives, without busying themselves to carrie Woolves and
Foxes, and to nourish them at sea."
It was under the impression made by this new array of facts that
in 1667 Abraham Milius published at Geneva his book on _The Origin
of Animals and the Migration of Peoples_. This book shows, like tha
of Acosta, the shock and strain to which the discovery of America
subjected the received theological scheme of things. It was issued
with the special approbation of the Bishop of Salzburg, and it
indicates the possibility that a solution of the whole trouble may
be found in the text, "Let the earth bring forth the living
creature after his kind." Milius goes on to show that the ancient
philosophers agree with Moses, and that "the earth and the waters,
and especially the heat of the sun and of the genial sky, together
with that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be inherent in
the soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial animals,
and birds." On the other hand, he is very severe against those who
imagine that man can have had the same origin with animals. But th
subject with which Milius especially grapples is the _distribution_
of animals. He is greatly exercised by the many species found in
America and in remote islands of the ocean--species entirely
unknown in the other continents--and of course he is especially
troubled by the fact that these species existing in those
exceedingly remote parts of the earth do not exist in the
neighbourhood of Mount Ararat. He confesses that to explain th
distribution of animals is the most difficult part of the problem
If it be urged that birds could reach America by flying and fishes
by swimming, he asks, "What of the beasts which neither fly nor
swim?" Yet even as to the birds he asks, "Is there not an
infinite variety of winged creatures who fly so slowly and heavily
and have such a horror of the water, that they would not even dare
trust themselves to fly over a wide river?" As to fishes, he says,
"They are very averse to wandering from their native waters," and
he shows that there are now reported many species of American and
East Indian fishes entirely unknown on the other continents, whose
presence, therefore, can not be explained by any theory of natura
dispersion.
Of those who suggest that land animals may have been dispersed over
the earth by the direct agency of man for his use or pleasure he
asks: "Who would like to get different sorts of lions, bears,
tigers, and other ferocious and noxious creatures on board ship?
who would trust himself with them? and who would wish to plant
colonies of such creatures in new, desirable lands?"
His conclusion is that plants and animals take their origin in the
lands wherein they are found; an opinion which he supports by
quoting from the two narrations in Genesis passages which imply
generative force in earth and water
But in the eighteenth century matters had become even worse for the
theological view. To meet the difficulty the eminent Benedictine,
Dom Calmet, in his _Commentary_, expressed the belief that all the
species of a genus had; originally formed one species, and he dwelt
on this view as one which enabled him to explain the possibility of
gathering all animals into the ark. This idea, dangerous as it wa
to the fabric of orthodoxy, and involving a profound separation
from the general doctrine of the Church, seems to have been abroa
among thinking men, for we find in the latter half of the same
century even Linnaeus inclining to consider it. It was time,
indeed, that some new theological theory be evolved; the grea
Linnaeus himself, in spite of his famous declaration favouring the
fixity of species, had dealt a death-blow to the old theory. In his
_Systema Naturae_, published in the middle of the eighteenth
century, he had enumerated four thousand species of animals, and
the difficulties involved in the naming of each of them by Adam and
in bringing them together in the ark appeared to all thinking men
more and more insurmountable.
What was more embarrassing, the number of distinct species went on
increasing rapidly, indeed enormously, until, as an eminent
zoological authority of our own time has declared, "for every on
of the species enumerated by Linnaeus, more than fifty kinds are
known to the naturalist of to-day, and the number of species still
unknown doubtless far exceeds the list of those recorded."
Already there were premonitions of the strain made upon Scriptur
by requiring a hundred and sixty distinct miraculous interventions
of the Creator to produce the hundred and sixty species of land
shells found in the little island of Madeira alone, and fourteen
hundred distinct interventions to produce the actual number of
distinct species of a single well-known shell.
Ever more and more difficult, too, became the question of the
geographical distribution of animals. As new explorations were mad
in various parts of the world, this danger to the theological view
went on increasing. The sloths in South America suggested painful
questions: How could animals so sluggish have got away from the
neighbourhood of Mount Ararat so completely and have travelled so far?
The explorations in Australia and neighbouring islands made matters
still worse, for there was found in those regions a whole realm of
animals differing widely from those of other parts of the earth.
The problem before the strict theologians became, for example, how
to explain the fact that the kangaroo can have been in the ark and
be now only found in Australia: his saltatory powers are indeed
great, but how could he by any series of leaps have sprung acros
the intervening mountains, plains, and oceans to that remote
continent? and, if the theory were adopted that at some period a
causeway extended across the vast chasm separating Australia from
the nearest mainland, why did not lions, tigers, camels, and
camelopards force or find their way across it?
The theological theory, therefore, had by the end of the eighteenth
century gone to pieces. The wiser theologians waited; the unwis
indulged in exhortations to "root out the wicked heart of
unbelief," in denunciation of "science falsely so called," and in
frantic declarations that "the Bible is true"--by which they
meant that the limited understanding of it which they had happened
to inherit is true.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological
theory of creation--though still preached everywhere as a matter of
form--was clearly seen by all thinking men to be hopelessly lost:
such strong men as Cardinal Wiseman in the Roman Church, Dean
Buckland in the Anglican, and Hugh Miller in the Scottish Church,
made heroic efforts to save something from it, but all to no
purpose. That sturdy Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon honesty, which is the
best legacy of the Middle Ages to Christendom, asserted itself i
the old strongholds of theological thought, the universities.
Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler nor the nimble
reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed. Just as the line of
astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed th
old astronomy, in which the earth was the centre, and the Almighty
sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies
about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinker
had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and
fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man. They
had developed a system of a very different sort, and this we shall
next consider.[49]
III. THEOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES, OF AN
EVOLUTION IN ANIMATED NATURE.
WE have seen, thus far, how there came into the thinking of
mankind upon the visible universe and its inhabitants the idea of
a creation virtually instantaneous and complete, and of a Creator
in human form with human attributes, who spoke matter into
existence literally by the exercise of his throat and lips, or
shaped and placed it with his hands and fingers.
We have seen that this view came from far; that it existed
in the Chaldaeo-Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations, and
probably in others of the earliest date known to us; that its
main features passed thence into the sacred books of the Hebrews
and then into the early Christian Church, by whose theologians it
was developed through the Middle Ages and maintained during the
modern period.
But, while this idea was thus developed by a succession of noble
and thoughtful men through thousands of years, another
conception, to all appearance equally ancient, was developed,
sometimes in antagonism to it, sometimes mingled with it--the
conception of all living beings as wholly or in part the result
of a growth process--of an evolution.
This idea, in various forms, became a powerful factor in nearly
all the greater ancient theologies and philosophies. For very
widespread among the early peoples who attained to much thinking
power was a conception that, in obedience to the divine fiat, a
watery chaos produced the earth, and that the sea and land gave
birth to their inhabitants.
This is clearly seen in those records of Chaldaeo-Babylonian
thought deciphered in these latter years, to which reference has
already been made. In these we have a watery chaos which, under
divine action, brings forth the earth and its inhabitants; first
the sea animals and then the land animals--the latter being
separated into three kinds, substantially as recorded afterward
in the Hebrew accounts. At the various stages in the work the
Chaldean Creator pronounces it "beautiful," just as the Hebrew
Creator in our own later account pronounces it "good."
In both accounts there is placed over the whole creation
solid, concave firmament; in both, light is created first, and
the heavenly bodies are afterward placed "for signs and for
seasons"; in both, the number seven is especially sacred, giving
rise to a sacred division of time and to much else. It may be
added that, with many other features in the Hebrew legends
evidently drawn from the Chaldean, the account of the creation i
each is followed by a legend regarding "the fall of man" and a
deluge, many details of which clearly passed in slightly modified
form from the Chaldean into the Hebrew accounts.
It would have been a miracle indeed if these primitive
conceptions, wrought out with so much poetic vigour in that
earlier civilization on the Tigris and Euphrates, had failed to
influence the Hebrews, who during the most plastic periods of
their development were under the tutelage of their Chaldean
neighbours. Since the researches of Layard, George Smith, Oppert,
Schrader, Jensen, Sayce, and their compeers, there is no longer
a reasonable doubt that this ancient view of the world,
elaborated if not originated in that earlier civilization, came
thence as a legacy to the Hebrews, who wrought it in a somewhat
disjointed but mainly monotheistic form into the poetic whole
which forms one of the most precious treasures of ancient thought
preserved in the book of Genesis.
Thus it was that, while the idea of a simple material creation
literally by the hands and fingers or voice of the Creator
became, as we have seen, the starting-point of a powerful stream
of theological thought, and while this stream was swollen from
age to age by contributions from the fathers, doctors, and
learned divines of the Church, Catholic and Protestant, there was
poured into it this lesser current, always discernible and at
times clearly separated from it--a current of belief in a process
of evolution
The Rev. Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, than whom no English-speakin
scholar carries more weight in a matter of this kind, has
recently declared his belief that the Chaldaeo-Babylonian theory
was the undoubted source of the similar theory propounded by the
Ionic philosopher Anaximander--the Greek thinkers deriving this
view from the Babylonians through the Phoenicians; he also
allows that from the same source its main features were adopted
into both the accounts given in the first of our sacred books
and in this general view the most eminent Christian
Assyriologists concur.
It is true that these sacred accounts of ours contradict each
other. In that part of the first or Elohistic account given in
the first chapter of Genesis the _waters_ bring forth fishes,
marine animals, and birds (Genesis, i, 20); but in that part o
the second or Jehovistic account given in the second chapter of
Genesis both the land animals and birds are declared to have been
created not out of the water, but "_out of the ground_"
(Genesis, ii, 19).
The dialectic skill of the fathers was easily equal to explaining
away this contradiction; but the old current of thought,
strengthened by both these legends, arrested their attention, and
passing through the minds of a succession of the greatest men of
the Church, influenced theological opinion deeply, if not widely,
for ages, in favour of an evolution theory.
But there was still another ancient source of evolution ideas.
Thoughtful men of the early civilizations which were developed
along the great rivers in the warmer regions of the earth noted how
the sun-god as he rose in his fullest might caused the water and
the rich soil to teem with the lesser forms of life. In Egypt,
especially, men saw how under this divine power the Nile slime
brought forth "creeping things innumerable." Hence mainly this
ancient belief that the animals and man were produced by lifeless
matter at the divine command, "in the beginning," was supplemented
by the idea that some of the lesser animals, especially the
insects, were produced by a later evolution, being evoked after the
original creation from various sources, but chiefly from matter in
a state of decay.
This crude, early view aided doubtless in giving germs of a better
evolution theory to the early Greeks. Anaximander, Empedocles,
Anaxagoras, and, greatest of all, Aristotle, as we have seen,
developed them, making their way at times by guesses toward truths
since established by observation. Aristotle especially, both by
speculation and observation, arrived at some results which, had
Greek freedom of thought continued, might have brought the world
long since to its present plane of biological knowledge; for he
reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher
organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a
perfecting principle" in Nature
With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a ye
truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude
view remained, and as a typical example of it we may note the
opinion of St. Basil the Great in the fourth century. Discussing
the work of creation, he declares that, at the command of God,
"the waters were gifted with productive power"; "from slime and
muddy places frogs, flies, and gnats came into being"; and he
finally declares that the same voice which gave this energy an
quality of productiveness to earth and water shall be similarly
efficacious until the end of the world. St. Gregory of Nyssa held
a similar view.
This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took even
stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For St.
Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text,
broke from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of
Scripture and spurned the generally received belief of a creative
process like that by which a toymaker brings into existence a box
of playthings. In his great treatise on _Genesis_ he says: "To
suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very
childish.... God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did h
breathe upon him with throat and lips."
St. Augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or
evolution theory, shows that "certain very small animals may not
have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have
originated later from putrefying matter." argues that, even if this
be so, God is still their creator, dwells upon such a potential
creation as involved in the actual creation, and speaks of animals
"whose numbers the after-time unfolded."
In his great treatise on the _Trinity_--the work to which he
devoted the best thirty years of his life--we find the full growth
of this opinion. He develops at length the view that in the
creation of living beings there was something like a growth--tha
God is the ultimate author, but works through secondary causes; and
finally argues that certain substances are endowed by God with the
power of producing certain classes of plants and animals.[53]
This idea of a development by secondary causes apart from th
original creation was helped in its growth by a theological
exigency. More and more, as the organic world was observed, the
vast multitude of petty animals, winged creatures, and "creepin
things" was felt to be a strain upon the sacred narrative. Mor
and more it became difficult to reconcile the dignity of the
Almighty with his work in bringing each of these creatures before
Adam to be named; or to reconcile the human limitations of Adam
with his work in naming "every living creature"; or to reconcile
the dimensions of Noah's ark with the space required for preserving
all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for thei
sustenance, whether they were admitted by twos, as stated in on
scriptural account, or by sevens, as stated in the other
The inadequate size of the ark gave especial trouble. Origen had
dealt with it by suggesting that the cubit was Six times greater
than had been supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete
so large a vessel by supposing that he worked upon it during a
hundred years; and, as to the provision of food taken into it, he
declared that there was no need of a supply for more than one day,
since God could throw the animals into a deep sleep or otherwise
miraculously make one day's supply sufficient; he also lessened the
strain on faith still more by diminishing the number of animals
taken into the ark--supporting his view upon Augustine's theory of
the later development of insects out of carrion.
Doubtless this theological necessity was among the main reasons
which led St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, to
incorporate this theory, supported by St. Basil and St. Augustine,
into his great encyclopedic work which gave materials for thought
on God and Nature to so many generations. He familiarized the
theological world still further with the doctrine of secondar
creation, giving such examples of it as that "bees are generated
from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh, grasshoppers fro
mules, scorpions from crabs," and, in order to give still stronger
force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells on the
biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken
strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that
other human beings had been changed into animals, especially int
swine, wolves, and owls.
This doctrine of after-creations went on gathering strength until,
in the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, in his theological summary
_The Sentences_, so powerful in moulding the thought of the Church,
emphasized the distinction between animals which spring from
carrion and those which are created from earth and water; the former
he holds to have been created "potentially" the latter "actually."
In the century following, this idea was taken up by St. Thoma
Aquinas and virtually received from him its final form. In the
_Summa_, which remains the greatest work of medieval thought, he
accepts the idea that certain animals spring from the decaying
bodies of plants and animals, and declares that they are produce
by the creative word of God either actually or virtually. H
develops this view by saying, "Nothing was made by God, after the
six days of creation, absolutely new, but it was in some sense
included in the work of the six days"; and that "even new
species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native
properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction."
The distinction thus developed between creation "causally" o
"potentially," and "materially" or "formally," was made much of
by commentators afterward. Cornelius a Lapide spread it by saying
that certain animals were created not "absolutely," but only
"derivatively," and this thought was still further developed three
centuries later by Augustinus Eugubinus, who tells us that, after
the first creative energy had called forth land and water, light
was made by the Almighty, the instrument of all future creation
and that the light called everything into existence
All this "science falsely so called," so sedulously developed by
the master minds of the Church, and yet so futile that we might
almost suppose that the great apostle, in a glow of prophetic
vision, had foreseen it in his famous condemnation, seems at this
distance very harmless indeed; yet, to many guardians of th
"sacred deposit of doctrine " in the Church, even so slight a
departure from the main current of thought seemed dangerous. It
appeared to them like pressing the doctrine of secondary causes to
a perilous extent; and about the beginning of the seventeenth
century we have the eminent Spanish Jesuit and theologian Suarez
denouncing it, and declaring St. Augustine a heretic for his share
in it.
But there was little danger to the older idea just then; the main
theological tendency was so strong that the world kept on as of
old. Biblical theology continued to spin its own webs out of its
own bowels, and all the lesser theological flies continued to be
entangled in them; yet here and there stronger thinkers broke loose
from this entanglement and helped somewhat to disentangle others.[56]
At the close of the Middle Ages, in spite of the devotion of the
Reformed Church to the letter of Scripture, the revival of learning
and the great voyages gave an atmosphere in which better thinking
on the problems of Nature began to gain strength. On all sides, in
every field, men were making discoveries which caused the general
theological view to appear more and more inadequate.
First of those who should be mentioned with reverence as beginning
to develop again that current of Greek thought which the system
drawn from our sacred books by the fathers and doctors of the
Church had interrupted for more than a thousand years, was Giordano
Bruno. His utterances were indeed vague and enigmatical, but this
fault may well be forgiven him, for he saw but too clearly what
must be his reward for any more open statements. His reward indeed
came--even for his faulty utterances--when, toward the end of the
nineteenth century, thoughtful men from all parts of the worl
united in erecting his statue on the spot where he had been burned
by the Roman Inquisition nearly three hundred years before.
After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth
century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human
thought: his theories, however superseded now, gave a great impulse
to investigation then. His genius in promoting an evolution
doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system
was great, and his mode of thought strengthened the current of
evolutionary doctrine generally; but his constant dread of
persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily
to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. The execution of
Bruno had occurred in his childhood, and in the midst of his Caree
he had watched the Galileo struggle in all its stages. He had seen
his own works condemned by university after university under the
direction of theologians, and placed upon the Roman _Index_.
Although he gave new and striking arguments to prove the existence
of God, and humbled himself before the Jesuits, he was condemned by
Catholics and Protestants alike. Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no
great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by
theological oppression.
Near the close of the same century another great thinker, Leibnitz,
though not propounding any full doctrine on evolution, gave it an
impulse by suggesting a view contrary to the sacrosanct belief i
the immutability of species--that is, to the pious doctrine that
every species in the animal kingdom now exists as it left the hand
of the Creator, the naming process by Adam, and the door of Noah's ark.
His punishment at the hands of the Church came a few years later,
when, in 1712, the Jesuits defeated his attempt to found an Academy
of Science at Vienna. The imperial authorities covered him with
honours, but the priests--ruling in the confessionals an
pulpits--would not allow him the privilege of aiding his fellow-me
to ascertain God's truths revealed in Nature.
Spinoza, Hume, and Kant may also be mentioned as among those whose
thinking, even when mistaken, might have done much to aid in the
development of a truer theory had not the theologic atmosphere of
their times been so unpropitious; but a few years after Leibnitz's
death came in France a thinker in natural science of much less
influence than any of these, who made a decided step forward.
Early in the eighteenth century Benoist de Maillet, a man of the
world, but a wide observer and close thinker upon Nature, began
meditating especially upon the origin of animal forms, and was led
into the idea of the transformation of species and so into a theory
of evolution, which in some important respects anticipated modern
ideas. He definitely, though at times absurdly, conceived the
production of existing species by the modification of their
predecessors, and he plainly accepted one of the fundamental maxims
of modern geology--that the structure of the globe must be studied
in the light of the present course of Nature.
But he fell between two ranks of adversaries. On one side, th
Church authorities denounced him as a freethinker; on the other,
Voltaire ridiculed him as a devotee. Feeling that his greatest
danger was from the orthodox theologians, De Maillet endeavoured to
protect himself by disguising his name in the title of his book,
and by so wording its preface and dedication that, if persecuted,
he could declare it a mere sport of fancy; he therefore announced
it as the reverie of a Hindu sage imparted to a Christian
missionary. But this strategy availed nothing: he had allowed his
Hindu sage to suggest that the days of creation named in Genesis
might be long periods of time; and this, with other ideas of
equally fearful import, was fatal. Though the book was in type in
1735, it was not published till 1748--three years after his death.
On the other hand, the heterodox theology of Voltaire was also
aroused; and, as De Maillet had seen in the presence of fossils on
high mountains a proof that these mountains were once below the
sea, Voltaire, recognising in this an argument for the deluge of
Noah, ridiculed the new thinker without mercy. Unfortunately, some
of De Maillet's vagaries lent themselves admirably to Voltaire's
sarcasm; better material for it could hardly be conceived than the
theory, seriously proposed, that the first human being was born of
a mermaid.
Hence it was that, between these two extremes of theology, De
Maillet received no recognition until, very recently, the greatest
men of science in England and France have united in giving him his
due. But his work was not lost, even in his own day; Robinet and
Bonnet pushed forward victoriously on helpful lines.
In the second half of the eighteenth century a great barrier was
thrown across this current--the authority of Linnaeus. He was the
most eminent naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close
thinker; but the atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his
being was saturated with biblical theology, and this permeated all
his thinking
He who visits the tomb of Linnaeus to-day, entering the beautiful
cathedral of Upsala by its southern porch, sees above it, wrought
in stone, the Hebrew legend of creation. In a series of
medallions, the Almighty--in human form--accomplishes the work of
each creative day. In due order he puts in place the soli
firmament with the waters above it, the sun, moon, and stars withi
it, the beasts, birds, and plants below it, and finishes his task
by taking man out of a little hillock of "the earth beneath," and
woman out of man's side. Doubtless Linnaeus, as he went to his
devotions, often smiled at this childlike portrayal. Yet he was
never able to break away from the idea it embodied. At times, in
face of the difficulties which beset the orthodox theory, he
ventured to favour some slight concessions. Toward the end of his
life he timidly advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one
genus constituted at the creation one species; and from the last
edition of his _Systema Naturae_ he quietly left out the strongly
orthodox statement of the fixity of each species, which he had
insisted upon in his earlier works. But he made no adequate
declaration. What he might expect if he openly and decidedly
sanctioned a newer view he learned to his cost; warnings came
speedily both from the Catholic and Protestant sides
At a time when eminent prelates of the older Church were eulogizin
debauched princes like Louis XV, and using the unspeakably obscene
casuistry of the Jesuit Sanchez in the education of the priesthood
as to the relations of men to women, the modesty of the Church
authorities was so shocked by Linnaeus's proofs of a sexual system
in plants that for many years his writings were prohibited in the
Papal States and in various other parts of Europe where clerical
authority was strong enough to resist the new scientific current.
Not until 1773 did one of the more broad-minded cardinals
--Zelanda--succeed in gaining permission that Prof. Minasi should
discuss the Linnaean system at Rome.
And Protestantism was quite as oppressive. In a letter to Eloius
Linnaeus tells of the rebuke given to science by one of the great
Lutheran prelates of Sweden, Bishop Svedberg. From various parts of
Europe detailed statements had been sent to the Royal Academy of
Science that water had been turned into blood, and well-meaning
ecclesiastics had seen in this an indication of the wrath of God,
certainly against the regions in which these miracles had occurred
and possibly against the whole world. A miracle of this sort
appearing in Sweden, Linnaeus looked into it carefully and found
that the reddening of the water was caused by dense masses of
minute insects. News of this explanation having reached the bishop,
he took the field against it; he denounced this scientific
discovery as "a Satanic abyss" (_abyssum Satanae_), and declared
"The reddening of the water is _not_ natural," and "when God allows
such a miracle to take place Satan endeavours, and so do his
ungodly, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and worldly tools, to make
it signify nothing." In face of this onslaught Linnaeus retreated;
he tells his correspondent that "it is difficult to say anything
in this matter," and shields himself under the statement "It is
certainly a miracle that so many millions of creatures can be s
suddenly propagated," and "it shows undoubtedly the all-wise power
of the Infinite."
The great naturalist, grown old and worn with labours for science
could no longer resist the contemporary theology; he settled int
obedience to it, and while the modification of his early orthodo
view was, as we have seen, quietly imbedded in the final edition of
his great work, he made no special effort to impress it upon th
world. To all appearance he continued to adhere to the doctrine that
all existing species had been created by the Almighty "in the
beginning," and that since "the beginning" no new species had appeared.
Yet even his great authority could not arrest the swelling tide;
more and more vast became the number of species, more and mor
incomprehensible under the old theory became the newly ascertaine
facts in geographical distribution, more and more it was felt that
the universe and animated beings had come into existence by some
process other than a special creation "in the beginning," and the
question was constantly pressing, "By _what_ process?"
Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century one man was at work
on natural history who might have contributed much toward an answe
to this question: this man was Buffon. His powers of research an
thought were remarkable, and his gift in presenting results of
research and thought showed genius. He had caught the idea of an
evolution in Nature by the variation of species, and was likely to
make a great advance with it; but he, too, was made to feel the
power of theology.
As long as he gave pleasing descriptions of animals the Church
petted him, but when he began to deduce truths of philosophical
import the batteries of the Sorbonne were opened upon him; he was
made to know that "the sacred deposit of truth committed to the
Church" was, that "in the beginning God made the heavens and the
earth" and that "all things were made at the beginning of th
world." For his simple statement of truths in natural science which
are to-day truisms, he was, as we have seen, dragged forth by the
theological faculty, forced to recant publicly, and to print his
recantation. In this he announced, "I abandon everything in my
book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which
may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."[62]
But all this triumph of the Chaldeo-Babylonian creation legends
which the Church had inherited availed but little.
For about the end of the eighteenth century fruitful suggestions
and even clear presentations of this or that part of a large
evolutionary doctrine came thick and fast, and from the most
divergent quarters. Especially remarkable were those which cam
from Erasmus Darwin in England, from Maupertuis in France, fro
Oken in Switzerland, and from Herder, and, most brilliantly of all,
from Goethe in Germany.
Two men among these thinkers must be especially
mentioned--Treviranus in Germany and Lamarck in France; each
independently of the other drew the world more completely than eve
before in this direction.
From Treviranus came, in 1802, his work on biology, and in this h
gave forth the idea that from forms of life originally simple had
arisen all higher organizations by gradual development; that ever
living feature has a capacity for receiving modifications of its
structure from external influences; and that no species had become
really extinct, but that each had passed into some other species
From Lamarck came about the same time his _Researches_, and a little
later his _Zoological Philosophy_, which introduced a new factor into
the process of evolution--the action of the animal itself in its
efforts toward a development to suit new needs--and he gave as hi
principal conclusions the following:
1. Life tends to increase the volume of each living body and of al
its parts up to a limit determined by its own necessities.
2. New wants in animals give rise to new organs.
3. The development of these organs is in proportion to their employment.
4. New developments may be transmitted to offspring.
His well-known examples to illustrate these views, such as that of
successive generations of giraffes lengthening their necks by
stretching them to gather high-growing foliage, and of successive
generations of kangaroos lengthening and strengthening their hind
legs by the necessity of keeping themselves erect while jumping
provoked laughter, but the very comicality of these illustrations
aided to fasten his main conclusion in men's memories.
In both these statements, imperfect as they were, great truths were
embodied--truths which were sure to grow.
Lamarck's declaration, especially, that the development of organs
is in ratio to their employment, and his indications of the
reproduction in progeny of what is gained or lost in parents by
the influence of circumstances, entered as a most effective force
into the development of the evolution theory.
The next great successor in the apostolate of this idea of the
universe was Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. As early as 1795 he had begun
to form a theory that species are various modifications of the same
type, and this theory he developed, testing it at various stages as
Nature was more and more displayed to him. It fell to his lot to bea
the brunt in a struggle against heavy odds which lasted many years.
For the man who now took up the warfare, avowedly for science but
unconsciously for theology, was the foremost naturalist the
living--Cuvier. His scientific eminence was deserved; the highest
honours of his own and other countries were given him, and he bore
them worthily. An Imperial Councillor under Napoleon; President of
the Council of Public Instruction and Chancellor of the University
under the restored Bourbons; Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour,
a Peer of France, Minister of the Interior, and President of the
Council of State under Louis Philippe; he was eminent in all these
capacities, and yet the dignity given by such high administrative
positions was as nothing compared to his leadership in natural
science. Science throughout the world acknowledged in him its chief
contemporary ornament, and to this hour his fame rightly continues.
But there was in him, as in Linnaeus, a survival of certain
theological ways of looking at the universe and certain theological
conceptions of a plan of creation; it must be said, too, that while
his temperament made him distrust new hypotheses, of which he had
seen so many born and die, his environment as a great functionary
of state, honoured, admired, almost adored by the greatest, not
only in the state but in the Church, his solicitude lest science
should receive some detriment by openly resisting the Church, whic
had recaptured Europe after the French Revolution, and had made o
its enemies its footstool--all these considerations led him to
oppose the new theory. Amid the plaudits, then, of the foremost
church-men he threw across the path of the evolution doctrines the
whole mass of his authority in favour of the old theory o
catastrophic changes and special creations.
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire stoutly withstood him, braving
non-recognition, ill-treatment, and ridicule. Treviranus, afar off
in his mathematical lecture-room at Bremen, seemed simply forgotten.
But the current of evolutionary thought could not thus be checked:
dammed up for a time, it broke out in new channels and in ways and
places least expected; turned away from France, it appeared
especially in England, where great paleontologists and geologists
arose whose work culminated in that of Lyell. Specialists
throughout all the world now became more vigorous than ever
gathering facts and thinking upon them in a way which caused the
special creation theory to shrink more and more. Broader and more
full became these various rivulets, soon to unite in one great
stream of thought.
In 1813 Dr. Wells developed a theory of evolution by natural
selection to account for varieties in the human race. About 182
Dean Herbert, eminent as an authority in horticulture, avowed his
conviction that species are but fixed varieties. In 1831 Patrick
Matthews stumbled upon and stated the main doctrine of natural
selection in evolution; and others here and there, in Europe and
America, caught an inkling of it.
But no one outside of a circle apparently uninfluential cared for
these things: the Church was serene: on the Continent it had
obtained reactionary control of courts, cabinets, and universities
in England, Dean Cockburn was denouncing Mary Somerville and the
geologists to the delight of churchmen; and the Rev. Mellor Brown
was doing the same thing for the edification of dissenters.
In America the mild suggestions of Silliman and his compeers wer
met by the protestations of the Andover theologians headed by Moses
Stuart. Neither of the great English universities, as a rule, too
any notice of the innovators save by sneers
To this current of thought there was joined a new element when, in
1844, Robert Chambers published his _Vestiges of Creation_. The book
was attractive and was widely read. In Chambers's view the several
series of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the
highest and most recent, were the result of two distinct impulses,
each given once and for all time by the Creator. The first of thes
was an impulse imparted to forms of life, lifting them gradually
through higher grades; the second was an impulse tending to modify
organic substances in accordance with external circumstances; i
fact, the doctrine of the book was evolution tempered by miracle--a
stretching out of the creative act through all time--a pious
version of Lamarck.
Two results followed, one mirth-provoking, the other leading to
serious thought. The amusing result was that the theologians were
greatly alarmed by the book: it was loudly insisted that i
promoted atheism. Looking back along the line of thought which has
since been developed, one feels that the older theologians ought to
have put up thanksgivings for Chambers's theory, and prayers that
it might prove true. The more serious result was that it accustomed
men's minds to a belief in evolution as in some form possibl
or even probable. In this way it was provisionally of service.
Eight years later Herbert Spencer published an essay contrasting
the theories of creation and evolution--reasoning with great force
in favour of the latter, showing that species had undoubtedly been
modified by circumstances; but still only few and chosen men saw
the significance of all these lines of reasoning which had been
converging during so many years toward one conclusion.
On July 1, 1858, there were read before the Linnaean Society at
London two papers--one presented by Charles Darwin, the other by
Alfred Russel Wallace--and with the reading of these papers the
doctrine of evolution by natural selection was born. Then and ther
a fatal breach was made in the great theological barrier of th
continued fixity of species since the creation
The story of these papers the scientific world knows by heart: how
Charles Darwin, having been sent to the University of Cambridge t
fit him for the Anglican priesthood, left it in 1831 to go upon the
scientific expedition of the Beagle; how for five years he studied
with wonderful vigour and acuteness the problems of life as
revealed on land and at sea--among volcanoes and coral reefs, i
forests and on the sands, from the tropics to the arctic regions
how, in the Cape Verde and the Galapagos Islands, and in Brazil,
Patagonia, and Australia he interrogated Nature with matchless
persistency and skill; how he returned unheralded, quietly settle
down to his work, and soon set the world thinking over its firs
published results, such as his book on _Coral Reefs,_ and the
monograph on the _Cirripedia_; and, finally, how he presented hi
paper, and followed it up with treatises which made him one of the
great leaders in the history of human thought.
The scientific world realizes, too, more and more, the power of
character shown by Darwin in all this great career; the faculty of
silence, the reserve of strength seen in keeping his great
thought--his idea of evolution by natural selection--under silent
study and meditation for nearly twenty years, giving no hint of it
to the world at large, but working in every field to secure proofs
or disproofs, and accumulating masses of precious material for the
solution of the questions involved.
To one man only did he reveal his thought--to Dr. Joseph Hooker, to
whom in 1844, under the seal of secrecy, he gave a summary of his
conclusions. Not until fourteen years later occurred the event
which showed him that the fulness of time had come--the letter from
Alfred Russel Wallace, to whom, in brilliant researches during the
decade from 1848 to 1858, in Brazil and in the Malay Archipelago,
the same truth of evolution by natural selection had been revealed.
Among the proofs that scientific study does no injury to the more
delicate shades of sentiment is the well-known story of this letter.
With it Wallace sent Darwin a memoir, asking him to present it to
the Linnaean Society: on examining it, Darwin found that Wallac
had independently arrived at conclusions similar to his
own--possibly had deprived him of fame; but Darwin was loyal to his
friend, and his friend remained ever loyal to him. He publicl
presented the paper from Wallace, with his own conclusions; and the
date of this presentation--July 1, 1858--separates two epochs in the
history, not merely of natural science, but of human thought.
In the following year, 1859, came the first instalment of his wor
in its fuller development--his book on _The Origin of Species_. In
this book one at least of the main secrets at the heart of the
evolutionary process, which had baffled the long line of
investigators and philosophers from the days of Aristotle, was mor
broadly revealed. The effective mechanism of evolution was shown a
work in three ascertained facts: in the struggle for existence
among organized beings; in the survival of the fittest; and in
heredity. These facts were presented with such minute research,
wide observation, patient collation, transparent honesty, and
judicial fairness, that they at once commanded the world's
attention. It was the outcome of thirty years' work and thought by
a worker and thinker of genius, but it was yet more than that--i
was the outcome, also, of the work and thought of another man of
genius fifty years before. The book of Malthus on the _Principle of
Population_, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a
geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber th
earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a
sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning,
and now the thought of Malthus was joined to the new current.
Meditating upon it in connection with his own observations of the
luxuriance of Nature, Darwin had arrived at his doctrine of natura
selection and survival of the fittest
As the great dogmatic barrier between the old and new views of the
universe was broken down, the flood of new thought pouring over the
world stimulated and nourished strong growths in every field of
research and reasoning: edition after edition of the book was
called for; it was translated even into Japanese and Hindustani;
the stagnation of scientific thought, which Buckle, only a fe
years before, had so deeply lamented, gave place to a widespread
and fruitful activity; masses of accumulated observations, which
had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made alive; facts formerly
without meaning now found their interpretation. Under this new
influence an army of young men took up every promising line of
scientific investigation in every land. Epoch-making books appeared
in all the great nations. Spencer, Wallace, Huxley, Galton,
Tyndall, Tylor, Lubbock, Bagehot, Lewes, in England, and a phalanx
of strong men in Germany, Italy, France, and America gave fort
works which became authoritative in every department of biology. If
some of the older men in France held back, overawed perhaps by the
authority of Cuvier, the younger and more vigorous pressed on.
One source of opposition deserves to be especially mentioned--Louis
Agassiz.
A great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble
man, he had received and elaborated a theory of animated creation
which he could not readily change. In his heart and mind still
prevailed the atmosphere of the little Swiss parsonage in which he
was born, and his religious and moral nature, so beautiful to all
who knew him, was especially repelled by sundry evolutionists, who,
in their zeal as neophytes, made proclamations seeming to have a
decidedly irreligious if not immoral bearing. In addition to this
was the direction his thinking had received from Cuvier. Both these
influences combined to prevent his acceptance of the new view.
He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a
barrier across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnaeus in the
second half of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first half
and Agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth--all made the same
effort. Each remains great; but not all of them together could
arrest the current. Agassiz's strong efforts throughout the United
States, and indeed throughout Europe, to check it, really promoted
it. From the great museum he had founded at Cambridge, from his
summer school at Penikese, from his lecture rooms at Harvard and
Cornell, his disciples went forth full of love and admiration fo
him, full of enthusiasm which he had stirred and into fields whic
he had indicated; but their powers, which he had aroused and
strengthened, were devoted to developing the truth he failed to
recognise; Shaler, Verrill, Packard, Hartt, Wilder, Jordan, with a
multitude of others, and especially the son who bore his honoured
name, did justice to his memory by applying what they had received
from him to research under inspiration of the new revelation.
Still another man deserves especial gratitude and honour in this
progress--Edward Livingston Youmans. He was perhaps the first in
America to recognise the vast bearings of the truths presented by
Darwin, Wallace, and Spencer. He became the apostle of these
truths, sacrificing the brilliant career on which he had entered as
a public lecturer, subordinating himself to the three leaders, and
giving himself to editorial drudgery in the stimulation of research
and the announcement of results
In support of the new doctrine came a world of new proofs; those
which Darwin himself added in regard to the cross-fertilization of
plants, and which he had adopted from embryology, led the way, and
these were followed by the discoveries of Wallace, Bates, Huxley,
Marsh, Cope, Leidy, Haeckel, Muller, Gaudry, and a multitude o
others in all lands.[70]
IV. THE FINAL EFFORT OF THEOLOGY
DARWIN'S _Origin of Species_ had come into the theological world like
a plough into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakene
from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and
confused. Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at
the new thinker from all sides
The keynote was struck at once in the _Quarterly Review_ by
Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He declared that Darwin was guilty
of "a tendency to limit God's glory in creation"; that "the
principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the
word of God"; that it "contradicts the revealed relations of
creation to its Creator"; that it is "inconsistent with the fulness
of his glory"; that it is "a dishonouring view of Nature"; and that
there is "a simpler explanation of the presence of these strange
forms among the works of God": that explanation being--"the fall of
Adam." Nor did the bishop's efforts end here; at the meeting of th
British Association for the Advancement of Science he again
disported himself in the tide of popular applause. Referring to the
ideas of Darwin, who was absent on account of illness, he
congratulated himself in a public speech that he was not descended
from a monkey. The reply came from Huxley, who said in substance:
"If I had to choose, I would prefer to be a descendant of a humble
monkey rather than of a man who employs his knowledge and eloquenc
in misrepresenting those who are wearing out their lives in th
search for truth."
This shot reverberated through England, and indeed throug
other countries.
The utterances of this the most brilliant prelate of the Anglican
Church received a sort of antiphonal response from the leaders of
the English Catholics. In an address before the "Academia," which
had been organized to combat "science falsely so called," Cardinal
Manning declared his abhorrence of the new view of Nature, and
described it as "a brutal philosophy--to wit, there is no God, and
the ape is our Adam."
These attacks from such eminent sources set the clerical fashion
for several years. One distinguished clerical reviewer, in spite of
Darwin's thirty years of quiet labour, and in spite of th
powerful summing up of his book, prefaced a diatribe by saying
that Darwin "might have been more modest had he given some slight
reason for dissenting from the views generally entertained."
Another distinguished clergyman, vice-president of a Protestant
institute to combat "dangerous" science, declared Darwinism "an
attempt to dethrone God." Another critic spoke of persons accepting
the Darwinian views as "under the frenzied inspiration of the
inhaler of mephitic gas," and of Darwin's argument as "a jungle o
fanciful assumption." Another spoke of Darwin's views as suggesting
that "God is dead," and declared that Darwin's work "does open
violence to everything which the Creator himself has told us in the
Scriptures of the methods and results of his work." Still another
theological authority asserted: "If the Darwinian theory is true,
Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to
pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it,
is a delusion and a snare." Another, who had shown excellen
qualities as an observing naturalist, declared the Darwinian view
"a huge imposture from the beginning."
Echoes came from America. One review, the organ of the most
widespread of American religious sects, declared that Darwin was
"attempting to befog and to pettifog the whole question"; another
denounced Darwin's views as "infidelity"; another, representing the
American branch of the Anglican Church, poured contempt over Darwin
as "sophistical and illogical," and then plunged into a
exceedingly dangerous line of argument in the following words: "If
this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable
fiction;... then have Christians for nearly two thousand years been
duped by a monstrous lie.... Darwin requires us to disbelieve the
authoritative word of the Creator" A leading journal representing
the same church took pains to show the evolution theory to be as
contrary to the explicit declarations of the New Testament as to
those of the Old, and said: "If we have all, men and monkeys,
oysters and eagles, developed from an original germ, then is 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'--untrue."
Another echo came from Australia, where Dr. Perry, Lord Bishop of
Melbourne, in a most bitter book on _Science and the Bible_, declared
that the obvious object of Chambers, Darwin, and Huxley is "to
produce in their readers a disbelief of the Bible."
Nor was the older branch of the Church to be left behind in this
chorus. Bayma, in the _Catholic World_, declared, "Mr. Darwin is, we
have reason to believe, the mouthpiece or chief trumpeter of that
infidel clique whose well-known object is to do away with all idea
of a God.
Worthy of especial note as showing the determination of the
theological side at that period was the foundation of
sacro-scientific organizations to combat the new ideas. First to be
noted is the "Academia," planned by Cardinal Wiseman. In
circular letter the cardinal, usually so moderate and just, sounded
an alarm and summed up by saying, "Now it is for the Church, which
alone possesses divine certainty and divine discernment, to place
itself at once in the front of a movement which threatens even th
fragmentary remains of Christian belief in England." The necessary
permission was obtained from Rome, the Academia was founded, and
the "divine discernment" of the Church was seen in the utterance
which came from it, such as those of Cardinal Manning, which every
thoughtful Catholic would now desire to recall, and in the
diatribes of Dr. Laing, which only aroused laughter on all sides.
A similar effort was seen in Protestant quarters; the "Victoria
institute" was created, and perhaps the most noted utterance which
ever came from it was the declaration of its vice-president, the
Rev. Walter Mitchell, that "Darwinism endeavours to dethrone God."[73]
In France the attack was even more violent. Fabre d'Envieu brought
out the heavy artillery of theology, and in a long series of
elaborate propositions demonstrated that any other doctrine tha
that of the fixity and persistence of species is absolutely
contrary to Scripture. The Abbe Desorges, a former Professor of
Theology, stigmatized Darwin as a "pedant," and evolution as
"gloomy". Monseigneur Segur, referring to Darwin and his followers,
went into hysterics and shrieked: "These infamous doctrines have
for their only support the most abject passions. Their father is
pride, their mother impurity, their offspring revolutions. The
come from hell and return thither, taking with them the gross
creatures who blush not to proclaim and accept them."
In Germany the attack, if less declamatory, was no less severe.
Catholic theologians vied with Protestants in bitterness. Prof.
Michelis declared Darwin's theory "a caricature of creation." Dr.
Hagermann asserted that it "turned the Creator out of doors." Dr.
Schund insisted that "every idea of the Holy Scriptures, from the
first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to the
Darwinian theory"; and, "if Darwin be right in his view of the
development of man out of a brutal condition, then the Bible
teaching in regard to man is utterly annihilated." Rougemont i
Switzerland called for a crusade against the obnoxious doctrine.
Luthardt, Professor of Theology at Leipsic, declared: "The idea of
creation belongs to religion and not to natural science; the whole
superstructure of personal religion is built upon the doctrine of
creation"; and he showed the evolution theory to be in direct
contradiction to Holy Writ.
But in 1863 came an event which brought serious confusion to the
theological camp: Sir Charles Lyell, the most eminent of living
geologists, a man of deeply Christian feeling and of exceedingl
cautious temper, who had opposed the evolution theory of Lamarck
and declared his adherence to the idea of successive creations,
then published his work on the _Antiquity of Man_, and in this and
other utterances showed himself a complete though unwilling convert
to the fundamental ideas of Darwin. The blow was serious in many
ways, and especially so in two--first, as withdrawing all
foundation in fact from the scriptural chronology, and secondly, as
discrediting the creation theory. The blow was not unexpected; i
various review articles against the Darwinian theory there had been
appeals to Lyell, at times almost piteous, "not to flinch from the
truths he had formerly proclaimed." But Lyell, like the honest man
he was, yielded unreservedly to the mass of new proofs arrayed on
the side of evolution against that of creation.
At the same time came Huxley's _Man's Place in Nature_, giving ne
and most cogent arguments in favour of evolution by natural selection.
In 1871 was published Darwin's _Descent of Man_. Its doctrine had
been anticipated by critics of his previous books, but it made,
none the less, a great stir; again the opposing army trooped forth,
though evidently with much less heart than before. A few were very
violent. _The Dublin University Magazine_, after the traditional
Hibernian fashion, charged Mr. Darwin with seeking "to displace
God by the unerring action of vagary," and with being "resolved t
hunt God out of the world." But most notable from the side of the
older Church was the elaborate answer to Darwin's book by the
eminent French Catholic physician, Dr. Constantin James. In his
work, _On Darwinism, or the Man-Ape_, published at Paris in 1877, Dr
James not only refuted Darwin scientifically but poured contempt
on his book, calling it "a fairy tale," and insisted that a work
"so fantastic and so burlesque" was, doubtless, only a huge joke,
like Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_, or Montesquieu's _Persian Letters_.
The princes of the Church were delighted. The Cardinal Archbishop
of Paris assured the author that the book had become his
"spiritual reading," and begged him to send a copy to the Pope
himself. His Holiness, Pope Pius IX, acknowledged the gift in
remarkable letter. He thanked his dear son, the writer, for th
book in which he "refutes so well the aberrations of Darwinism."
"A system," His Holiness adds, "which is repugnant at once t
history, to the tradition of all peoples, to exact science, t
observed facts, and even to Reason herself, would seem to need no
refutation, did not alienation from God and the leaning toward
materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek a support in all thi
tissue of fables.... And, in fact, pride, after rejecting the
Creator of all things and proclaiming man independent, wishing hi
to be his own king, his own priest, and his own God--pride goes s
far as to degrade man himself to the level of the unreasoning
brutes, perhaps even of lifeless matter, thus unconsciously
confirming the Divine declaration, _When pride cometh, then cometh
shame_. But the corruption of this age, the machinations of the
perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that such fancies,
altogether absurd though they are, should--since they borrow the
mask of science--be refuted by true science." Wherefore the Pope
thanked Dr. James for his book, "so opportune and so perfectly
appropriate to the exigencies of our time," and bestowed on him the
apostolic benediction. Nor was this brief all. With it there cam
a second, creating the author an officer of the Papal Order of St.
Sylvester. The cardinal archbishop assured the delighted physician
that such a double honour of brief and brevet was perhap
unprecedented, and suggested only that in a new edition of his book
he should "insist a little more on the relation existing between
the narratives of Genesis and the discoveries of modern science, in
such fashion as to convince the most incredulous of their perfect
agreement." The prelate urged also a more dignified title. The
proofs of this new edition were accordingly all submitted to His
Eminence, and in 1882 it appeared as _Moses and Darwin: the Man of
Genesis compared with the Man-Ape, or Religious Education opposed
to Atheistic_. No wonder the cardinal embraced the author, thanking
him in the name of science and religion. " We have at last," he
declared, "a handbook which we can safely put into the hands of youth."
Scarcely less vigorous were the champions of English Protestant
orthodoxy. In an address at Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone remarked:
"Upon the grounds of what is termed evolution God is relieved of
the labour of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws he is
discharged from governing the world"; and, when Herbert Spencer
called his attention to the fact that Newton with the doctrine of
gravitation and with the science of physical astronomy is open to
the same charge, Mr. Gladstone retreated in the _Contemporary Review_
under one of his characteristic clouds of words. The Rev. Dr.
Coles, in the _British and Foreign Evangelical Review_, declared that
the God of evolution is not the Christian's God. Burgon, Dean of
Chichester, in a sermon preached before the University of Oxford,
pathetically warned the students that "those who refuse to accept
the history of the creation of our first parents according to its
obvious literal intention, and are for substituting the moder
dream of evolution in its place, cause the entire scheme of man's
salvation to collapse." Dr. Pusey also came into the fray with most
earnest appeals against the new doctrine, and the Rev. Gavin
Carlyle was perfervid on the same side. The Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge published a book by the Rev. Mr. Birks, in
which the evolution doctrine was declared to be "flatly opposed
to the fundamental doctrine of creation." Even the _London Times_
admitted a review stigmatizing Darwin's _Descent of Man_ as an
"utterly unsupported hypothesis," full of "unsubstantiated
premises, cursory investigations, and disintegrating speculations,"
and Darwin himself as "reckless and unscientific."[77
But it was noted that this second series of attacks, on the _Descent
of Man_, differed in one remarkable respect--so far as England was
concerned--from those which had been made over ten years before on
the _Origin of Species_. While everything was done to discredit
Darwin, to pour contempt upon him, and even, of all things in the
world, to make him--the gentlest of mankind, only occupied with
the scientific side of the problem--"a persecutor of Christianity,"
while his followers were represented more and more as charlatans
or dupes, there began to be in the most influential quarters
careful avoidance of the old argument that evolution--even b
natural selection--contradicts Scripture. It began to be felt that
this was dangerous ground. The defection of Lyell had, perhaps,
more than anything else, started the question among theologians who
had preserved some equanimity, "_What if, after all, the Darwinian
theory should prove to be true?_" Recollections of the position in
which the Roman Church found itself after the establishment of the
doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo naturally came into the minds
of the more thoughtful. In Germany this consideration does not seem
to have occurred at quite so early a day. One eminent Lutheran
clergyman at Magdeburg called on his hearers to choose between
Darwin and religion; Delitszch, in his new commentary on Genesis,
attempted to bring science back to recognise human sin as an
important factor in creation; Prof. Heinrich Ewald, while carefully
avoiding any sharp conflict between the scriptural doctrine an
evolution, comforted himself by covering Darwin and his followers
with contempt; Christlieb, in his address before the Evangelical
Alliance at New York in 1873, simply took the view that the
tendencies of the Darwinian theory were "toward infidelity," but
declined to make any serious battle on biblical grounds; the
Jesuit, Father Pesch, in Holland, drew up in Latin, after the old
scholastic manner, a sort of general indictment of evolution, of
which one may say that it was interesting--as interesting as the
display of a troop in chain armour and with cross-bows on a
nineteenth-century battlefield
From America there came new echoes. Among the myriad attacks on the
Darwinian theory by Protestants and Catholics two should be
especially mentioned. The first of these was by Dr. Noah Porter,
President of Yale College, an excellent scholar, an interestin
writer, a noble man, broadly tolerant, combining in his thinking a
curious mixture of radicalism and conservatism. While giving great
latitude to the evolutionary teaching in the university under his
care, he felt it his duty upon one occasion to avow his disbelief
in it; but he was too wise a man to suggest any necessary
antagonism between it and the Scriptures. He confined himself
mainly to pointing out the tendency of the evolution doctrine i
this form toward agnosticism and pantheism. To those who knew and
loved him, and had noted the genial way in which by wise neglect h
had allowed scientific studies to flourish at Yale, there was an
amusing side to all this. Within a stone's throw of his college
rooms was the Museum of Paleontology, in which Prof. Marsh had laid
side by side, among other evidences of the new truth, that
wonderful series of specimens showing the evolution of the hors
from the earliest form of the animal, "not larger than a fox, with
five toes," through the whole series up to his present form and
size--that series which Huxley declared an absolute proof of the
existence of natural selection as an agent in evolution. In spite
of the veneration and love which all Yale men felt for President
Porter, it was hardly to be expected that these particula
arguments of his would have much permanent effect upon them when
there was constantly before their eyes so convincing a refutation.
But a far more determined opponent was the Rev. Dr. Hodge, of
Princeton; his anger toward the evolution doctrine was bitter: he
denounced it as thoroughly "atheistic"; he insisted that Christians
"have a right to protest against the arraying of probabilities
against the clear evidence of the Scriptures"; he even censured
so orthodox a writer as the Duke of Argyll, and declared that the
Darwinian theory of natural selection is "utterly inconsistent
with the Scriptures," and that "an absent God, who does nothing,
is to us no God"; that "to ignore design as manifested in God's
creation is to dethrone God"; that "a denial of design in Natur
is virtually a denial of God"; and that "no teleologist can be a
Darwinian." Even more uncompromising was another of the leadin
authorities at the same university--the Rev. Dr. Duffield. H
declared war not only against Darwin but even against men like Asa
Gray, Le Conte, and others, who had attempted to reconcile the ne
theory with the Bible: he insisted that "evolutionism and the
scriptural account of the origin of man are irreconcilable"--that
the Darwinian theory is "in direct conflict with the teaching of
the apostle, `All scripture is given by inspiration of God'"; he
pointed out, in his opposition to Darwin's _Descent of Man_ and
Lyell's _Antiquity of Man_, that in the Bible "the genealogical
links which connect the Israelites in Egypt with Adam and Eve in
Eden are explicitly given." These utterances of Prof. Duffield
culminated in a declaration which deserves to be cited as showing
that a Presbyterian minister can "deal damnation round the land"
_ex cathedra_ in a fashion quite equal to that of popes and bishops.
It is as follows: "If the development theory of the origin of man,
wrote Dr. Duffield in the _Princeton Review_, "shall in a little
while take its place--as doubtless it will--with other exploded
scientific speculations, then they who accept it with its proper
logical consequences will in the life to come have their portion
with those who in this life `know not God and obey not the gospel
of his Son.'"
Fortunately, at about the time when Darwin's _Descent of Man_ was
published, there had come into Princeton University "_deus e
machina_" in the person of Dr. James McCosh. Called to the
presidency, he at once took his stand against teachings so
dangerous to Christianity as those of Drs. Hodge, Duffield, and
their associates. In one of his personal confidences he has let us
into the secret of this matter. With that hard Scotch sense which
Thackeray had applauded in his well-known verses, he saw that the
most dangerous thing which could be done to Christianity at
Princeton was to reiterate in the university pulpit, week after
week, solemn declarations that if evolution by natural selection,
or indeed evolution at all, be true, the Scriptures are false. He
tells us that he saw that this was the certain way to make the
students unbelievers; he therefore not only checked this dangerous
preaching but preached an opposite doctrine. With him began th
inevitable compromise, and, in spite of mutterings against him as
a Darwinian, he carried the day. Whatever may be thought of his
general system of philosophy, no one can deny his great service in
neutralizing the teachings of his predecessors and colleagues--so
dangerous to all that is essential in Christianity.
Other divines of strong sense in other parts of the country began
to take similar ground--namely, that men could be Christians and at
the same time Darwinians. There appeared, indeed, here and there,
curious discrepancies: thus in 1873 the _Monthly Religious Magazine_
of Boston congratulated its readers that the Rev. Mr. Burr ha
"demolished the evolution theory, knocking the breath of life out of
it and throwing it to the dogs." This amazing performance by the
Rev. Mr. Burr was repeated in a very striking way by Bishop Keener
before the OEcumenical Council of Methodism at Washington in 1891.
In what the newspapers described as an "admirable speech," he
refuted evolution doctrines by saying that evolutionists had "only
to make a journey of twelve hours from the place where he was then
standing to find together the bones of the muskrat, the opossum
the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus." He asserted that
Agassiz--whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think
an evolutionist--when he visited these beds near Charleston,
declared: "These old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed
the work of a lifetime." And the Methodist prelate ended by
saying: "Now, gentlemen, brethren, take these facts home with
you; get down and look at them. This is the watch that was under
the steam hammer--the doctrine of evolution; and this steam hamme
is the wonderful deposit of the Ashley beds." Exhibitions like
these availed little. While the good bishop amid vociferous
applause thus made comically evident his belief that Agassiz was a
Darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording
in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an
evolution by natural selection. While the Rev. Mr. Burr was so
loudly praised for "throwing Darwinism to the dogs," Marsh was
completing his series leading from the five-toed ungulates to the
horse. While Dr. Tayler Lewis at Union, and Drs. Hodge and Duffield
at Princeton, were showing that if evolution be true the biblical
accounts must be false, the indefatigable Yale professor was
showing his cretaceous birds, and among them _Hesperornis_ and
_Ichthyornis_ with teeth. While in Germany Luthardt, Schund, and
their compeers were demonstrating that Scripture requires a belief
in special and separate creations, the Archaepteryx, showing a
most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was
discovered. While in France Monseigneur Segur and others were
indulging in diatribes against "a certain Darwin," Gaudry an
Filhol were discovering a striking series of "missing links" among
the carnivora.
In view of the proofs accumulating in favour of the new
evolutionary hypothesis, the change in the tone of controlling
theologians was now rapid. From all sides came evidences of desir
to compromise with the theory. Strict adherents of the biblical
text pointed significantly to the verses in Genesis in which the
earth and sea were made to bring forth birds and fishes, and ma
was created out of the dust of the ground. Men of larger mind like
Kingsley and Farrar, with English and American broad churchmen
generally, took ground directly in Darwin's favour. Even Whewell too
pains to show that there might be such a thing as a Darwinian argument
for design in Nature; and the Rev. Samuel Houghton, of the Royal
Society, gave interesting suggestions of a divine design in evolution.
Both the great English universities received the new teaching as a
leaven: at Oxford, in the very front of the High Church party at
Keble College, was elaborated a statement that the evolutio
doctrine is "an advance in our theological thinking." And Temple,
Bishop of London, perhaps the most influential thinker then in the
Anglican episcopate, accepted the new revelation in the following
words: "It seems something more majestic, more befitting him to
whom a thousand years are as one day, thus to impress his will
once for all on his creation, and provide for all the countless
varieties by this one original impress, than by special acts of
creation to be perpetually modifying what he had previously made."
In Scotland the Duke of Argyll, head and front of the orthodox
party, dissenting in many respects from Darwin's full conclusions,
made concessions which badly shook the old position.
Curiously enough, from the Roman Catholic Church, bitter as some o
its writers had been, now came argument to prove that the Catholic
faith does not prevent any one from holding the Darwinian theory,
and especially a declaration from an authority eminent among
American Catholics--a declaration which has a very curious sound,
but which it would be ungracious to find fault with--that "the
doctrine of evolution is no more in opposition to the doctrine of the
Catholic Church than is the Copernican theory or that of Galileo."
Here and there, indeed, men of science like Dawson, Mivart, and
Wigand, in view of theological considerations, sought to make
conditions; but the current was too strong, and eminent
theologians in every country accepted natural selection as at leas
a very important part in the mechanism of evolution.
At the death of Darwin it was felt that there was but one place i
England where his body should be laid, and that this place was next
the grave of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. The nobl
address of Canon Farrar at his funeral was echoed from many pulpits
in Europe and America, and theological opposition as such was ended.
Occasionally appeared, it is true, a survival of the old feeling:
the Rev. Dr. Laing referred to the burial of Darwin in Westminste
Abbey as "a proof that England is no longer a Christian country,"
and added that this burial was a desecration--that this honour
was given him because he had been "the chief promoter of the mock
doctrrne of evolution of the species and the ape descent of man."
Still another of these belated prophets was, of all men, Thoma
Carlyle. Soured and embittered, in the same spirit which led him to
find more heroism in a marauding Viking or in one of Frederick the
Great's generals than in Washington, or Lincoln, or Grant, and
which caused him to see in the American civil war only the burning
out of a foul chimney, he, with the petulance natural to
dyspeptic eunuch, railed at Darwin as an "apostle of dirt worship."
The last echoes of these utterances reverberated between Scotland
and America. In the former country, in 1885, the Rev. Dr. Lee
issued a volume declaring that, if the Darwinian view be true,
"there is no place for God"; that "by no method of interpretation
can the language of Holy Scripture be made wide enough to re-echo
the orang-outang theory of man's natural history"; that "Darwinism
reverses the revelation of God" and "implies utter blasphemy
against the divine and human character of our Incarnate Lord"; and
he was pleased to call Darwin and his followers "gospellers of the
gutter." In one of the intellectual centres of America the edito
of a periodical called _The Christian_ urged frantically that "the
battle be set in array, and that men find out who is on the Lord'
side and who is on the side of the devil and the monkeys.
To the honour of the Church of England it should be recorded that
a considerable number of her truest men opposed such utterances
as these, and that one of them--Farrar, Archdeacon o
Westminster--made a protest worthy to be held in perpetual
remembrance. While confessing his own inability to accept fully the
new scientific belief, he said: "We should consider it disgraceful
and humiliating to try to shake it by an _ad captandum_ argument, or
by a clap-trap platform appeal to the unfathomable ignorance and
unlimited arrogance of a prejudiced assembly. We should blush to
meet it with an anathema or a sneer."
All opposition had availed nothing; Darwin's work and fame were
secure. As men looked back over his beautiful life--simple, honest,
tolerant, kindly--and thought upon his great labours in the searc
for truth, all the attacks faded into nothingness.
There were indeed some dark spots, which as time goes on appear
darker. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Whewell, the "omniscient,"
author of the _History of the Inductive Sciences_, refused to allow
a copy of the _Origin of Species_ to be placed in the library. A
multitudes of institutions under theological control--Protestant as
well as Catholic--attempts were made to stamp out or to stifle
evolutionary teaching. Especially was this true for a time i
America, and the case of the American College at Beyrout, where
nearly all the younger professors were dismissed for adhering to
Darwin's views, is worthy of remembrance. The treatment of Dr.
Winchell at the Vanderbilt University in Tennessee showed the same
spirit; one of the truest of men, devoted to science but of deeply
Christian feeling, he was driven forth for views which centred in
the Darwinian theory.
Still more striking was the case of Dr. Woodrow. He had, abou
1857, been appointed to a professorship of Natural Science as
connected with Revealed Religion, in the Presbyterian Seminary a
Columbia, South Carolina. He was a devoted Christian man, and his
training had led him to accept the Presbyterian standards of faith.
With great gifts for scientific study he visited Europe, made a
most conscientious examination of the main questions under
discussion, and adopted the chief points in the doctrine of
evolution by natural selection. A struggle soon began. A movement
hostile to him grew more and more determined, and at last, in spit
of the efforts made in his behalf by the directors of the seminary
and by a large and broad-minded minority in the representative
bodies controlling it, an orthodox storm, raised by the delegates
from various Presbyterian bodies, drove him from his post.
Fortunately, he was received into a professorship at the University
of South Carolina, where he has since taught with more power than
ever before.
This testimony to the faith by American provincial Protestantism
was very properly echoed from Spanish provincial Catholicism. In
the year 1878 a Spanish colonial man of science, Dr. Chil y
Marango, published a work on the Canary Islands. But Dr. Chil had
the imprudence to sketch, in his introduction, the modern
hypothesis of evolution, and to exhibit some proofs, found in the
Canary Islands, of the barbarism of primitive man. The
ecclesiastical authorities, under the lead of Bishop Urquinaona y
Bidot, at once grappled with this new idea. By a solemn act they
declared it "_falsa, impia, scandalosa_"; all persons possessing
copies of the work were ordered to surrender them at once to the
proper ecclesiastics, and the author was placed under the major
excommunication.
But all this opposition may be reckoned among the last expiring
convulsions of the old theologic theory. Even from the new Catholic
University at Washington has come an utterance in favour of the ne
doctrine, and in other universities in the Old World and in the New
the doctrine of evolution by natural selection has asserted it
right to full and honest consideration. More than this, it i
clearly evident that the stronger men in the Church have, in these
latter days, not only relinquished the struggle against science in
this field, but have determined frankly and manfully to make an
alliance with it. In two very remarkable lectures given in 1892 at
the parish church of Rochdale, Wilson, Archdeacon of Manchester
not only accepted Darwinism as true, but wrought it with great
argumentative power into a higher view of Christianity; and what
is of great significance, these sermons were published by the same
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge which only a fe
years before had published the most bitter attacks against the
Darwinian theory. So, too, during the year 1893, Prof. Henry
Drummond, whose praise is in all the dissenting churches, developed
a similar view most brilliantly in a series of lectures delivered
before the American Chautauqua schools, and published in one of th
most widespread of English orthodox newspapers
Whatever additional factors may be added to natural selection--and
Darwin himself fully admitted that there might be others--the theory
of an evolution process in the formation of the universe and of
animated nature is established, and the old theory of direct creation
is gone forever. In place of it science has given us conceptions far
more noble, and opened the way to an argument for design infinitely
more beautiful than any ever developed by theology.[86]
CHAPTER II.
GEOGRAPHY.
I. THE FORM OF THE EARTH.
AMONG various rude tribes we find survivals of a primitive idea
that the earth is a flat table or disk, ceiled, domed, or canopie
by the sky, and that the sky rests upon the mountains as pillars. Such
a belief is entirely natural; it conforms to the appearance of things,
and hence at a very early period entered into various theologies.
In the civilizations of Chaldea and Egypt it was very fully
developed. The Assyrian inscriptions deciphered in these latter
years represent the god Marduk as in the beginning creating the
heavens and the earth: the earth rests upon the waters; within it
is the realm of the dead; above it is spread "the firmament"--a
solid dome coming down to the horizon on all sides and resting upon
foundations laid in the "great waters" which extend around the earth.
On the east and west sides of this domed firmament are doors, through
which the sun enters in the morning and departs at night; above it
extends another ocean, which goes down to the ocean surrounding
the earth at the horizon on all sides, and which is supported and
kept away from the earth by the firmament. Above the firmament and
the upper ocean which it supports is the interior of heaven.
The Egyptians considered the earth as a table, flat and oblong, the
sky being its ceiling--a huge "firmament" of metal. At the fou
corners of the earth were the pillars supporting this firmament,
and on this solid sky were the "waters above the heavens." They
believed that, when chaos was taking form, one of the gods by mai
force raised the waters on high and spread them out over the
firmament; that on the under side of this solid vault, or ceiling,
or firmament, the stars were suspended to light the earth, and that
the rains were caused by the letting down of the waters through its
windows. This idea and others connected with it seem to have taken
strong hold of the Egyptian priestly caste, entering into thei
theology and sacred science: ceilings of great temples, with
stars, constellations, planets, and signs of the zodiac figure
upon them, remain to-day as striking evidences of this.
In Persia we have theories of geography based upon similar
conceptions and embalmed in sacred texts
From these and doubtless from earlier sources common to them all
came geographical legacies to the Hebrews. Various passages in
their sacred books, many of them noble in conception and beautiful
in form, regarding "the foundation of the earth upon the waters,"
"the fountains of the great deep," "the compass upon the face of
the depth," the "firmament," the "corners of the earth," the
"pillars of heaven," the "waters above the firmament," the
"windows of heaven," and "doors of heaven," point us back to both
these ancient springs of thought.[90]
But, as civilization was developed, there were evolved, especially
among the Greeks, ideas of the earth's sphericity. The
Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle especially cherished them. These
ideas were vague, they were mixed with absurdities, but they were
germ ideas, and even amid the luxuriant growth of theology in the
early Christian Church these germs began struggling into life in
the minds of a few thinking men, and these men renewed the
suggestion that the earth is a globe.[91]
A few of the larger-minded fathers of the Church, influenced
possibly by Pythagorean traditions, but certainly by Aristotle and
Plato, were willing to accept this view, but the majority of them
took fright at once. To them it seemed fraught with dangers to
Scripture, by which, of course, they meant their interpretation of
Scripture. Among the first who took up arms against it was
Eusebius. In view of the New Testament texts indicating the
immediately approaching, end of the world, he endeavoured to turn
off this idea by bringing scientific studies into contempt.
Speaking of investigators, he said, "It is not through ignorance
of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their
useless labour, that we think little of these matters, turning our
souls to better things." Basil of Caesarea declared it "a matter
of no interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or
a disk, or concave in the middle like a fan." Lactantius referred
to the ideas of those studying astronomy as "bad and senseless,"
and opposed the doctrine of the earth's sphericity both from
Scripture and reason. St. John Chrysostom also exerted his
influence against this scientific belief; and Ephraem Syrus, the
greatest man of the old Syrian Church, widely known as the "lute
of the Holy Ghost," opposed it no less earnestly.
But the strictly biblical men of science, such eminent fathers and
bishops as Theophilus of Antioch in the second century, and Clement
of Alexandria in the third, with others in centuries following,
were not content with merely opposing what they stigmatized as a
old heathen theory; they drew from their Bibles a new Christian
theory, to which one Church authority added one idea and another
another, until it was fully developed. Taking the survival of
various early traditions, given in the seventh verse of the firs
chapter of Genesis, they insisted on the clear declarations of
Scripture that the earth was, at creation, arched over with a solid
vault, "a firmament," and to this they added the passages from
Isaiah and the Psalms, in which it declared that the heavens are
stretched out "like a curtain," and again "like a tent to dwell
in." The universe, then, is like a house: the earth is its ground
floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs
out the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the
night. This ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and
in this is a cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says,
"like a bathing-tank," and containing "the waters which are abov
the firmament." These waters are let down upon the earth by the
Almighty and his angels through the "windows of heaven." As to the
movement of the sun, there was a citation of various passages in
Genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various proportions, and this
was thought to give ample proofs from the Bible that the earth
could not be a sphere.[92]
In the sixth century this development culminated in what was
nothing less than a complete and detailed system of the universe
claiming to be based upon Scripture, its author being the Egyptian
monk Cosmas Indicopleustes. Egypt was a great treasure-house of
theologic thought to various religions of antiquity, and Cosmas
appears to have urged upon the early Church this Egyptian idea of
the construction of the world, just as another Egyptian
ecclesiastic, Athanasius, urged upon the Church the Egyptian idea
of a triune deity ruling the world. According to Cosmas, the earth
is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas. It is four
hundred days' journey long and two hundred broad. At the outer
edges of these four seas arise massive walls closing in the whole
structure and supporting the firmament or vault of the heavens
whose edges are cemented to the walls. These walls inclose the
earth and all the heavenly bodies.
The whole of this theologico-scientific structure was built most
carefully and, as was then thought, most scripturally. Starting
with the expression applied in the ninth chapter of Hebrews to the
tabernacle in the desert, Cosmas insists, with other interpreter
of his time, that it gives the key to the whole construction of the
world. The universe is, therefore, made on the plan of the Jewis
tabernacle--boxlike and oblong. Going into details, he quotes the
sublime 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"; and the passage in
Job which speaks of the "pillars of heaven." He works all this
into his system, and reveals, as he thinks, treasures of science
This vast box is divided into two compartments, one above the
other. In the first of these, men live and stars move; and i
extends up to the first solid vault, or firmament, above which 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," 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" then casts all,
and these growths of thought into his crucible together, finally
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" and establishes a doctrine
regarding the regulation of the rain, to the effect that the angels
not only push and pull the heavenly bodies to light the earth, but
also open and close the heavenly windows to water it.
To understand the surface of the earth, Cosmas, following the
methods of interpretation which Origen and other early fathers of
the Church had established, studies the table of shew-bread in the
Jewish tabernacle. The surface of this table proves to him that the
earth is flat, and its dimensions prove that the earth is twice a
long as broad; its four corners symbolize the four seasons; the
twelve loaves of bread, the twelve months; the hollow about the
table proves that the ocean surrounds the earth. 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 pit at night and
pulled out in the morning.
Nothing can be more touching in its simplicity than Cosmas's
summing up of his great argument, He declares, "We say therefore
with Isaiah that the heaven embracing the universe is a vault, wit
Job that it is joined to the earth, and with Moses that the length
of the earth is greater than its breadth." The treatise closes with
rapturous assertions that not only Moses and the prophets, but also
angels and apostles, agree to the truth of his doctrine, and that
at the last day God will condemn all who do not accept it.
Although this theory was drawn from Scripture, it was also, as we
have seen, the result of an evolution of theological thought begun
long before the scriptural texts on which it rested were written.
It was not at all strange that Cosmas, Egyptian as he was, shoul
have received this old Nile-born doctrine, as we see it indicated
to-day in the structure of Egyptian temples, and that he should
have developed it by the aid of the Jewish Scriptures; but th
theological world knew nothing of this more remote evolution from
pagan germs; it was received as virtually inspired, and was soon
regarded as a fortress of scriptural truth. Some of the foremost
men in the Church devoted themselves to buttressing it with new
texts and throwing about it new outworks of theological reasoning;
the great body of the faithful considered it a direct gift from th
Almighty. Even in the later centuries of the Middle Ages John of
San Geminiano made a desperate attempt to save it. Like Cosmas, he
takes the Jewish tabernacle as his starting-point, and shows ho
all the newer ideas can be reconciled with the biblical accounts of
its shape, dimensions, and furniture.[95]
From this old conception of the universe as a sort of house, wit
heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor, flowed
important theological ideas into heathen, Jewish, and Christian
mythologies. Common to them all are legends regarding attempts of
mortals to invade the upper apartment from the lower. Of such are
the Greek legends of the Aloidae, who sought to reach heaven by
piling up mountains, and were cast down; the Chaldean and Hebrew
legends of the wicked who at Babel sought to build "a tower whose
top may reach heaven," which Jehovah went down from heaven to see,
and which he brought to naught by the "confusion of tongues"; the
Hindu legend of the tree which sought to grow into heaven and which
Brahma blasted; and the Mexican legend of the giants who sought t
reach heaven by building the Pyramid of Cholula, and who wer
overthrown by fire from above.
Myths having this geographical idea as their germ developed in
luxuriance through thousands of years. Ascensions to heaven and
descents from it, "translations," "assumptions," "annunciations,"
mortals "caught up" into it and returning, angels flying between
it and the earth, thunderbolts hurled down from it, might
winds issuing from its corners, voices speaking from the
upper floor to men on the lower, temporary openings of the floor of
heaven to reveal the blessedness of the good, "signs and wonders"
hung out from it to warn the wicked, interventions of every
kind--from the heathen gods coming down on every sort of errand, an
Jehovah coming down to walk in Eden in the cool of the day, to St.
Mark swooping down into the market-place of Venice to break th
shackles of a slave--all these are but features in a vast evolution
of myths arising largely from this geographical germ.
Nor did this evolution end here. Naturally, in this view of things,
if heaven was a loft, hell was a cellar; and if there were
ascensions into one, there were descents into the other. Hell being
so near, interferences by its occupants with the dwellers of th
earth just above were constant, and form a vast chapter in medieval
literature. Dante made this conception of the location of hel
still more vivid, and we find some forms of it serious barriers t
geographical investigation. Many a bold navigator, who was quite
ready to brave pirates and tempests, trembled at the thought of
tumbling with his ship into one of the openings into hell which a
widespread belief placed in the Atlantic at some unknown distance
from Europe. This terror among sailors was one of the main
obstacles in the great voyage of Columbus. In a medieval text-book,
giving science the form of a dialogue, occur the following question
and answer: "Why is the sun so red in the evening?" "Because he
looketh down upon hell."
But the ancient germ of scientific truth in geography--the idea of
the earth's sphericity--still lived. Although the great majority
of the early fathers of the Church, and especially Lactantius, had
sought to crush it beneath the utterances attributed to Isaiah,
David, and St. Paul, the better opinion of Eudoxus and Aristotle
could not be forgotten. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had eve
supported it. Ambrose and Augustine had tolerated it, and, after
Cosmas had held sway a hundred years, it received new life from
great churchman of southern Europe, Isidore of Seville, who,
however fettered by the dominant theology in many other things,
braved it in this. In the eighth century a similar declaration was
made in the north of Europe by another great Church authority,
Bede. Against the new life thus given to the old truth, the sacred
theory struggled long and vigorously but in vain. Eminent
authorities in later ages, like Albert the Great, St. Thomas
Aquinas, Dante, and Vincent of Beauvais, felt obliged to accept the
doctrine of the earth's sphericity, and as we approach the modern
period we find its truth acknowledged by the vast majority o
thinking men. The Reformation did not at first yield fully to this
better theory. Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin were very strict in
their adherence to the exact letter of Scripture. Even Zwingli,
broad as his views generally were, was closely bound down in this
matter, and held to the opinion of the fathers that a great
firmament, or floor, separated the heavens from the earth; that
above it were the waters and angels, and below it the earth and man.
The main scope given to independent thought on this general subject
among the Reformers was in a few minor speculations regarding the
universe which encompassed Eden, the exact character of the
conversation of the serpent with Eve, and the like.
In the times immediately following the Reformation matters were
even worse. The interpretations of Scripture by Luther and Calvin
became as sacred to their followers as the Scripture itself. Whe
Calixt ventured, in interpreting the Psalms, to question th
accepted belief that "the waters above the heavens" were
contained in a vast receptacle upheld by a solid vault, he was
bitterly denounced as heretical.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century Musaeus interpreted the
accounts in Genesis to mean that first God made the heavens for the
roof or vault, and left it there on high swinging until three days
later he put the earth under it. But the new scientific thought as
to the earth's form had gained the day. The most sturdy believers
were obliged to adjust their, biblical theories to it as best they
could.[98
II. THE DELINEATION OF THE EARTH
Every great people of antiquity, as a rule, regarded its own central
city or most holy place as necessarily the centre of the earth.
The Chaldeans held that their "holy house of the gods" was the
centre. The Egyptians sketched the world under the form of a human
figure, in which Egypt was the heart, and the centre of it Thebes.
For the Assyrians, it was Babylon; for the Hindus, it was Mount
Meru; for the Greeks, so far as the civilized world was concerned,
Olympus or the temple at Delphi; for the modern Mohammedans, it is
Mecca and its sacred stone; the Chinese, to this day, speak of
their empire as the "middle kingdom." It was in accordance, then,
with a simple tendency of human thought that the Jews believed th
centre of the world to be Jerusalem.
The book of Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem as in the middle of the
earth, and all other parts of the world as set around the holy
city. Throughout the "ages of faith" this was very generally
accepted as a direct revelation from the Almighty regarding the
earth's form. St. Jerome, the greatest authority of the early
Church upon the Bible, declared, on the strength of this utterance
of the prophet, that Jerusalem could be nowhere but at the earth'
centre; in the ninth century Archbishop Rabanus Maurus reiterated
the same argument; in the eleventh century Hugh of St. Victor gave
to the doctrine another scriptural demonstration; and Pope Urban,
in his great sermon at Clermont urging the Franks to the crusade,
declared, "Jerusalem is the middle point of the earth"; in the
thirteenth century an ecclesiastical writer much in vogue, the
monk Caesarius of Heisterbach, declared, "As the heart in the midst
of the body, so is Jerusalem situated in the midst of our inhabited
earth,"--"so it was that Christ was crucified at the centre of the
earth." Dante accepted this view of Jerusalem as a certainty,
wedding it to immortal verse; and in the pious book of travels
ascribed to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages,
it is declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and
that a spear standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shado
at the equinox
Ezekiel's statement thus became the standard of orthodoxy to early
map-makers. The map of the world at Hereford Cathedral, the maps of
Andrea Bianco, Marino Sanuto, and a multitude of others fixed thi
view in men's minds, and doubtless discouraged during many
generations any scientific statements tending to unbalance this
geographical centre revealed in Scripture.[99]
Nor did medieval thinkers rest with this conception. In accordance
with the dominant view that physical truth must be sought b
theological reasoning, the doctrine was evolved that not only th
site of the cross on Calvary marked the geographical centre of th
world, but that on this very spot had stood the tree which bore the
forbidden fruit in Eden. Thus was geography made to reconcile all
parts of the great theologic plan. This doctrine was hailed with
joy by multitudes; and we find in the works of medieval pilgrims to
Palestine, again and again, evidence that this had become preciou
truth to them, both in theology and geography. Even as late as 1664
the eminent French priest Eugene Roger, in his published travels in
Palestine, dwelt upon the thirty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel, coupled
with a text from Isaiah, to prove that the exact centre of the
earth is a spot marked on the pavement of the Church of the Hol
Sepulchre, and that on this spot once stood the tree which bore the
forbidden fruit and the cross of Christ.[100
Nor was this the only misconception which forced its way from our
sacred writings into medieval map-making: two others were almost
as marked. First of these was the vague terror inspired by Gog
and Magog. Few passages in the Old Testament are more sublime
than the denunciation of these great enemies by Ezekiel; and the
well-known statement in the Apocalypse fastened the Hebrew
feeling regarding them with a new meaning into the mind of the
early Church: hence it was that the medieval map-makers too
great pains to delineate these monsters and their habitations o
the maps. For centuries no map was considered orthodox which did
not show them.
The second conception was derived from the mention in our sacre
books of the "four winds." Hence came a vivid belief in their real
existence, and their delineation on the maps, generally as colossal
heads with distended cheeks, blowing vigorously toward Jerusalem.
After these conceptions had mainly disappeared we find here and
there evidences of the difficulty men found in giving up the
scriptural idea of direct personal interference by agents of Heaven
in the ordinary phenomena of Nature: thus, in a noted map of th
sixteenth century representing the earth as a sphere, there is at
each pole a crank, with an angel laboriously turning the earth by
means of it; and, in another map, the hand of the Almighty, thrus
forth from the clouds, holds the earth suspended by a rope and
spins it with his thumb and fingers. Even as late as the middle of
the seventeenth century Heylin, the most authoritative English
geographer of the time, shows a like tendency to mix science and
theology. He warps each to help the other, as follows: "Water,
making but one globe with the earth, is yet higher than it. This
appears, first, because it is a body not so heavy; secondly, it is
observed by sailors that their ships move faster to the shore than
from it, whereof no reason can be given but the height of the wate
above the land; thirdly, to such as stand on the shore the sea
seems to swell into the form of a round hill till it puts a bound
upon our sight. Now that the sea, hovering thus over and above the
earth, doth not overwhelm it, can be ascribed only to his
Providence who `hath made the waters to stand on an heap that they
turn not again to cover the earth.'"[102]
III. THE INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH.
Even while the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth was
undecided, another question had been suggested which theologians
finally came to consider of far greater importance. The doctrine of
the sphericity of the earth naturally led to thought regarding its
inhabitants, and another ancient germ was warmed into life--the
idea of antipodes: of human beings on the earth's opposite sides.
In the Greek and Roman world this idea had found supporters and
opponents, Cicero and Pliny being among the former, and Epicurus,
Lucretius, and Plutarch among the latter. Thus the problem cam
into the early Church unsolved.
Among the first churchmen to take it up was, in the East, St.
Gregory Nazianzen, who showed that to sail beyond Gibraltar wa
impossible; and, in the West, Lactantius, who asked: "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?. . . I am at a loss what to say of those who, when they
have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly and defend one
vain thing by another."
In all this contention by Gregory and Lactantius there was nothing to be
especially regretted, for, whatever their motive, they simply supported
their inherited belief on grounds of natural law and probability.
Unfortunately, the discussion was not long allowed to rest on these
scientific and philosophical grounds; other Christian thinkers
followed, who in their ardour adduced texts of Scripture, and soo
the question had become theological; hostility to the belief in
antipodes became dogmatic. The universal Church was arrayed against
it, and in front of the vast phalanx stood, to a man, the fathers.
To all of them this idea seemed dangerous; to most of them it
seemed damnable. St. Basil and St. Ambrose were tolerant enough to
allow that a man might be saved who thought the earth inhabited on
its opposite sides; but the great majority of the fathers doubted
the possibility of salvation to such misbelievers.
The great champion of the orthodox view was St. Augustine. Though
he seemed inclined to yield a little in regard to the sphericity o
the earth, he fought the idea that men exist on the other side of
it, saying that "Scripture speaks of no such descendants of Adam."
he insists that men could not be allowed by the Almighty to live
there, since if they did they could not see Christ at His second
coming descending through the air. But his most cogent appeal, one
which we find echoed from theologian to theologian during a
thousand years afterward, is to the nineteenth Psalm, and to it
confirmation in the Epistle to the Romans; to the words, "Their
line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the en
of the world." He dwells with great force on the fact that St.
Paul based one of his most powerful arguments upon this declaration
regarding the preachers of the gospel, and that he declared even
more explicitly that "Verily, their sound went into all the earth,
and their words unto the ends of the world." Thenceforth we find i
constantly declared that, as those preachers did not go to the
antipodes, no antipodes can exist; and hence that the supporters of
this geographical doctrine "give the lie direct to King David and
to St. Paul, and therefore to the Holy Ghost." Thus the great
Bishop of Hippo taught the whole world for over a thousand years
that, as there was no preaching of the gospel on the opposite side
of the earth, there could be no human beings there.
The great authority of Augustine, and the cogency of his scriptural
argument, held the Church firmly against the doctrine of the
antipodes; all schools of interpretation were now agreed--the
followers of the allegorical tendencies of Alexandria, the strictly
literal exegetes of Syria, the more eclectic theologians of the
West. For over a thousand years it was held in the Church,
"always, everywhere, and by all," that there could not be human
beings on the opposite sides of the earth, even if the earth had
opposite sides; and, when attacked by gainsayers, the great mass of
true believers, from the fourth century to the fifteenth, simply
used that opiate which had so soothing an effect on John Henry
Newman in the nineteenth century--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_.
Yet gainsayers still appeared. That the doctrine of the antipodes
continued to have life, is shown by the fact that in the sixt
century Procopius of Gaza attacks it with a tremendous argument. He
declares that, if there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ
must have gone there and suffered a second time to save them; and,
therefore, that there must have been there, as necessary preliminaries
to his coming, a duplicate Eden, Adam, serpent, and deluge.
Cosmas Indicopleustes also attacked the doctrine with especia
bitterness, citing a passage from St. Luke to prove that antipodes
are theologically impossible.
At the end of the sixth century came a man from whom much might be
expected--St. Isidore of Seville. He had pondered over ancient
thought in science, and, as we have seen, had dared proclaim his
belief in the sphericity of the earth; but with that he stopped. As
to the antipodes, the authority of the Psalmist, St. Paul, and St
Augustine silences him; he shuns the whole question as unlawful,
subjects reason to faith, and declares that men can not and ought
not to exist on opposite sides of the earth.[105]
Under such pressure this scientific truth seems to have disappeared
for nearly two hundred years; but by the eighth century the
sphericity of the earth had come to be generally accepted among th
leaders of thought, and now the doctrine of the antipodes was again
asserted by a bishop, Virgil of Salzburg.
There then stood in Germany, in those 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 labours he was a worthy
successor of the apostles; his genius for Christian work made him
unwillingly primate of Germany; his devotion to duty led him
willingly to martyrdom. There sat, too, at that time, on the papal
throne a great Christian statesman--Pope Zachary. Boniface
immediately declared against the revival of such a heresy as the
doctrine of the antipodes; he stigmatized it as an assertion that
there are men beyond the reach of the appointed means of salvation;
he attacked Virgil, and called on Pope Zachary for aid.
The Pope, as the infallible teacher of Christendom, made a strong
response. He cited passages from the book of Job and the Wisdom of
Solomon against the doctrine of the antipodes; he declared it
"perverse, iniquitous, and against Virgil's own soul," and indicated
a purpose of driving him from his bishopric. Whether this purpose
was carried out or not, the old theological view, by virtue of the
Pope's divinely ordered and protected "inerrancy," was
re-established, and the doctrine that the earth has inhabitants on
but one of its sides became more than ever orthodox, and precious
in the mind of the Church.[106]
This decision seems to have been regarded as final, and five
centuries later the great encyclopedist of the Middle Ages, Vincen
of Beauvais, though he accepts the sphericity of the earth, treats
the doctrine of the antipodes as disproved, because contrary to
Scripture. Yet the doctrine still lived. Just as it had bee
previously revived by William of Conches and then laid to rest, so
now it is somewhat timidly brought out in the thirteenth century by
no less a personage than Albert the Great, the most noted man of
science in that time. But his utterances are perhaps purposely
obscure. Again it disappears beneath the theological wave, and a
hundred years later Nicolas d'Oresme, geographer of the King of
France, a light of science, is forced to yield to the clear
teaching of the Scripture as cited by St. Augustine.
Nor was this the worst. In Italy, at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, the Church thought it necessary to deal with
questions of this sort by rack and fagot. In 1316 Peter of Abano
famous as a physician, having promulgated this with other obnoxious
doctrines in science, only escaped the Inquisition by death; and i
1327 Cecco d'Ascoli, noted as an astronomer, was for this and other
results of thought, which brought him under suspicion of sorcery,
driven from his professorship at Bologna and burned alive at
Florence. Nor was this all his punishment: Orcagna, whose terrible
frescoes still exist on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa
immortalized Cecco by representing him in the flames of hell.[107]
Years rolled on, and there came in the fifteenth century one from
whom the world had a right to expect much. Pierre d'Ailly, by force
of thought and study, had risen to be Provost of the College of St.
Die in Lorraine; his ability had made that little village a centre
of scientific thought for all Europe, and finally made him
Archbishop of Cambray and a cardinal. Toward the end of th
fifteenth century was printed what Cardinal d'Ailly had written
long before as a summing up of his best thought and research--th
collection of essays known as the _Ymago Mundi_. It gives us one of
the most striking examples in history of a great man in theological
fetters. As he approaches this question he states it with such
clearness that we expect to hear him assert the truth; but there
stands the argument of St. Augustine; there, too, stand the
biblical texts on which it is founded--the text from the Psalms and
the explicit declaration of St. Paul to the Romans, "Their sound
went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the
world." D'Ailly attempts to reason, but he is overawed, and gives
to the world virtually nothing.
Still, the doctrine of the antipodes lived and moved: so much s
that the eminent Spanish theologian Tostatus, even as late as the
age of Columbus, felt called upon to protest against it as
"unsafe." He had shaped the old missile of St. Augustine into the
following syllogism: "The apostles were commanded to go into al
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."
The warfare of Columbus the world knows well: how the Bishop of
Ceuta worsted him in Portugal; how sundry wise men of Spain
confronted him with the usual quotations from the Psalms, from St.
Paul, and from St. Augustine; how, even after he was triumphant
and after his voyage had greatly strengthened the theory of th
earth's sphericity, with which the theory of the antipodes was so
closely connected, the Church by its highest authority solemnly
stumbled and persisted in going astray. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI,
having been appealed to as an umpire between the claims of Spain
and Portugal to the newly discovered parts of the earth, issued a
bull laying down upon the earth's surface a line of demarcatio
between the two powers. This line was drawn from north to south a
hundred leagues west of the Azores; and the Pope in the plenitude
of his knowledge declared that all lands discovered east of this
line should belong to the Portuguese, and all west of it should
belong to the Spaniards. This was hailed as an exercise of divinely
illuminated power by the Church; but difficulties arose, and in
1506 another attempt was made by Pope Julius II to draw the line
three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.
This, again, was supposed to bring divine wisdom to settle the
question; but, shortly, overwhelming difficulties arose; for th
Portuguese claimed Brazil, and, of course, had no difficulty in
showing that they could reach it by sailing to the east of the
line, provided they sailed long enough. The lines laid down b
Popes Alexander and Julius may still be found upon the maps of the
period, but their bulls have quietly passed into the catalogue of
ludicrous errors.
Yet the theological barriers to this geographical truth yielded bu
slowly. Plain as it had become to scholars, they hesitated to
declare it to the world at large. Eleven hundred years had passe
since St. Augustine had proved its antagonism to Scripture, when
Gregory Reysch gave forth his famous encyclopaedia, the _Margarita
Philosophica_. Edition after edition was issued, and everywher
appeared in it the orthodox statements; but they were evidentl
strained to the breaking point; for while, in treating of the
antipodes, Reysch refers respectfully to St. Augustine as objecting
to the scientific doctrine, he is careful not to cite Scripture
against it, and not less careful to suggest geographical reasoning
in favour of it.
But in 1519 science gains a crushing victory. Magellan makes hi
famous voyage. He proves the earth to be round, for his expedition
circumnavigates it; he proves the doctrine of the antipodes, for
his shipmates see the peoples of the antipodes. Yet even this does
not end the war. Many conscientious 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
their 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 and perfectly, and when a
long line of trustworthy explorers, including devoted missionaries,
had sent home accounts of the antipodes, then, and then only, this
war of twelve centuries ended.
Such was the main result of this long war; but there were other
results not so fortunate. The efforts of Eusebius, Basil, and
Lactantius to deaden scientific thought; the efforts of Augustine
to combat it; the efforts of Cosmas to crush it by dogmatism; th
efforts of Boniface and Zachary to crush it by force, conscientious
as they all were, had resulted simply in impressing upon many
leading minds the conviction that science and religion are enemies.
On the other hand, what was gained by the warriors of science for
religion? Certainly a far more worthy conception of the world, and
a far more ennobling conception of that power which pervades and
directs it. Which is more consistent with a great religion, the
cosmography of Cosmas or that of Isaac Newton? Which presents
nobler field for religious thought, the diatribes of Lactantius or
the calm statements of Humboldt?[110]
IV. THE SIZE OF THE EARTH.
But at an early period another subject in geography had stirred the
minds of thinking men--_the earth's size_. Various ancient
investigators had by different methods reached measurements more or
less near the truth; these methods were continued into the Middle
Ages, supplemented by new thought, and among the more strikin
results were those obtained by Roger Bacon and Gerbert, afterward
Pope Sylvester II. They handed down to after-time the torch of
knowledge, but, as their reward among their contemporaries, they
fell under the charge of sorcery.
Far more consonant with the theological spirit of the Middle Ages
was a solution of the problem from Scripture, and this solution
deserves to be given as an example of a very curious theological
error, chancing to result in the establishment of a great truth.
The second book of Esdras, which among Protestants is placed in th
Apocrypha, was held by many of the foremost men of the ancient
Church as fully inspired: though Jerome looked with suspicion on
this book, it was regarded as prophetic by Clement of Alexandria,
Tertullian, and Ambrose, and the Church acquiesced in that view. I
the Eastern Church it held an especially high place, and in the
Western Church, before the Reformation, was generally considered by
the most eminent authorities to be part of the sacred canon. In th
sixth chapter of this book there is a summary of the works o
creation, and in it occur the following verses:
"Upon the third day thou didst command that the waters should b
gathered in the seventh part of the earth; six parts hast thou
dried up and kept them to the intent that of these some, bein
planted of God and tilled, might serve thee."
"Upon the fifth day thou saidst unto the seventh part where the
waters were gathered, that it should bring forth living creatures,
fowls and fishes, and so it came to pass."
These statements were reiterated in other verses, and were
naturally considered as of controlling authority.
Among the scholars who pondered on this as on all things likely to
increase knowledge was Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly. As we have seen,
this great man, while he denied the existence of the antipodes, as
St. Augustine had done, believed firmly in the sphericity of the
earth, and, interpreting these statements of the book of Esdras in
connection with this belief, he held that, as only one seventh of
the earth's surface was covered by water, the ocean between th
west coast of Europe and the east coast of Asia could not be very
wide. Knowing, as he thought, the extent of the land upon the
globe, he felt that in view of this divinely authorized statement
the globe must be much smaller, and the land of "Zipango," reached
by Marco Polo, on the extreme east coast of Asia, much nearer than
had been generally believed.
On this point he laid stress in his great work, the _Ymago Mundi_,
and an edition of it having been published in the days when
Columbus was thinking most closely upon the problem of a westward
voyage, it naturally exercised much influence upon his reasonings.
Among the treasures of the library at Seville, there is nothing
more interesting than a copy of this work annotated by Columbus
himself: from this very copy it was that Columbus obtained
confirmation of his belief that the passage across the ocean t
Marco Polo's land of Zipango in Asia was short. But for this error,
based upon a text supposed to be inspired, it is unlikely that
Columbus could have secured the necessary support for his voyage.
It is a curious fact that this single theological error thus
promoted a series of voyages which completely destroyed not only
this but every other conception of geography based upon the sacre
writings.[112
V. THE CHARACTER OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE.
It would be hardly just to dismiss the struggle for geographical
truth without referring to one passage more in the history of th
Protestant Church, for it shows clearly the difficulties in the way
of the simplest statement of geographical truth which conflicted
with the words of the sacred books.
In the year 1553 Michael Servetus was on trial for his life a
Geneva on the charge of Arianism. Servetus had rendered many
services to scientific truth, and one of these was an edition of
Ptolemy's _Geography_, in which Judea was spoken of, not as "a land
flowing with milk and honey," but, in strict accordance with the
truth, as, in the main, meagre, barren, and inhospitable. In his
trial this simple statement of geographical fact was used against
him by his arch-enemy John Calvin with fearful power. In vain did
Servetus plead that he had simply drawn the words from a previous
edition of Ptolemy; in vain did he declare that this statement was
a simple geographical truth of which there were ample proofs: i
was answered that such language "necessarily inculpated Moses, and
grievously outraged the Holy Ghost."[113]
In summing up the action of the Church upon geography, we must say,
then, that the dogmas developed in strict adherence to Scripture
and the conceptions held in the Church during many centuries
"always, every where, and by all," were, on the whole, steadily
hostile to truth; but it is only just to make a distinction here
between the religious and the theological spirit. To the religious
spirit are largely due several of the noblest among the great
voyages of discovery. A deep longing to extend the realms o
Christianity influenced the minds of Prince John of Portugal, in
his great series of efforts along the African coast; of Vasco da
Gama, in his circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope; of
Magellan, in his voyage around the world; and doubtless found a
place among the more worldly motives of Columbus.[113b]
Thus, in this field, from the supremacy accorded to theology, we
find resulting that tendency to dogmatism which has shown itself in
all ages the deadly foe not only of scientific inquiry but of th
higher religious spirit itself, while from the love of truth for
truth's sake, which has been the inspiration of all fruitful work
in science, nothing but advantage has ever resulted to religion
CHAPTER III.
ASTRONOMY.
I. THE OLD SACRED THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE.
THE next great series of battles was fought over the relations of
the visible heavens to the earth.
In the early Church, in view of the doctrine so prominent in the
New Testament, that the earth was soon to be destroyed, and tha
there were to be "new heavens and a new earth," astronomy, lik
other branches of science, was generally looked upon as futile. Wh
study the old heavens and the old earth, when they were so soon t
be replaced with something infinitely better? This feeling appear
in St. Augustine's famous utterance, "What concern is it to me
whether the heavens as a sphere inclose the earth in the middle of
the world or overhang it on either side?"
As to the heavenly bodies, theologians looked on them as at bes
only objects of pious speculation. Regarding their nature the
fathers of the Church were divided. Origen, and others with him,
thought them living beings possessed of souls, and this belief was
mainly based upon the scriptural vision of the morning stars
singing together, and upon the beautiful appeal to the "stars and
light" in the song of the three children--the _Benedicite_--which
the Anglican communion has so wisely retained in its Liturgy.
Other fathers thought the stars abiding-places of the angels, and
that stars were moved by angels. The Gnostics thought the stars
spiritual beings governed by angels, and appointed not to cause
earthly events but to indicate them.
As to the heavens in general, the prevailing view in the Church was
based upon the scriptural declarations that a solid vault--
"firmament"--was extended above the earth, and that the heavenly
bodies were simply lights hung within it. This was for a time held
very tenaciously. St. Philastrius, in his famous treatise on
heresies, pronounced it a heresy to deny that the stars are brought
out by God from his treasure-house and hung in the sky ever
evening; any other view he declared "false to the Catholi
faith." This view also survived in the sacred theory established so
firmly by Cosmas in the sixth century. Having established his plan
of the universe upon various texts in the Old and New Testaments,
and having made it a vast oblong box, covered by the solid
"firmament," he brought in additional texts from Scripture t
account for the planetary movements, and developed at length the
theory that the sun and planets are moved and the "windows of
heaven" opened and shut by angels appointed for that purpose.
How intensely real this way of looking at the universe was, we find
in the writings of St. Isidore, the greatest leader of orthodox
thought in the seventh century. He affirms that since the fall of
man, and on account of it, the sun and moon shine with a feebler
light; but he proves from a text in Isaiah that when the world
shall be fully redeemed these "great lights" will shine again in
all their early splendour. But, despite these authorities and their
theological finalities, the evolution of scientific though
continued, its main germ being the geocentric doctrine--the
doctrine that the earth is the centre, and that the sun and planets
revolve about it.[115]
This doctrine was of the highest respectability: it had been
developed at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it
accounted well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies;
its final name, "Ptolemaic theory," carried weight; and, having
thus come from antiquity into the Christian world, St. Clement of
Alexandria demonstrated that the altar in the Jewish tabernacle was
"a symbol of the earth placed in the middle of the universe":
nothing more was needed; the geocentric theory was fully adopted b
the Church and universally held to agree with the letter and spirit
of Scripture.[116]
Wrought into this foundation, and based upon it, there was
developed in the Middle Ages, mainly out of fragments of Chaldean
and other early theories preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures, a new
sacred system of astronomy, which became one of the great treasures
of the universal Church--the last word of revelation.
Three great men mainly reared this structure. First was the unknow
who gave to the world the treatises ascribed to Dionysius the
Areopagite. It was unhesitatingly believed that these were the work
of St. Paul's Athenian convert, and therefore virtually of St. Paul
himself. Though now known to be spurious, they were then considered
a treasure of inspiration, and an emperor of the East sent them to
an emperor of the West as the most worthy of gifts. In the ninth
century they were widely circulated in western Europe, and becam
a fruitful source of thought, especially on the whole celestia
hierarchy. Thus the old ideas of astronomy were vastly developed,
and the heavenly hosts were classed and named in accordance wit
indications scattered through the sacred Scriptures.
The next of these three great theologians was Peter Lombard,
professor at the University of Paris. About the middle of the
twelfth century he gave forth his collection of _Sentences_, or
Statements by the Fathers, and this remained until the end of the
Middle Ages the universal manual of theology. In it was especially
developed the theological view of man's relation to the universe.
The author tells the world: "Just as man is made for the sake of
God--that is, that he may serve Him,--so the universe is made for
the sake of man--that is, that it may serve _him_; therefore is ma
placed at the middle point of the universe, that he may both serve
and be served.
The vast significance of this view, and its power in resisting any real
astronomical science, we shall see, especially in the time of Galileo.
The great triad of thinkers culminated in St. Thomas Aquinas--the
sainted theologian, the glory of the mediaeval Church, the
"Angelic Doctor," the most marvellous intellect between Aristotle
and Newton; he to whom it was believed that an image of the
Crucified had spoken words praising his writings. Large of mind,
strong, acute, yet just--even more than just--to his opponents, he
gave forth, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, his
Cyclopaedia of Theology, the _Summa Theologica_. In this he carried
the sacred theory of the universe to its full development. With
great power and clearness he brought the whole vast system,
material and spiritual, into its relations to God and man.[117]
Thus was the vast system developed by these three leaders of
mediaeval thought; and now came the man who wrought it yet more
deeply into European belief, the poet divinely inspired who made
the system part of the world's _life_. Pictured by Dante, the
empyrean and the concentric heavens, paradise, purgatory, and hell,
were seen of all men; the God Triune, seated on his throne upon the
circle of the heavens, as real as the Pope seated in the chair of
St. Peter; the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, surrounding the
Almighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding the Pope; the three
great orders of angels in heaven, as real as the three great
orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, on earth; and the whole
system of spheres, each revolving within the one above it, and all
moving about the earth, subject to the _primum mobile_, as real as
the feudal system of western Europe, subject to the Emperor.[118]
Let us look into this vast creation--the highest achievement of
theology--somewhat more closely.
Its first feature shows a development out of earlier theologica
ideas. The earth is no longer a flat plain inclosed by four walls
and solidly vaulted above, as theologians of previous centuries had
believed it, under the inspiration of Cosmas; it is no longer a
mere flat disk, with sun, moon, and stars hung up to give it light,
as the earlier cathedral sculptors had figured it; it has become
a globe at the centre of the universe. Encompassing it are
successive transparent spheres, rotated by angels about the earth,
and each carrying one or more of the heavenly bodies with it: that
nearest the earth carrying the moon; the next, Mercury; the next,
Venus; the next, the Sun; the next three, Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn; the eighth carrying the fixed stars. The ninth was the
_primum mobile_, and inclosing all was the tenth heaven--the
Empyrean. This was immovable--the boundarv between creation and the
great outer void; and here, in a light which no one can enter, the
Triune God sat enthroned, the "music of the spheres" rising to
Him as they moved. Thus was the old heathen doctrine of the spheres
made Christian.
In attendance upon the Divine Majesty, thus enthroned, are vast
hosts of angels, who are divided into three hierarchies, one
serving in the empyrean, one in the heavens, between the empyrean
and the earth, and one on the earth.
Each of these hierarchies is divided into three choirs, or orders;
the first, into the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; and
the main occupation of these is to chant incessantly--to
"continually cry" the divine praises.
The order of Thrones conveys God's will to the second hierarchy
which serves in the movable heavens. This second hierarchy is also
made up of three orders. The first of these, the order of
Dominions, receives the divine commands; the second, the order of
Powers, moves the heavens, sun, moon, planets, and stars, opens and
shuts the "windows of heaven," and brings to pass all other celestial
phenomena; the third, the order of Empire, guards the others
The third and lowest hierarchy is also made up of three orders.
First of these are the Principalities, the guardian spirits of
nations and kingdoms. Next come Archangels; these protect religion,
and bear the prayers of the saints to the foot of God's throne.
Finally come Angels; these care for earthly affairs in general, one
being appointed to each mortal, and others taking charge of the
qualities of plants, metals, stones, and the like. Throughout the
whole system, from the great Triune God to the lowest group of
angels, we see at work the mystic power attached to the triangle
and sacred number three--the same which gave the triune idea to
ancient Hindu theology, which developed the triune deities in
Egypt, and which transmitted this theological gift to the Christian
world, especially through the Egyptian Athanasius.
Below the earth is hell. This is tenanted by the angels who
rebelled under the lead of Lucifer, prince of the seraphim--th
former favourite of the Trinity; but, of these rebellious angels
some still rove among the planetary spheres, and give trouble to
the good angels; others pervade the atmosphere about the earth
carrying lightning, storm, drought, and hail; others infest earthly
society, tempting men to sin; but Peter Lombard and St. Thomas
Aquinas take pains to show that the work of these devils is, after
all, but to discipline man or to mete out deserved punishment.
All this vast scheme had been so riveted into the Ptolemaic view
by the use of biblical texts and theological reasonings that the
resultant system of the universe was considered impregnable an
final. To attack it was blasphemy.
It stood for centuries. Great theological men of science, like
Vincent of Beauvais and Cardinal d'Ailly, devoted themselves t
showing not only that it was supported by Scripture, but that it
supported Scripture. Thus was the geocentric theory embedded in the
beliefs and aspirations, in the hopes and fears, of Christendom
down to the middle of the sixteenth century.[120]
II. THE HELIOCENTRIC THEORY.
But, on the other hand, there had been planted, long before, th
germs of a heliocentric theory. In the sixth century before our
era, Pythagoras, and after him Philolaus, had suggested the
movement of the earth and planets about a central fire; and, three
centuries later, Aristarchus had restated the main truth with
striking precision. Here comes in a proof that the antagonisin
between theological and scientific methods is not confined to
Christianity; for this statement brought upon Aristarchus the
charge of blasphemy, and drew after it a cloud of prejudice which
hid the truth for six hundred years. Not until the fifth century of
our era did it timidly appear in the thoughts of Martianus Capella:
then it was again lost to sight for a thousand years, until in the
fifteenth century, distorted and imperfect, it appeared in th
writings of Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa.
But in the shade cast by the vast system which had grown from the
minds of the great theologians and from the heart of the great poet
there had come to this truth neither bloom nor fruitage.
Quietly, however, the soil was receiving enrichment and the ai
warmth. The processes of mathematics were constantly improved, the
heavenly bodies were steadily observed, and at length appeared, far
from the centres of thought, on the borders of Poland, a plain,
simple-minded scholar, who first fairly uttered to the modern 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: this man was Nicholas Copernicus.
Copernicus had been a professor at Rome, and even as early as 150
had announced his doctrine there, but more in the way of a
scientific curiosity or paradox, as it had been previously held by
Cardinal de Cusa, than as the statement of a system representing a
great fact in Nature. About thirty years later one of his
disciples, Widmanstadt, had explained it to Clement VII; but it
still remained a mere hypothesis, and soon, like so many others,
disappeared from the public view. But to Copernicus, steadily
studying the subject, it became more and more a reality, and as
this truth grew within him he seemed to feel that at Rome he wa
no longer safe. To announce his discovery there as a theory or a
paradox might amuse the papal court, but to announce it as a
truth--as _the_ truth--was a far different matter. He therefore
returned to his little town in Poland
To publish his thought as it had now developed was evidentl
dangerous even there, and for more than thirty years it la
slumbering in the mind of Copernicus and of the friends to whom he
had privately intrusted it.
At last he prepared his great work on the _Revolutions of the
Heavenly Bodies_, and dedicated it to the Pope himself. He next
sought a place of publication. He dared not send it to Rome, for
there were the rulers of the older Church ready to seize it; he
dared not send it to Wittenberg, for there were the leaders of
Protestantism no less hostile; he therefore intrusted it to
Osiander, at Nuremberg.[122]
But Osiander's courage failed him: he dared not launch the new
thought boldly. He wrote a grovelling preface, endeavouring to
excuse Copernicus for his novel idea, and in this he inserted the
apologetic lie that Copernicus had propounded the doctrine of the
earth's movement not as a fact, but as a hypothesis. He declared
that it was lawful for an astronomer to indulge his imagination,
and that this was what Copernicus had 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 before the world, to sneak and crawl.[123]
On the 24th of May, 1543, the newly printed book arrived at th
house of Copernicus. It was put into his hands; but he was on his
deathbed. A few hours later he was beyond the reach of the
conscientious men who 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 lifelong
labours, no mention of his great discovery; but there was graven
upon it simply a prayer: "I ask not the grace accorded to Paul
not that given to Peter; give me only the favour 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.[124]
The preface of Osiander, pretending that the book of Copernicus
suggested a hypothesis instead of announcing a truth, served its
purpose well. During nearly seventy years the Church authorities
evidently thought it best not to stir the matter, and in some cases
professors like Calganini were allowed to present the new view
purely as a hypothesis. There were, indeed, mutterings from time to
time on the theological side, but there was no great demonstration
against the system until 1616. Then, when the Copernican doctrine
was upheld by Galileo as a _truth_, and proved to be a truth by his
telescope, the book was taken in hand by the Roman curia. The
statements of Copernicus were condemnned, "until they should be
corrected"; and the corrections required were simply such as would
substitute for his conclusions the old Ptolemaic theory.
That this was their purpose was seen in that year when Galileo was
forbidden to teach or discuss the Copernican theory, and when wer
forbidden "all books which affirm the motion of the earth."
Henceforth to read the work of Copernicus was to risk damnation,
and the world accepted the decree.[124b] The strongest minds wer
thus held fast. If they could not believe the old system, they must
_pretend_ that they believed it;--and this, even after the great
circumnavigation of the globe had done so much to open the eyes of
the world! Very striking is the case of the eminent Jesuit
missionary Joseph Acosta, whose great work on the _Natural and
Moral History of the Indies_, published in the last quarter of the
sixteenth century, exploded so many astronomical and geographical
errors. Though at times curiously credulous, he told the truth as
far as he dared; but as to the movement of the heavenly bodies he
remained orthodox--declaring, "I have seen the two poles, whereon
the heavens turn as upon their axletrees."
There was, indeed, in Europe one man who might have done much to
check this current of unreason which was to sweep away so many
thoughtful men on the one hand from scientific knowledge, and so
many on the other from Christianity. This was Peter Apian. He wa
one of the great mathematical and astronomical scholars of the
time. His brilliant abilities had made him the astronomical teacher
of the Emperor Charles V. his work on geography had brought him a
world-wide reputation; his work on astronomy brought him a patent
of nobility; his improvements in mathematical processes and
astronomical instruments brought him the praise of Kepler and a
place in the history of science: never had a true man better
opportunity to do a great deed. When Copernicus's work appeared,
Apian was at the height of his reputation and power: a quiet,
earnest plea from him, even if it had been only for ordinary
fairness and a suspension of judgment, must have carried much
weight. His devoted pupil, Charles V, who sat on the thrones of
Germany and Spain, must at least have given a hearing to such a
plea. But, unfortunately, Apian was a professor in an institution
of learning under the strictest Church control--the University of
Ingolstadt. His foremost duty was to teach _safe_ science--to keep
science within the line of scriptural truth as interpreted by
theological professors. His great opportunity was lost. Apian
continued to maunder over the Ptolemaic theory and astrology in his
lecture-room. The attack on the Copernican theory he neither
supported nor opposed; he was silent; and the cause of his silence
should never be forgotten so long as any Church asserts its title
to control university instruction.[126]
Doubtless many will exclaim against the Roman Catholic Church for
this; but the simple truth is that Protestantism was no less
zealous against the new scientific doctrine. All branches of the
Protestant Church--Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican--vied with eac
other in denouncing the Copernican doctrine as contrary to
Scripture; and, at a later period, the Puritans showed the same tendency.
Said Martin Luther: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who
strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or th
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 Copernicus. In his
treatise on the _Elements of Physics_, published six years after
Copernicus's death, 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 the passages in the Psalms and 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." So earnest does this mildest of the Reformers
become, that he suggests severe measures to restrain such impious
teachings as those of Copernicus.[127]
While Lutheranism was thus condemning the theory of the earth's
movement, other branches of the Protestant Church did not remain
behind. Calvin took the lead, in his _Commentary on Genesis_, by
condemning all who asserted that the earth is not at the centre o
the universe. He clinched the matter by the usual reference to th
first verse of the ninety-third Psalm, and asked, "Who will
venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy
Spirit?" Turretin, Calvin's famous successor, even after Kepler
and Newton had virtually completed the theory of Copernicus and
Galileo, put forth his compendium of theology, in which he proved,
from a multitude of scriptural texts, that the heavens, sun, and
moon move about the earth, which stands still in the centre. In
England we see similar theological efforts, even after they had
become evidently futile. Hutchinson's _Moses's Principia_, Dr. Samuel
Pike's _Sacred Philosophy_, the writings of Horne, Bishop Horsley,
and President Forbes contain most earnest attacks upon the ideas of
Newton, such attacks being based upon Scripture. Dr. John Owen, so
famous in the annals of Puritanism, declared the Copernican system
a "delusive and arbitrary hypothesis, contrary to Scripture"; and even
John Wesley declared the new ideas to "tend toward infidelity."[128]
And Protestant peoples were not a whit behind Catholic in following
out such teachings. The people of Elbing made themselves merry over
a farce in which Copernicus was the main object of ridicule. The
people of Nuremberg, a Protestant stronghold, caused a medal to be
struck with inscriptions ridiculing the philosopher and his theory.
Why the people at large took this view is easily understood when
we note the attitude of the guardians of learning, both Catholic
and Protestant, in that age. It throws great light upon sundry
claims by modern theologians to take charge of public instruction
and of the evolution of science. So important was it thought to
have "sound learning" guarded and "safe science" taught, that
in many of the universities, as late as the end of the seventeenth
century, professors were forced to take an oath not to hold the
"Pythagorean"--that is, the Copernican--idea as to the movement of
the heavenly bodies. As the contest went on, professors were
forbidden to make known to students the facts revealed by the
telescope. Special orders to this effect were issued by the
ecclesiastical authorities to the universities and colleges of
Pisa, Innspruck, Louvain, Douay, Salamanca, and others. During
generations we find the authorities of these Universities boasting
that these godless doctrines were kept away from their students. It
is touching to hear such boasts made then, just as it is touching
now to hear sundry excellent university authorities boast that they
discourage the reading of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin. Nor were suc
attempts to keep the truth from students confined to the Roman
Catholic institutions of learning. Strange as it may seem, nowher
were the facts confirming the Copernican theory more carefully kept
out of sight than at Wittenberg--the university of Luther and
Melanchthon. About the middle of the sixteenth century there were
at that centre of Protestant instruction two astronomers of a very
high order, Rheticus and Reinhold; both of these, after thorough
study, had convinced themselves that the Copernican system was
true, but neither of them was allowed to tell this truth to hi
students. Neither in his lecture announcements nor in his published
works did Rheticus venture to make the new system known, and he at
last gave up his professorship and left Wittenberg, that he might
have freedom to seek and tell the truth. Reinhold was even more
wretchedly humiliated. Convinced of the truth of the new theory, he
was obliged to advocate the old; if he mentioned the Copernican
ideas, he was compelled to overlay them with the Ptolemaic. Even
this was not thought safe enough, and in 1571 the subject was
intrusted to Peucer. He was eminently "sound," and denounced the
Copernican theory in his lectures as "absurd, and unfit to be
introduced into the schools."
To clinch anti-scientific ideas more firmly into German Protestant
teaching, Rector Hensel wrote a text-book for schools entitled _The
Restored Mosaic System of the World_, which showed the Copernican
astronomy to be unscriptural.
Doubtless this has a far-off sound; yet its echo comes very near
modern Protestantism in the expulsion of Dr. Woodrow by th
Presbyterian authorities in South Carolina; the expulsion of Prof.
Winchell by the Methodist Episcopal authorities in Tennessee; the
expulsion of Prof. Toy by Baptist authorities in Kentucky; the
expulsion of the professors at Beyrout under authority of American
Protestant divines--all for holding the doctrines of modern
science, and in the last years of the nineteenth century.[129
But the new truth could not be concealed; it could neither be
laughed down nor frowned down. Many minds had received it, but
within the hearing of the papacy only one tongue appears to have
dared to utter it clearly. This new warrior was that strang
mortal, Giordano Bruno. He was hunted from land to land, until at
last he turned on his pursuers with fearful invectives. For this
he was entrapped at Venice, imprisoned during six years in the
dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome, then burned alive, and his
ashes scattered to the winds. Still, the new truth lived on. Ten
years after the martyrdom of Bruno the truth of Copernicus's
doctrine was established by the telescope of Galileo.[130]
Herein was fulfilled one of the most touching of prophecies. Years
before, the opponents of Copernicus had said to him, "If you
doctrines were true, Venus would show phases like the moon."
Copernicus answered: "You are right; I know not what to say; bu
God is good, and will in time find an answer to this objection."
The God-given answer came when, in 1611, the rude telescope of
Galileo showed the phases of Venus.[130b
III. THE WAR UPON GALILEO.
On this new champion, Galileo, the whole war was at last
concentrated. His discoveries had clearly taken the Copernican
theory out of the list of hypotheses, and had placed it before th
world as a truth. Against him, then, the war was long and bitter.
The supporters of what was called "sound learning" declared hi
discoveries deceptions and his announcements blasphemy.
Semi-scientific professors, endeavouring to curry favour with the
Church, attacked him with sham science; earnest preachers attacked
him with perverted Scripture; theologians, inquisitors,
congregations of cardinals, and at last two popes dealt with him,
and, as was supposed, silenced his impious doctrine forever.[131]
I shall present this warfare at some length because, so far as I
can find, no careful summary of it has been given in our language,
since the whole history was placed in a new light by the
revelations of the trial documents in the Vatican Library, honestly
published for the first time by L'Epinois in 1867, and since that
by Gebler, Berti, Favaro, and others
The first important attack on Galileo began in 1610, when he
announced that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet
Jupiter. The enemy saw that this took the Copernican theory out of
the realm of hypothesis, and they gave battle immediately. They
denounced both his method and its results as absurd and impious. A
to his method, professors bred in the "safe science" favoured by
the Church argued that the divinely appointed way of arriving at
the truth in astronomy was by theological reasoning on texts of
Scripture; and, as to his results, they insisted, first, that
Aristotle knew nothing of these new revelations; and, next, that
the Bible 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; that from
Galileo's doctrine consequences must logically result destructive
to Christian truth. Bishops and priests therefore warned their
flocks, and multitudes of the faithful besought the Inquisition to
deal speedily and sharply with the heretic.[131b]
In vain did Galileo try to prove the existence of satellites b
showing them to the doubters through his telescope: they either
declared it impious to look, or, if they did look, denounced the
satellites 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." In vain did Galileo try to
save the great truths he had discovered by his letters to th
Benedictine Castelli and the Grand-Duchess Christine, in which he
argued that literal biblical interpretation should not be applied
to science; it was answered that such an argument only made his
heresy more detestable; that he was "worse than Luther or Calvin."
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 ar
fixed so firm that they can not be moved," and that the su
"runneth about from one end of the heavens to the other."[132]
But the little telescope of Galileo still swept the heavens, an
another revelation was announced--the mountains and valleys in the
moon. This brought on another attack. It was declared that this,
and the statement that the moon shines by light reflected from the
sun, directly contradict the statement in Genesis that the moon is
"a great light." 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.
Still another struggle was aroused when the hated telescope
revealed spots upon the sun, and their motion indicating the sun's
rotation. Monsignor Elci, head of the University of Pisa, forbade
the astronomer Castelli to mention these spots to his students
Father Busaeus, at the University of Innspruck, forbade the
astronomer Scheiner, who had also discovered the spots and proposed
a _safe_ explanation of them, to allow the new discovery to be know
there. At the College of Douay and the University of Louvain this
discovery was expressly placed under the ban, and this became the
general rule among the Catholic universities and colleges o
Europe. The Spanish universities were especially intolerant of this
and similar ideas, and up to a recent period their presentation wa
strictly forbidden in the most important university of all--that of
Salamanca.[133]
Such are the consequences of placing the instruction of men's minds
in the hands of those mainly absorbed in saving men's souls.
Nothing could be more in accordance with the idea recently put
forth by sundry ecclesiastics, Catholic and Protestant, that the
Church alone is empowered to promulgate scientific truth or direct
university instruction. But science gained a victory here also.
Observations of the solar spots were reported not only from Galile
in Italy, but from Fabricius in Holland. Father Scheiner then
endeavoured to make the usual compromise between theology and
science. He promulgated a pseudo-scientific theory, which only
provoked derision.
The war became more and more bitter. 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 upon the grea
astronomer's name ushered in sharper weapons; for, before Caccini
ended, he insisted that "geometry is of the devil," and that
"mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies.
The Church authorities gave Caccini promotion.
Father Lorini proved that Galileo's doctrine was not only heretical
but "atheistic," and besought the Inquisition to intervene. The
Bishop of Fiesole screamed in rage against the Copernican system,
publicly insulted Galileo, and denounced him 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
solenmnly condemned the new doctrines as unscriptural; and Paul V,
while petting Galileo, and inviting him as the greatest astronomer
of the world to visit Rome, was secretly moving the Archbishop of
Pisa to pick up evidence against the astronomer.
But by far the most terrible champion who now appeared was Cardinal
Bellarmin, one of the greatest theologians the world has known. He
was earnest, sincere, and learned, but insisted on making science
conform to Scripture. The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp
used were purely theological. They held up before the world the
dreadful consequences which must result to Christian theology were
the heavenly bodies proved to revolve about the sun and not about
the earth. Their most tremendous dogmatic engine was the statement
that "his pretended discovery vitiates the whole Christian plan o
salvation." Father Lecazre declared "it casts suspicion on th
doctrine of the incarnation." Others declared, "It upsets the
whole basis of theology. If the earth is a planet, and only on
among several planets, it can not be that any such great things
have been done specially 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 their 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?" Nor was this argument
confined to the theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon,
Protestant as he was, had already used it in his attacks on
Copernicus and his school.
In addition to this prodigious theological engine of war there was
kept up a fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and
scriptural extracts.
But the war grew still more bitter, and some weapons used in it are
worth examining. They are very easily examined, for they are to be
found on all the battlefields of science; but on that field they
were used with more effect than on almost any other. These weapons
are the epithets "infidel" and "atheist." 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, and philanthropists. The purest Christian
life, the noblest Christian character, have not availed to shield
combatants. Christians like Isaac Newton, Pascal, Locke, Milton,
and even Fenelon and Howard, have had this weapon hurled agains
them. Of all proofs of the existence of a God, those of Descartes
have been wrought most thoroughly into the minds of modern men; yet
the Protestant theologians of Holland sought to bring him to
torture and to death by the charge of atheism, and the Roma
Catholic theologians of France thwarted him during his life and
prevented any due honours to him after his death.[135]
These epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. They
are burning arrows; they set fire to masses of popular prejudice
always obscuring the real question, sometimes destroying th
attacking party. They are poisoned weapons. They pierce the hearts
of loving women; they alienate dear children; they injure a ma
after life is ended, for they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts
of those who loved him best--fears for his eternal salvation, dread
of the Divine wrath upon him. Of course, in these days these
weapons, though often effective in vexing good men and in scaring
good women, are somewhat blunted; indeed, they not infrequently
injure the assailants more than the assailed. So it was not in the
days of Galileo; they were then in all their sharpness and venom.[135b]
Yet a baser warfare was waged by the Archbishop of Pisa. This man,
whose cathedral derives its most enduring fame from Galileo's
deduction of a great natural law from the swinging lamp before its
altar, was not an archbishop after the noble mould of Borromeo and
Fenelon and Cheverus. Sadly enough for the Church and humanity, he
was simply a zealot and intriguer: he perfected the plan for
entrapping the great astronomer.
Galileo, after his discoveries had been denounced, had written to
his friend Castelli and to the Grand-Duchess Christine two letters
to show that his discoveries might be reconciled with Scripture. On
a hint from the Inquisition at Rome, the archbishop sought to get
hold of these letters and exhibit them as proofs that Galileo had
uttered heretical views of theology and of Scripture, and thus to
bring him 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
Inquisition against Galileo, professes to Castelli the greatest
admiration of Galileo's genius and a sincere desire to know more of
his discoveries. This not succeeding, the archbishop at last throws
off the mask and resorts 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 of
priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, appear two popes,
Paul V and Urban VIII. It is most suggestive to see in this crisis
of the Church, at the tomb of the prince of the apostles, on the
eve of the greatest errors in Church policy the world has known, in
all the intrigues and deliberations of these consecrated leaders of
the Church, no more evidence of the guidance or presence of the
Holy Spirit than in a caucus of New York politicians at Tammany Hall.
But the opposing powers were too strong. In 1615 Galileo was
summoned before the Inquisition at Rome, and the mine which had
been so long preparing was sprung. Sundry theologians of the
Inquisition having been ordered to examine two propositions which
had been extracted from Galileo's letters on the solar spots,
solemnly considered these points during ahout a month and rendere
their unanimous decision as follows: "_The first proposition, that
the sun is the centre and does not revolve about the earth, i
foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because
expressly contrary to Holy Scripture"; and "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_."
The Pope himself, Paul V, now intervened again: he ordered that
Galileo be brought before the Inquisition. Then the greatest man o
science in that age was brought face to face with the greates
theologian--Galileo was confronted by Bellarmin. Bellarmin shows
Galileo the error of his opinion and orders him to renounce it. De
Lauda, fortified by a letter from the Pope, gives orders that the
astronomer be placed in the dungeons of the Inquisition should he
refuse to yield. Bellarmin now commands Galileo, "in the name of
His Holiness the Pope and the whole Congregation of the Holy
Office, to relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun is the
centre of the world and immovable, and that the earth moves, nor
henceforth to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever,
verbally or in writing." This injunction Galileo acquiesces in and
promises to obey.[137]
This was on the 26th of February, 1616. About a fortnight later th
Congregation of the Index, moved thereto, as the letters and
documents now brought to light show, by Pope Paul, V solemnly
rendered a decree that "_the doctrine of the double motion of the
earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely
contrary to Holy Scripture_"; and that this opinion must neither b
taught nor advocated. The same decree condemned all writings of
Copernicus and "_all writings which affirm the motion of the
earth_." The great work of Copernicus was interdicted unti
corrected in accordance with the views of the Inquisition; and th
works of Galileo and Kepler, though not mentioned by name at tha
time, were included among those implicitly condemned as "affirming
the motion of the earth."
The condemnations were inscribed upon the _Index_; and, finally, the
papacy committed itself as an infallible judge and teacher to the
world by prefixing to the _Index_ the usual papal bull giving it
monitions the most solemn 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. Science had apparently lost
the decisive battle.
For a time after this judgment Galileo remained in Rome, apparently
hoping to find some way out of this difficulty; but he soon
discovered the hollowness of the protestations made to him by
ecclesiastics, and, being recalled to Florence, remained in his
hermitage near the city in silence, working steadily, indeed, but
not publishing anything save by private letters to friends in
various parts of Europe.
But at last a better vista seemed to open for him. Cardinal
Barberini, who had seemed liberal and friendly, became pope under
the name of Urban VIII. Galileo at this conceived new hopes, and
allowed his continued allegiance to the Copernican system to be
known. New troubles ensued. Galileo was induced to visit Rome
again, and Pope Urban tried to cajole him into silence, personally
taking the trouble to show him his errors by argument. Other
opponents were less considerate, for works appeared attacking his
ideas--works all the more unmanly, since their authors knew that
Galileo was restrained by force from defending himself. Then, too
as if to accumulate proofs of the unfitness of the Church to take
charge of advanced instruction, his salary as a professor at the
University of Pisa was taken from him, and sapping and mining
began. Just as the Archbishop of Pisa some years before had tried
to betray him 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.
For the final assault upon him a park of heavy artillery was at
last wheeled into place. It may be seen on all the scientific
battlefields. It consists of general denunciation; and in 1631
Father Melchior Inchofer, of the Jesuits, brought his artillery to
bear upon Galileo with this declaration: "The opinion of the
earth's motion is of all heresies the most abominable, the most
pernicious, the most scandalous; the immovability of the earth is
thrice sacred; argument against the immortality of the soul, the
existence of God, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner
than an argument to prove that the earth moves." From the other end
of Europe came a powerful echo.
From the shadow of the Cathedral of Antwerp, the noted theologian
Fromundus gave forth his famous treatise, the _Ant-Aristarclius_. Its
very title-page was a contemptuous insult to the memory of
Copernicus, since it paraded the assumption that the new truth was
only an exploded theory of a pagan astronomer. Fromundus declare
that "sacred Scripture fights against the Copernicans." To prov
that the sun revolves about the earth, he cites the passage in the
Psalms which speaks of the sun "which cometh forth as a bridegroo
out of his chamber." To prove that the earth stands still, he
quotes a passage from Ecclesiastes, "The earth standeth fas
forever." To show the utter futility of the Copernican theory, he
declares that, if it were true, "the wind would constantly blow
from the east"; and that "buildings and the earth itself would fly
off with such a rapid motion that men would have to be provided
with claws like cats to enable them to hold fast to the earth's
surface." Greatest weapon of all, he works up, by the use of
Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, a demonstration from theology and
science combined, that the earth _must_ stand in the centre, an
that the sun _must_ revolve about it.[140] Nor was it merely
fanatics who opposed the truth revealed by Copernicus; such strong
men as Jean Bodin, in France, and Sir Thomas Browne, in England,
declared against it as evidently contrary to Holy Scripture.
IV. VICTORY OF THE CHURCH OVER GALILEO.
While news of triumphant attacks upon him and upon the truth he had
established were coming in from all parts of Europe, Galile
prepared a careful treatise in the form of a dialogue, exhibiting
the arguments for and against the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems,
and offered to submit to any conditions that the Church tribunals
might impose, if they would allow it to be printed. At last, after
discussions which extended through eight years, they consented,
imposing a humiliating condition--a preface written in accordance
with the ideas of Father Ricciardi, Master of the Sacred Palace,
and signed by Galileo, in which the Copernican theory was virtually
exhibited as a play of the imagination, and not at all as opposed
to the Ptolemaic doctrine reasserted in 1616 by the Inquisition
under the direction of Pope Paul V.
This new work of Galileo--the _Dialogo_--appeared in 1632, and met
with prodigious success. It put new weapons into the hands of the
supporters of the Copernican theory. The pious preface was laughe
at from one end of Europe to the other. This roused the enemy; the
Jesuits, Dominicans, and the great majority of the clergy returne
to the attack more violent than ever, and in the midst of them
stood Pope Urban VIII, most bitter of all. His whole power was now
thrown against Galileo. He was touched in two points: first, in his
personal vanity, for Galileo had put the Pope's arguments into th
mouth of one of the persons in the dialogue and their refutation
into the mouth of another; but, above all, he was touched in his
religious feelings. Again and again His Holiness insisted to all
comers on the absolute and specific declarations of Holy Scripture,
which prove that the sun and heavenly bodies revolve about the
earth, and declared that to gainsay them is simply to dispute
revelation. Certainly, if one ecclesiastic more than another ever
seemed _not_ under the care of the Spirit of Truth, it was Urban
VIII in all this matter.
Herein was one of the greatest pieces of ill fortune that has ever
befallen the older Church. Had Pope Urban been broad-minded and
tolerant like Benedict XIV, or had he been taught moderation b
adversity like Pius VII, or had he possessed the large scholarly
qualities of Leo XIII, now reigning, the vast scandal of the
Galileo case would never have burdened the Church: instead of
devising endless quibbles and special pleadings to escape
responsibility for this colossal blunder, its defenders could hav
claimed forever for the Church the glory of fearlessly initiating
a great epoch in human thought.
But it was not so to be. Urban was not merely Pope; he was also a
prince of the house of Barberini, and therefore doubly angry that
his arguments had been publicly controverted.
The opening strategy of Galileo's enemies was to forbid the sale of
his work; but this was soon seen to be unavailing, for the first
edition had already been spread throughout Europe. Urban now became
more angry than ever, 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 insist that "nothing that can be done can now
hinder the earth from revolving." He was dismissed in disgrace, an
Galileo was forced to appear in the presence of the dread tribunal
without defender or adviser. There, as was so long concealed, bu
as is now fully revealed, he was menaced with torture again an
again by express order of Pope Urban, and, as is also thoroughly
established from the trial documents themselves, forced to abjure
under threats, and subjected to imprisonment by command of the
Pope; the Inquisition deferring in this whole matter to the papal
authority. All the long series of attempts made in the supposed
interest of the Church to mystify these transactions have at last
failed. The world knows now that Galileo was subjected certainly to
indignity, to imprisonment, and to threats equivalent to torture,
and 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."[142]
He was vanquished indeed, for he had been forced, in the face of
all coming ages, to perjure himself. To complete his dishonour, he
was obliged to swear that he would denounce to the Inquisition any
other man of science whom he should discover to be supporting the
"heresy of the motion of the earth."
Many have wondered at this abjuration, and on account of it have
denied to Galileo the title of martyr. But let such gainsayers
consider the circumstances. Here was an old man--one who had
reached the allotted threescore years and ten--broken with
disappointments, worn out with labours and cares, dragged from
Florence to Rome, with the threat from the Pope himself that if he
delayed he should be "brought in chains"; sick in body and mind,
given over to his oppressors by the Grand-Duke who ought to have
protected him, and on his arrival in Rome threatened with torture
What the Inquisition was he knew well. He could remember as but of
yesterday the burning of Giordano Bruno in that same city for
scientific and philosophic heresy; he could remember, too, that
only eight years before this very time De Dominis, Archbishop of
Spalatro, having been seized by the Inquisition for scientific and
other heresies, had died in a dungeon, and that his body and his
writings had been publicly burned
To the end of his life--nay, after his life was ended--the
persecution of Galileo was continued. He was kept in exile from his
family, from his friends, from his noble employments, and was held
rigidly to his promise not 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 committal to a dungeon. When,
at last, a special commission had reported to the ecclesiastical
authorities that he had become blind and wasted with disease an
sorrow, he was allowed a little more liberty, but that little was
hampered by close surveillance. He was forced to bear contemptible
attacks on himself and on his works in silence; to see the men who
had befriended him severely punished; Father Castelli banished;
Ricciardi, the Master of the Sacred Palace, and Ciampoli, the papa
secretary, thrown out of their positions by Pope Urban, and the
Inquisitor at Florence reprimanded for having given permission to
print Galileo's work. He lived to see the truths he had established
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."[143]
And now measures were taken to complete the destruction of the
Copernican theory, with Galileo's proofs of it. On the 16th of
June, 1633, the Holy Congregation, with the permission of the
reigning Pope, ordered the sentence upon Galileo, and his
recantation, to be sent to all the papal nuncios throughout Europe,
as well as to all archbishops, bishops, and inquisitors in Italy
and this document gave orders that the sentence and abjuration be
made known "to your vicars, that you and all professors of
philosophy and mathematics may have knowledge of it, that they may
know why we proceeded against the said Galileo, and recognise the
gravity of his error, in order that they may avoid it, and thus not
incur the penalties which they would have to suffer in case they
fell into the same."[144]
As a consequence, the processors of mathematics and astronomy in
various universities of Europe were assembled and these document
were read to them. To the theological authorities this gave great
satisfaction. The Rector of the University of Douay, referring to
the opinion of Galileo, wrote to the papal nuncio at Brussels: "The
professors of our university are so opposed to this fanatica
opinion that they have always held that it must be banished from
the schools. In our English college at Douay this paradox has
never been approved and never will be.
Still another step was taken: the Inquisitors were ordered,
especially in Italy, not to permit the publication of a new edition
of any of Galileo's works, or of any similar writings. On the other
hand, theologians were urged, now that Copernicus and Galileo and
Kepler were silenced, to reply to them with tongue and pen. Europe was
flooded with these theological refutations of the Copernican system.
To make all complete, there was prefixed to the _Index_ of the
Church, forbidding "all writings which affirm the motion of th
earth," a bull signed by the reigning Pope, which, by virtue of his
infallibility as a divinely guided teacher in matters of faith and
morals, clinched this condemnation into the consciences of the
whole Christian world.
From the mass of books which appeared under the auspices of the
Church immediately after the condemnation of Galileo, for the
purpose of rooting out every vestige of the hated Copernican theory
from the mind of the world, two may be taken as typical. The first
of these was a work by Scipio Chiaramonti, dedicated to Cardinal
Barberini. Among his arguments against the double motion of the
earth may be cited the following
"Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles; the earth has no
limbs or muscles, therefore it does not move. It is angels who make
Saturn, Jupiter, the sun, etc., turn round. If the earth revolves,
it must also have an angel in the centre to set it in motion; but
only devils live there; it would therefore be a devil who would
impart motion to the earth...
"The planets, the sun, the fixed stars, all belong to one
species--namely, that of stars. It seems, therefore, to be a
grievous wrong to place the earth, which is a sink of impurity,
among these heavenly bodies, which are pure and divine things."
The next, which I select from the mass of similar works, is the
_Anticopernicus Catholicus_ of Polacco. It was intended to deal a
finishing stroke at Galileo's heresy. In this it is declared
"The Scripture always represents the earth as at rest, and the sun
and moon as in motion; or, if these latter bodies are ever
represented as at rest, Scripture represents this as the result o
a great miracle....
"These writings must be prohibited, because they teach certain
principles about the position and motion of the terrestrial globe
repugnant to Holy Scripture and to the Catholic interpretation of
it, not as hypotheses but as established facts...."
Speaking of Galileo's book, Polacco says that it "smacked o
Copernicanism," and that, "when this was shown to the Inquisition,
Galileo was thrown into prison and was compelled to utterly abjure
the baseness of this erroneous dogma."
As to the authority of the cardinals in their decree, Polacco
asserts that, since they are the "Pope's Council" and his "brothers,"
their work is one, except that the Pope is favoured with special
divine enlightenment.
Having shown that the authority of the Scriptures, of popes, and of
cardinals is against the new astronomy, he gives a refutation based
on physics. He asks: "If we concede the motion of the earth, why
is it that an arrow shot into the air falls back to the same spot,
while the earth and all things on it have in the meantime moved
very rapidly toward the east? Who does not see that great confusio
would result from this motion?"
Next he argues from metaphysics, as follows: "The Copernican theory
of the earth's motion is against the nature of the earth itself,
because the earth is not only cold but contains in itself the
principle of cold; but cold is opposed to motion, and even destroy
it--as is evident in animals, which become motionless when they
become cold."
Finally, he clinches all with a piece of theological reasoning, a
follows: "Since it can certainly be gathered from Scripture that
the heavens move above the earth, and since a circular motion
requires something immovable around which to move,... the earth is
at the centre of the universe."[146]
But any sketch of the warfare between theology and science in this
field would be incomplete without some reference to the treatment
of Galileo after his death. He had begged to be buried in hi
family tomb in Santa Croce; this request was denied. His friends
wished to erect a monument over him; this, too, was refused. Pope
Urban said to the ambassador Niccolini that "it would be an evil
example for the world if such honours 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, an
who had given so great a scandal to Christendom." In accordance,
therefore, with the wish of the Pope and the orders of th
Inquisition, Galileo was buried ignobly, apart from his family
without fitting ceremony, without monument, without epitaph. Not
until forty years after did Pierrozzi dare write an inscription to
be placed above his bones; not until a hundred years after di
Nelli dare transfer his remains to a suitable position in Santa
Croce, and erect a monument above them. Even then the old
conscientious hostility burst forth: the Inquisition was besought
to prevent such honours to "a man condemned for notorious
errors"; and that tribunal refused to allow any epitaph to b
placed above him which had not been submitted to its censorship.
Nor has that old conscientious consistency in hatred yet fully
relented: hardly a generation since has not seen some ecclesiastic,
like 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. Nay, more: there are school histories, widely used, which,
in the supposed interest of the Church, misrepresent in the
grossest manner all these transactions in which Galileo was
concerned. _Sancta simplicitas_! The Church has no worse enemies than
those who devise and teach these perversions. They are simply
rooting out, in the long run, from the minds of the more thoughtful
scholars, respect for the great organization which such writings
are supposed to serve.[147]
The Protestant Church was hardly less energetic against this ne
astronomy than the mother Church. The sacred science of the first
Lutheran Reformers was transmitted as a precious legacy, and in the
next century was made much of by Calovius. His great learning and
determined orthodoxy gave him the Lutheran leadership. Utterly
refusing to look at ascertained facts, he cited the turning back of
the shadow upon King Hezekiah's dial and the standing still of the
sun for Joshua, denied the movement of the earth, and denounced the
whole new view as clearly opposed to Scripture. To this day his
arguments are repeated by sundry orthodox leaders of America
Lutheranism.
As to the other branches of the Reformed Church, we have already
seen how Calvinists, Anglicans, and, indeed, Protestant sectarians
generally, opposed the new truth.[148] In England, among the strict
churchmen, the great Dr. South denounced the Royal Society as
"irreligious," and among the Puritans the eminent John Owen declared
that Newton's discoveries were "built on fallible phenomena and
advanced by many arbitrary presumptions against evident testimonies
of Scripture." Even Milton seems to have hesitated between the two
systems. At the beginning of the eighth book of _Paradise Lost_ he
makes Adam state the difficulties of the Ptolemaic system, and then
brings forward an angel to make the usual orthodox answers. Later,
Milton seems to lean toward the Copernican theory, for, referring
to the earth, he says:
"Or she from west her silent course advance
With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps
On her soft axle, while she faces even
And bears thee soft with the smooth air along."
English orthodoxy continued to assert itself. In 1724 John
Hutchinson, professor at Cambridge, published his _Moses' Principia_
a system of philosophy in which he sought to build up a complete
physical system of the universe from the Bible. In this he
assaulted the Newtonian theory as "atheistic," and led the way for
similar attacks by such Church teachers as Horne, Duncan Forbes,
and Jones of Nayland. But one far greater than these involved
himself in this view. That same limitation of his reason by the
simple statements of Scripture which led John Wesley to declar
that, "unless witchcraft is true, nothing in the Bible is true,"
led him, while giving up the Ptolemaic theory and accepting in a
general way the Copernican, to suspect the demonstrations of
Newton. Happily, his inborn nobility of character lifted him above
any bitterness or persecuting spirit, or any imposition of
doctrinal tests which could prevent those who came after him from
finding their way to the truth.
But in the midst of this vast expanse of theologic error signs of
right reason began to appear, both in England and America.
Noteworthy is it that Cotton Mather, bitter as was his orthodoxy
regarding witchcraft, accepted, in 1721, the modern astronomy
fully, with all its consequences.
In the following year came an even more striking evidence that the
new scientific ideas were making their way in England. In 1722
Thomas Burnet published the sixth edition of his _Sacred Theory of
the Earth_. In this he argues, as usual, to establish the scriptural
doctrine of the earth's stability; but in his preface he sounds a
remarkable warning. He mentions the great mistake into which St.
Augustine led the Church regarding the doctrine of the antipodes,
and says, "If within a few years or in the next generation it
should prove as certain and demonstrable that the earth is moved,
as it is now that there are antipodes, those that have been zealous
against it, and engaged the Scripture in the controversy, would
have the same reason to repent of their forwardness that St
Augustine would now, if he were still alive."
Fortunately, too, Protestantism had no such power to oppose the
development of the Copernican ideas as the older Church had
enjoyed. Yet there were some things in its warfare against scienc
even more indefensible. In 1772 the famous English expedition for
scientific discovery sailed from England under Captain Cook.
Greatest by far of all the scientific authorities chosen to accompany
it was Dr. Priestley. Sir Joseph Banks had especially invite
him. But the clergy of Oxford and Cambridge interfered. Priestley
was considered unsound in his views of the Trinity; it wa
evidently suspected that this might vitiate his astronomical
observations; he was rejected, and the expedition crippled
The orthodox view of astronomy lingered on in other branches of th
Protestant Church. In Germany even Leibnitz attacked the Newtonian
theory of gravitation on theological grounds, though he found some
little consolation in thinking that it might be used to support the
Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation.
In Holland the Calvinistic Church was at first strenuous against
the whole new system, but we possess a comical proof that Calvinism
even in its strongholds was powerless against it; for in 1642 Blaer
published at Amsterdam his book on the use of globes, and, in order
to be on the safe side, devoted one part of his work to the
Ptolemaic and the other to the Copernican scheme, leaving the
benevolent reader to take his choice.[150
Nor have efforts to renew the battle in the Protestant Church 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 assemblage of Lutheran clerg
at Berlin, in 1868, to protest against "science falsely so called,
are examples of these. Fortunately, to the latter came Pastor Knak
and his denunciations of the Copernican theory as absolutel
incompatible with a belief in the Bible, dissolved the whole
assemblage in ridicule.
In its recent dealings with modern astronomy the wisdom of the
Catholic Church in the more civilized countries has prevented its
yielding to some astounding errors into which one part of the
Protestant Church has fallen heedlessly.
Though various leaders in the older Church have committed the
absurd error of allowing a text-book and sundry review articles to
appear which grossly misstate the Galileo episode, with the
certainty of ultimately undermining confidence in her teachings
among her more thoughtful young men, she has kept clear of the
folly of continuing to tie her instruction, and the acceptance of
our sacred books, to an adoption of the Ptolemaic theory.
Not so with American Lutheranism. In 1873 was published in St.
Louis, at the publishing house of the Lutheran Synod of Missouri,
a work entitled _Astromomische Unterredung_, the author being well
known as a late president of a Lutheran Teachers' Seminary
No attack on the whole modern system of astronomy could be more
bitter. On the first page of the introduction the author, after
stating the two theories, asks, "Which is right?" and says: "It
would be very simple to me which is right, if it were only a
question of human import. But the wise and truthful God has
expressed himself on this matter in the Bible. The entire Hol
Scripture settles the question that the earth is the principal body
(_Hauptkorper_) of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that su
and moon only serve to light it."
The author then goes on to show from Scripture the folly, not only
of Copernicus and Newton, but of a long line of great astronomer
in more recent times. He declares: "Let no one understand me as
inquiring first where truth is to be found--in the Bible or with
the astronomers. No; I know that beforehand--that my God never
lies, never makes a mistake; out of his mouth comes only truth,
when he speaks of the structure of the universe, of the earth, sun,
moon, and stars....
"Because the truth of the Holy Scripture is involved in this,
therefore the above question is of the highest importance to me....
Scientists and others lean upon the miserable reed (_Rohrstab_) that God
teaches only the order of salvation, but not the order of the universe."
Very noteworthy is the fact that this late survival of an ancient
belief based upon text-worship is found, not in the teachings o
any zealous priest of the mother Church, but in those of an eminent
professor in that branch of Protestantism which claims special
enlightenment.[151]
Nor has the warfare against the dead champions of science been
carried on by the older Church alone.
On the 10th of May, 1859, Alexander von Humboldt was buried. His
labours had been among the glories of the century, and his funera
was one of the most imposing that Berlin had ever seen. Among
those who honoured themselves by their presence was the prince
regent, afterward the Emperor William I; but of the clergy it was
observed that none were present save the officiating clergyman an
a few regarded as unorthodox.[152]
V. RESULTS OF THE VICTORY OVER GALILEO.
We return now to the sequel of the Galileo case.
Having gained their victory over Galileo, living and dead, having
used it to scare into submission the professors of astronom
throughout Europe, conscientious churchmen exulted. Loud was their
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. As we have seen, all books
teaching this hated belief were put upon the _Index_ of books
forbidden to Christians, and that _Index_ was prefaced by a bull
enforcing this condemnation upon the consciences of the faithful
throughout the world, and signed by the reigning Pope.
The losses to the world during this complete triumph of theology
were even more serious than at first appears: one must especially
be mentioned. There was then in Europe one of the greatest thinkers
ever given to mankind--Rene Descartes. Mistaken though many of his
reasonings were, they bore a rich fruitage of truth. He had already
done a vast work. His theory of vortices--assuming a uniform
material regulated by physical laws--as the beginning of th
visible universe, though it was but a provisional hypothesis, had
ended the whole old theory of the heavens with the vaulted
firmament and the direction of the planetary movements by angels,
which even Kepler had allowed. 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 would have
made an epoch in history. His aim was to combine all knowledge and
thought into a _Treatise on the World_, and in view of this he gave
eleven years to the study of anatomy alone. But the fate of Galileo
robbed him of all hope, of all courage; the battle seemed lost; he
gave up his great plan forever.[153]
But ere long it was seen that this triumph of the Church was in
reality a prodigious defeat. From all sides came proofs tha
Copernicus and Galileo were right; and although Pope Urban and the
inquisition held Galileo in strict seclusion, forbidding him even
to _speak_ regarding the double motion of the earth; and although
this condemnation of "all books which affirm the motion of th
earth" was kept on the _Index_; and although the papal bull still
bound the _Index_ and the condemnations in it on the consciences of
the faithful; and although colleges and universities under Churc
control were compelled to teach the old doctrine--it was seen by
clear-sighted men everywhere that this victory of the Church was a
disaster to the victors.
New champions pressed on. Campanella, full of vagaries as he was,
wrote his _Apology for Galileo_, though for that and other heresies,
religious, and political, he seven times underwent torture
And Kepler comes: he leads science on to greater victories.
Copernicus, great as he was, could not disentangle scientifi
reasoning entirely from the theological bias: the doctrines of
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as to the necessary superiority of th
circle had vitiated the minor features of his system, and left
breaches in it through which the enemy was not slow to enter; but
Kepler sees these errors, and by wonderful genius and vigour he
gives 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 solemnly warned by the
Protestant Consistory of Stuttgart "not to throw Christ's kingdom
into confusion with his silly fancies," and as solemnly ordered to
"bring his theory of the world into harmony with Scripture": he
is sometimes abused, sometimes ridiculed, sometimes imprisoned.
Protestants in Styria and Wurtemberg, Catholics in Austria and
Bohemia, press upon him but Newton, Halley, Bradley, and other
great astronomers follow, and to science remains the victory.[154
Yet this did not end the war. During the seventeenth century, in
France, after all the splendid proofs added by Kepler, no one dare
openly teach the Copernican theory, and Cassini, the grea
astronomer, never declared for it. In 1672 the Jesuit Father
Riccioli declared that there were precisely forty-nine arguments
for the Copernican theory and seventy-seven against it. Even afte
the beginning of the eighteenth century--long after the
demonstrations of Sir Isaac Newton--Bossuet, the great Bishop of
Meaux, the foremost theologian that France has ever produced
declared it contrary to Scripture.
Nor did matters seem to improve rapidly during that century. I
England, John Hutchinson, as we have seen, published in 1724 his
_Moses' Principia_ maintaining that the Hebrew Scriptures are
perfect system of natural philosophy, and are opposed to the
Newtonian system of gravitation; and, as we have also seen, he was
followed by a long list of noted men in the Church. In France, two
eminent mathematicians published in 1748 an edition of Newton's
_Principia_; but, in order to avert ecclesiastical censure, they felt
obliged to prefix to it a statement absolutely false. Three years
later, 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 hypothese
the appearances favour this idea."
In Germany, especially in the Protestant part of it, the war was
even more bitter, and it lasted through the first half of the
eighteenth century. Eminent Lutheran doctors of divinity floode
the country with treatises to prove that the Copernican theory
could not be reconciled with Scripture. In the theological
seminaries and in many of the universities where clerical influence
was strong they seemed to sweep all before them; and yet at the
middle of the century we find some of the clearest-headed of them
aware of the fact that their cause was lost.[155]
In 1757 the most enlightened perhaps in the whole line of th
popes, Benedict XIV, took up the matter, and the Congregation of
the _Index_ secretly allowed the ideas of Copernicus to be tolerated.
Yet in 1765 Lalande, the great French astronomer, tried in vain at
Rome to induce the authorities to remove Galileo's works from the
_Index_. Even at a date far within our own nineteenth century the
authorities of many universities in Catholic Europe, and especiall
those in Spain, excluded the Newtonian system. In 1771 the
greatest of them all, the University of Salamanca, being urged to
teach physical science, refused, making answer as follows: "Newton
teaches nothing that would make a good logician or metaphysician;
and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well with revealed truth
as Aristotle does."
Vengeance upon the dead also has continued far into our ow
century. On the 5th of May, 1829, a great multitude assembled at
Warsaw to honour the memory of Copernicus and to unveil
Thorwaldsen's statue of him
Copernicus had lived a pious, Christian life; he had been beloved
for unostentatious Christian charity; with his religious belief no
fault had ever been found; he was a canon of the Church at
Frauenberg, and over his grave had been written the most touching
of Christian epitaphs. Naturally, then, the people expected
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. Copernicus,
gentle, charitable, pious, one of the noblest gifts of God t
religion as well as to science, was evidently still under the ban
Five years after that, his book was still standing on the _Index_ of
books prohibited to Christians.
The edition of the _Index_ published in 1819 was as inexorable towar
the works of Copernicus and Galileo as its predecessors had been;
but in the year 182O came a crisis. Canon Settele, Professor of
Astronomy at Rome, had written an elementary book in which th
Copernican system was taken for granted. The Master of the Sacre
Palace, Anfossi, as censor of the press, refused to allow the book
to be printed unless Settele revised his work and treated the
Copernican theory as merely a hypothesis. On this Settele appealed
to Pope Pius VII, and the Pope referred the matter to the
Congregation of the Holy Office. At last, on the 16th of August,
182O, it was decided that Settele might teach the Copernican system
as established, and this decision was approved by the Pope. This
aroused considerable discussion, but finally, on the 11th of
September, 1822, the cardinals of the Holy Inquisition graciously
agreed that "the printing and publication of works treating of the
motion of the earth and the stability of the sun, in accordance
with the general opinion of modern astronomers, is permitted at
Rome." This decree was ratified by Pius VII, but it was not until
thirteen years later, in 1835, that there was issued an edition of
the _Index_ from which the condemnation of works defending the double
motion of the earth was left out.
This was not a moment too soon, for, as if the previous proofs had
not been sufficient, each of the motions of the earth was now
absolutely demonstrated anew, so as to be recognised by the
ordinary observer. The parallax of fixed stars, shown by Bessel as
well as other noted astronomers in 1838, clinched forever the
doctrine of the revolution of the earth around the sun, and in 1851
the great experiment of Foucault with the pendulum showed to the
human eye the earth in motion around its own axis. To make the
matter complete, this experiment was publicly made in one of the
churches at Rome by the eminent astronomer, Father Secchi, of th
Jesuits, in 1852--just two hundred and twenty years after the
Jesuits had done so much to secure Galileo's condemnation.[157]
VI. THE RETREAT OF THE CHURCH AFTER ITS VICTORY OVER GALILEO.
Any history of the victory of astronomical science over dogmatic
theology would be incomplete without some account of the retreat
made by the Church from all its former positions in the Galileo case.
The retreat of the Protestant theologians was not difficult. A
little skilful warping of Scripture, a little skilful use of that
time-honoured phrase, attributed to Cardinal Baronius, that the
Bible is given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but how men go
to heaven, and a free use of explosive rhetoric against the
pursuing army of scientists, sufficed.
But in the older Church it was far less easy. The retreat of the
sacro-scientific army of Church apologists lasted through two centuries.
In spite of all that has been said by these apologists, there no
longer remains the shadow of a doubt that the papal infallibility
was committed fully and irrevocably against the double revolution
of the earth. As the documents of Galileo's trial now published
show, Paul V, in 1616, pushed on with all his might the
condemnation of Galileo and of the works of Copernicus and of all
others teaching the motion of the earth around its own axis and
around the sun. So, too, in the condemnation of Galileo in 1633,
and in all the proceedings which led up to it and which followed
it, Urban VIII was the central figure. Without his sanction no
action could have been taken.
True, the Pope did not formally sign the decree against th
Copernican theory _then_; but this came later, In 1664 Alexander VI
prefixed to the _Index_ containing the condemnations of the works of
Copernicus and Galileo and "all books which affirm the motion of
the earth" a papal bull signed by himself, binding the contents of
the _Index_ upon the consciences of the faithful. This bull confirmed
and approved in express terms, finally, decisively, and infallibly,
the condemnation of "all books teaching the movement of the earth
and the stability of the sun."[158]
The position of the mother Church had been thus made especially
difficult; and the first important move in retreat by the
apologists was the statement that Galileo was condemned, not
because he affirmed the motion of the earth, but because h
supported it from Scripture. There was a slight appearance of truth
in this. Undoubtedly, Galileo's letters to Castelli and the grand.
duchess, in which he attempted to show that his astronomical
doctrines were not opposed to Scripture, gave a new stir to
religious bigotry. For a considerable time, then, this quibble
served its purpose; even a hundred and fifty years after Galileo's
condemnation it was renewed by the Protestant Mallet du Pan, in hi
wish to gain favour from the older Church.
But nothing can be more absurd, in the light of the original
documents recently brought out of the Vatican archives, than to
make this contention now. The letters of Galileo to Castelli and
the Grand-Duchess were not published until after the condemnation;
and, although the Archbishop of Pisa had endeavoured 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 by the Sacred
Congregation held in the presence of Pope Paul V, 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_."
And again, what Galileo was made, by express order of Pope Urban, and
by the action of the Inquisition under threat of torture, to abjure
in 1633, was "_the error and heresy of the movement of the earth_."
What the _Index_ condemned under sanction of the bull issued by
Alexander VII in 1664 was, "_all books teaching the movement of the
earth and the stability of the sun_."
What the _Index_, prefaced by papal bulls, infallibly binding its
contents upon the consciences of the faithful, for nearly two
hundred years steadily condemned was, "_all books which affirm the
motion of the earth_."
Not one of these condemnations was directed against Galileo "for
reconciling his ideas with Scripture."[160]
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 want of respect toward the Pope.
There was a slight chance, also, for this quibble: no doubt Urban
VIII, one of the haughtiest of pontiffs, was induced by Galileo's
enemies to think that he had been treated with some lack of proper
etiquette: first, by Galileo's adhesion to his own doctrines after
his condemnation in 1616; and, next, by his supposed reference in
the _Dialogue_ of 1632 to the arguments which the Pope had used
against him.
But it would seem to be a very poor service rendered to the
doctrine of papal infallibility to claim that a decision so immense
in its consequences could be influenced by the personal resentment
of the reigning pontiff
Again, as to the first point, the very language of the various
sentences shows the folly of this assertion; for these sentences
speak always of "heresy" and never of "contumacy." As to the
last point, the display of the original documents settled that
forever. They show Galileo from first to last as most submissive
toward the Pope, and patient under the papal arguments and
exactions. 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 proceedings, and to convict Paul V, Urban
VIII, Bellarmin, the other theologians, and the Inquisition, of
direct falsehood, since they assigned entirely different reasons
for their conduct. From this position, therefore, the assailants
retreated.[161]
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 favouring the experimental method on the
other. But this position was attacked and carried by a very simpl
statement. If the divine guidance of the Church is such that it can
be dragged into a professorial squabble, and made the tool of a
faction in bringing about a most disastrous condemnation of a
proved truth, how did the Church at that time differ from any human
organization sunk into decrepitude, managed nominally by
simpletons, but really by schemers? If that argument be true, the
condition of the Church was even worse than its enemies have
declared it; and amid the jeers of an unfeeling world th
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 mor
treacherous shelter than the others. The wording of the decree of
condemnation itself is a sufficient answer to this claim. Whe
doctrines have been solemnly declared, as those of Galileo were
solemnly declared under sanction of the highest authority in the
Church, "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" is to say that the
truth held by the Church is not immutable; from this, then, the
apologists retreated.[161b]
Still another contention was made, in some respects more curious
than any other: it was, mainly, that Galileo "was no more a
victim of Catholics than of Protestants; for they more than the
Catholic theologians impelled the Pope to the action taken."[162]
But if Protestantism could force the papal hand in a matter of this
magnitude, involving vast questions of belief and far-reaching
questions of policy, what becomes of "inerrancy"--of special
protection and guidance of the papal authority in matters of faith?
While this retreat from position to position was going on, there
was a constant discharge of small-arms, in the shape of innuendoes,
hints, and sophistries: every effort was made to blacken
Galileo's private character: the irregularities of his early life
were dragged forth, and stress was even laid upon breaches of
etiquette; but this succeeded so poorly that even as far back a
1850 it was thought necessary to cover the retreat by some more
careful strategy.
This new strategy is instructive. The original documents of the
Galileo trial had been brought during the Napoleonic conquests to
Paris; but in 1846 they were returned to Rome by the French
Government, on the express pledge by the papal authorities that
they should be published. In 1850, after many delays on various
pretexts, the long-expected publication appeared. The personag
charged with presenting them to the world was Monsignor Marini.
This ecclesiastic was of a kind which has too often afflicted bot
the Church and the world at large. Despite the solemn promise o
the papal court, the wily Marini became the instrument of the Roman
authorities 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 infallibility 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."
The first effect of Monsignor Marini's book seemed useful in
covering the retreat of the Church apologists. Aided by him, such
vigorous writers as Ward were able to throw up temporary intrenchments
between the Roman authorities and the indignation of the world.
But some time later came an investigator very different from
Monsignor Marini. This was a Frenchman, M. L'Epinois. Like Marini,
L'Epinois was devoted to the Church; but, unlike Marini, he coul
not lie. Having obtained access in 1867 to the Galileo documents at
the Vatican, he published several of the most important, without
suppression or pious-fraudulent manipulation. This made all the
intrenchments based upon Marini's statements untenable. Another
retreat had to be made.
And now came the most desperate effort of all. The apologetic army,
reviving an idea which the popes and the Church had spurned for
centuries, declared that the popes _as popes_ had never condemned
the doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo; that they had condemned
them as men simply; that therefore the Church had never been
committed to them; that the condemnation was made by the cardinals
of the inquisition and index; and that the Pope had evidently bee
restrained by interposition of Providence from signing thei
condemnation. Nothing could show the desperation of the retreatin
party better than jugglery like this. The fact is, that in th
official account of the condemnation by Bellarmin, in 1616, he
declares distinctly that he makes this condemnation "in the name
of His Holiness the Pope."[163]
Again, from Pope Urban downward, among the Church authorities o
the seventeenth century the decision was always acknowledged to be
made by the Pope and the Church. Urban VIII spoke of that of 161
as made by Pope Paul V and the Church, and of that of 1633 as made
by himself and the Church. Pope Alexander VII in 1664, in his bull
_Speculatores_, solemnly sanctioned the condemnation of all books
affirming the earth's movement.[163b]
When Gassendi attempted to raise the point that the decisio
against Copernicus and Galileo was not sanctioned by the Church as
such, an eminent 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 th
Church," that had condemned Galileo; and to this statement the
Pope and other Church authorities gave consent either openly or by
silence. When Descartes and others attempted to raise the same
point, they 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 ambassador Guicciardini, in
his dispatches; Polacco, in his refutation; the historian Viviani,
in his biography of Galileo--all writing under Church inspection
and approval at the time, took the view that the Pope and the
Church condemned Galileo, and this was never denied at Rome. The
Inquisition itself, backed by the greatest theologian of the time
(Bellarmin), took the same view. Not only does he declare that he
makes the condemnation "in the name of His Holiness the Pope," but
we have the Roman _Index_, containing the condemnation for nearly two
hundred years, prefaced by a solemn bull of the reigning Pope
binding this condemnation on the consciences of the whole Church
and declaring year after year that "all books which affirm the
motion of the earth" are damnable. To attempt to face all this,
added to the fact that Galileo was required to abjure "the heresy
of the movement of the earth" by written order of the Pope, was
soon seen to be impossible. Against the assertion that the Pope was
not responsible we have all this mass of testimony, and the bull of
Alexander VII in 1664.[164]
This contention, then, was at last utterly given up by honest
Catholics themselves. In 1870 a Roman Catholic clergy man in
England, the Rev. Mr. Roberts, evidently thinking that the time ha
come to tell the truth, published a book entitled _The Pontifica
Decrees against the Earth's Movement_, and in this exhibited the
incontrovertible evidences that the papacy had committed itself and
its infallibility fully against the movement of the earth. This
Catholic clergyman showed from the original record that Pope Paul
V, in 1616, had presided over the tribunal condemning the doctrine
of the earth's movement, and ordering Galileo to give up th
opinion. He showed that Pope Urban VIII, in 1633, pressed on,
directed, and promulgated the final condemnation, making himself in
all these ways responsible for it. And, finally, he showed that
Pope Alexander VII, in 1664, by his bull--_Speculatores domus
Israel_--attached to the _Index_, condemning "all books which affirm
the motion of the earth," had absolutely pledged the papa
infallibility against the earth's movement. He also confessed tha
under the rules laid down by the highest authorities in the Church,
and especially by Sixtus V and Pius IX, there was no escape from
this conclusion.
Various theologians attempted to evade the force of the argument.
Some, like Dr. Ward and Bouix, took refuge in verbal niceties;
some, like Dr. Jeremiah Murphy, comforted themselves with
declamation. The only result was, that in 1885 came another edition
of the Rev. Mr. Roberts's work, even more cogent than the first;
and, besides this, an essay by that eminent Catholic, St. George
Mivart, acknowledging the Rev. Mr. Roberts's position to be
impregnable, and declaring virtually that the Almighty allowed Pope
and Church to fall into complete error regarding the Copernica
theory, in order to teach them that science lies outside their
province, and that the true priesthood of scientific truth rests
with scientific investigators alone.[166]
In spite, then, of all casuistry and special pleading, this sturdy
honesty ended the controversy among Catholics themselves, so far a
fair-minded men are concerned.
In recalling it at this day there stand out from its later phase
two efforts at compromise especially instructive, as showing the
embarrassment of militant theology in the nineteenth century.
The first of these was made by John Henry Newman in the days whe
he was hovering between the Anglican and Roman Churches. In one of
his sermons before the University of Oxford he spoke as follows:
"Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is stationary, and
science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest.
How can we determine which of these opposite statements is the very
truth till we know what motion is? If our idea of motion is but a
accidental result of our present senses, neither proposition is
true and both are true: neither true philosophically; both true for
certain practical purposes in the system in which they are
respectively found."
In all anti-theological literature there is no utterance more
hopelessly skeptical. And for what were the youth of Oxford led
into such bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence
of truth or any real foundation for it? Simply to save an outwor
system of interpretation into which the gifted preacher happened t
be born
The other utterance was suggested by De Bonald and developed in the
_Dublin Review_, as is understood, by one of Newman's associates
This argument was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under the
charge of deception against the Almighty himself. It 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
saw 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."
This argument, like Mr. Gosse's famous attempt to reconcile geology
to Genesis--by supposing that for some inscrutable purpose God
deliberately deceived the thinking world by giving to the earth al
the appearances of development through long periods of time, while
really creating it in six days, each of an evening and a
morning--seems only to have awakened the amazed pity of thinking
men. This, like the argument of Newman, was a last desperate effort
of Anglican and Roman divines to save something from the wreckage
of dogmatic theology.[167]
All these well-meaning defenders of the faith but wrought into the
hearts of great numbers of thinking men 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
simply attached Christianity by the strongest cords of logic which
they could spin to these mistaken ideas in science, and, could they
have had their way, the advance of knowledge would have ingulfed
both together
On the other hand, what had science done for religion? Simply this:
Copernicus, escaping persecution only by death; Giordano Bruno,
burned alive as a monster of impiety; Galileo, imprisoned an
humiliated as the worst of misbelievers; Kepler, accused of
"throwing Christ's kingdom into confusion with his silly fancies";
Newton, bitterly attacked for "dethroning Providence," gave to
religion stronger foundations and more ennobling conceptions.
Under the old system, that princely astronomer, Alphonso of
Castile, seeing the inadequacy of the Ptolemaic theory, yet knowing
no other, startled Europe with the blasphemy that, if he had been
present at creation, he could have suggested a better order of the
heavenly bodies. Under the new system, Kepler, filled with a
religious spirit, exclaimed, "I do think the thoughts of God." The
difference in religious spirit between these two men marks the
conquest made in this long struggle by Science for Religion.[168]
Nothing is more unjust than to cast especial blame for all this
resistance to science upon the Roman Church. The Protestant Church,
though rarely able to be so severe, has been more blameworthy. The
persecution of Galileo and his compeers by the older Church wa
mainly at the beginning of the seventeenth century; the
persecution of Robertson Smith, and Winchell, and Woodrow, and Toy,
and the young professors at Beyrout, by various Protestant
authorities, was near the end of the nineteenth century. Those
earlier persecutions by Catholicism were strictly in accordance
with principles held at that time by all religionists, Catholic and
Protestant, throughout the world; these later persecutions by
Protestants were in defiance of principles which all Protestants
to-day hold or pretend to hold, and none make louder claim to hold
them than the very sects which persecuted these eminent Christian
men of our day, men whose crime was that they were intelligent
enough to accept the science of their time, and honest enough to
acknowledge it.
Most unjustly, then, would Protestantism taunt Catholicism for
excluding knowledge of astronomical truths from European Catholic
universities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whil
real knowledge of geological and biological and anthropological
truth is denied or pitifully diluted in so many American Protestan
colleges and universities in the nineteenth century.
Nor has Protestantism the right to point with scorn to the Catholic
_Index_, and to lay stress on the fact that nearly every reall
important book in the last three centuries has been forbidden by
it, so long as young men in so many American Protestant
universities and colleges are nursed with "ecclesiastical pap"
rather than with real thought, and directed to the works of
"solemnly constituted impostors," or to sundry "approved courses of
reading," while they are studiously kept aloof from such leaders in
modern thought as Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Draper, and Lecky.
It may indeed be justly claimed by Protestantism that some of the
former strongholds of her bigotry have become liberalized; but, on
the other hand, Catholicism can point to the fact that Pope Leo XIII,
now happily reigning, has made a noble change as regards open
dealing with documents. The days of Monsignor Marini, it may be
hoped, are gone. The Vatican Library, with its masses of historical
material, has been thrown open to Protestant and Catholic scholars
alike, and this privilege has been freely used by men representing
all shades of religious thought.
As to the older errors, the whole civilized world was at fault,
Protestant as well as Catholic. It was not the fault of religion
it was the fault of that short-sighted linking of theological
dogmas to scriptural texts which, in utter defiance of the words
and works of the Blessed Founder of Christianity, narrow-minded
loud-voiced men are ever prone to substitute for religion. Justly
is it said by one of the most eminent among contemporary Anglican
divines, that "it is because they have mistaken the dawn for a
conflagration that theologians have so often been foes of light."[170]
CHAPTER IV.
FROM "SIGNS AND WONDERS" TO LAW IN THE HEAVENS.
I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.
FEW things in the evolution of astronomy are more suggestive than
the struggle between the theological and the scientific doctrine
regarding comets--the passage from the conception of them as
fire-balls flung by an angry God for the purpose of scaring a
wicked world, to a recognition of them as natural in origin an
obedient to law in movement. Hardly anything throws a more vivid
light upon the danger of wresting texts of Scripture to preserve
ideas which observation and thought have superseded, and upon th
folly of arraying ecclesiastical power against scientific discovery.[171]
Out of the ancient world had come a mass of beliefs regarding
comets, meteors, and eclipses; all these were held to be signs
displayed from heaven for the warning of mankind. Stars and meteors
were generally thought to presage happy events, especially the
births of gods, heroes, and great men. So firmly rooted was this
idea that we constantly find among the ancient nations tradition
of lights in the heavens preceding the birth of persons of note.
The sacred books of India show that the births of Crishna and o
Buddha were announced by such heavenly lights.[171b] The sacred
books of China tell of similar appearances at the births of Yu, the
founder of the first dynasty, and of the inspired sage, Lao-tse
According to the Jewish legends, a star appeared at the birth of
Moses, and was seen by the Magi of Egpyt, who informed the king;
and when Abraham was born an unusual star appeared in the east. Th
Greeks and Romans cherished similar traditions. A heavenly light
accompanied the birth of AEsculapius, and the births of various
Caesars were heralded in like manner.[172]
The same conception entered into our Christian sacred books. Of all
the legends which grew in such luxuriance and beauty about the
cradle of Jesus of Nazareth, none appeals more directly to the
highest poetic feeling than that given by one of the evangelists
in which a star, rising in the east, conducted the wise men to the
manger where the Galilean peasant-child--the Hope of Mankind, th
Light of the World--was lying in poverty and helplessness.
Among the Mohammedans we have a curious example of the same
tendency toward a kindly interpretation of stars and meteors, in
the belief of certain Mohammedan teachers that meteoric showers are
caused by good angels hurling missiles to drive evil angels out of
the sky.
Eclipses were regarded in a very different light, being supposed to
express the distress of Nature at earthly calamities. The Greeks
believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the deaths o
Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, AEsculapius, and Alexander the Great.
The Roman legends held that at the death of Romulus there was
darkness for six hours. In the history of the Caesars occur
portents of all three kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth
was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a
star, and the downfall of Nero by a comet. So, too, in one of the
Christian legends clustering about the crucifixion, darkness
overspread the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour. Neither the
silence regarding it of the only evangelist who claims to have been
present, nor the fact that observers like Seneca and Pliny, who
though they carefully described much less striking occurrences of
the same sort and in more remote regions, failed to note any such
darkness even in Judea, have availed to shake faith in an accoun
so true to the highest poetic instincts of humanity
This view of the relations between Nature and man continued among
both Jews and Christians. According to Jewish tradition, darkness
overspread the earth for three days when the books of the Law were
profaned by translation into Greek. Tertullian thought an eclipse
an evidence of God's wrath against unbelievers. Nor has this mode
of thinking ceased in modern times. A similar claim was made at th
execution of Charles I; and Increase Mather thought an eclipse i
Massachusetts an evidence of the grief of Nature at the death of
President Chauncey, of Harvard College. Archbishop Sandys expecte
eclipses to be the final tokens of woe at the destruction of the
world, and traces of this feeling have come down to our own time.
The quaint story of the Connecticut statesman who, when his
associates in the General Assembly were alarmed by an eclipse of
the sun, and thought it the beginning of the Day of Judgment,
quietly ordered in candles, that he might in any case be found
doing his duty, marks probably the last noteworthy appearance of
the old belief in any civilized nation.[173
In these beliefs regarding meteors and eclipses there was little
calculated to do harm by arousing that superstitious terror which i
the worst breeding-bed of cruelty. Far otherwise was it with th
belief regarding comets. During many centuries it gave rise to the
direst superstition and fanaticism. The Chaldeans alone among th
ancient peoples generally regarded comets without fear, and thought
them bodies wandering as harmless as fishes in the sea; th
Pythagoreans alone among philosophers seem to have had a vague idea
of them as bodies returning at fixed periods of time; and in all
antiquity, so far as is known, one man alone, Seneca, had the
scientific instinct and prophetic inspiration to give this idea
definite shape, and to declare that the time would come when comet
would be found to move in accordance with natural law. Here and
there a few strong men rose above the prevailing superstition. The
Emperor Vespasian tried to laugh it down, and insisted that a
certain comet in his time could not betoken his death, because it
was hairy, and he bald; but such scoffing produced little permanent
effect, and the prophecy of Seneca was soon forgotten. These and
similar isolated utterances could not stand against the mass of
opinion which upheld the doctrine that comets are "signs an
wonders."[174]
The belief that every comet is a ball of fire flung from the righ
hand of an angry God to warn the grovelling dwellers of earth wa
received into the early Church, transmitted through the Middle Age
to the Reformation period, and in its transmission was made all the
more precious by supposed textual proofs from Scripture. The great
fathers of the Church committed themselves unreservedly to it. In
the third century Origen, perhaps the most influential of the
earlier fathers of the universal Church in all questions between
science and faith, insisted that comets indicate catastrophes and
the downfall of empires and worlds. Bede, so justly revered by the
English Church, declared in the eighth century. that "comets
portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or heat";
and John of Damascus, his eminent contemporary in the Eastern
Church, took the same view. Rabanus Maurus, the great teacher of
Europe in the ninth century, an authority throughout the Middle
Ages, adopted Bede's opinion fully. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great
light of the universal Church in the thirteenth century, whose
works the Pope now reigning commends as the centre and source of
all university instruction, accepted and handed down the same
opinion. The sainted Albert the Great, the most noted genius of the
medieval Church in natural science, received and developed this
theory. These men and those who followed them founded upo
scriptural texts and theological reasonings a system that for
seventeen centuries defied every advance of thought.[175]
The main evils thence arising were three: the paralysis of
self-help, the arousing of fanaticism, and the strengthening of
ecclesiastical and political tyranny. The first two of these
evils--the paralysis of self-help and the arousing of
fanaticism--are evident throughout all these ages. At the
appearance of a comet we constantly see all Christendom, from pope
to peasant, instead of striving to avert war by wise statesmanship,
instead of striving to avert pestilence by observation and reason,
instead of striving to avert famine by skilful economy, whinin
before fetiches, trying to bribe them to remove these signs of
God's wrath, and planning to wreak this supposed wrath of God upon
misbelievers.
As to the third of these evils--the strengthening of ecclesiastical
and civil despotism--examples appear on every side. It was natural
that hierarchs and monarchs whose births were announced by stars,
or whose deaths were announced by comets, should regard themselves
as far above the common herd, and should be so regarded by mankind;
passive obedience was thus strengthened, and the most monstrous
assumptions of authority were considered simply as manifestations
of the Divine will. Shakespeare makes Calphurnia say to Caesar:
"When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
Galeazzo, the tyrant of Milan, expressing satisfaction on his
deathbed that his approaching end was of such importance as to be
heralded by a comet, is but a type of many thus encouraged to prey
upon mankind; and Charles V, one of the most powerful monarchs the
world has known, abdicating under fear of the comet of 1556, taking
refuge in the monastery of San Yuste, and giving up the best of his
vast realms to such a scribbling bigot as Philip II, furnishes an
example even more striking.[176
But for the retention of this belief there was a moral cause.
Myriads of good men in the Christian Church down to a recent period
saw in the appearance of comets not merely an exhibition of "signs
in the heavens" foretold in Scripture, but also Divine warnings of
vast value to humanity as incentives to repentance and improvemen
of life-warnings, indeed, so precious that they could not be spared
without danger to the moral government of the world. And this
belief in the portentous character of comets as an essential part
of the Divine government, being, as it was thought, in full accord
with Scripture, was made for centuries a source of terror to
humanity. To say nothing of examples in the earlier periods, comets
in the tenth century especially increased the distress of all
Europe. In the middle of the eleventh century a comet was though
to accompany the death of Edward the Confessor and to presage the
Norman conquest; the traveller in France to-day may see this
belief as it was then wrought into the Bayeux tapestry.[177]
Nearly every decade of years throughout the Middle Ages saw Europe
plunged into alarm by appearances of this sort, but the culminatio
seems to have been reached in 1456. At that time the Turks, after
a long effort, had made good their footing in Europe. A large
statesmanship or generalship might have kept them out; but, while
different religious factions were disputing over petty shades of
dogma, they had advanced, had taken Constantinople, and were
evidently securing their foothold. Now came the full bloom of this
superstition. A comet appeared. The Pope of that period, Calixtus
III, though a man of more than ordinary ability, was saturated with
the ideas of his time. Alarmed at this monster, if we are to
believe the contemporary historian, this infallible head of the
Church solemnly "decreed several days of prayer for the averting
of the wrath of God, that whatever calamity impended might be
turned from the Christians and against the Turks." And, that all
might join daily in this petition, there was then established that
midday Angelus which has ever since called good Catholics to prayer
against the powers of evil. Then, too, was incorporated into a
litany the plea, "From the Turk and the comet, good Lord, deliver
us." Never was papal intercession less effective; for the Turk has
held Constantinople from that day to this, while the obstinate
comet, being that now known under the name of Halley, has returne
imperturbably at short periods ever since.[177b]
But the superstition went still further. It became more and more
incorporated into what was considered "scriptural science" and
"sound learning." The encyclopedic summaries, in which the science
of the Middle Ages and the Reformation period took form, furnis
abundant proofs of this.
Yet scientific observation was slowly undermining this structure.
The inspired prophecy of Seneca had not been forgotten. Even as
far back as the ninth century, in the midst of the sacred learning
so abundant at the court of Charlemagne and his successors, we find
a scholar protesting against the accepted doctrine. In the
thirteenth century we have a mild question by Albert the Great as
to the supposed influence of comets upon individuals; but the
prevailing theological current was too strong, and he finally
yielded to it in this as in so many other things.
So, too, in the sixteenth century, we have Copernicus refusing to
accept the usual theory, Paracelsus writing to Zwingli against it,
and Julius Caesar Scaliger denouncing it as "ridiculous folly."[178]
At first this scepticism only aroused the horror of theologians and
increased the vigour of ecclesiastics; both asserted the
theological theory of comets all the more strenuously as based on
scriptural truth. During the sixteenth century France felt the
influence of one of her greatest men on the side of this
superstition. Jean Bodin, so far before his time in political
theories, was only thoroughly abreast of it in religious theories:
the same reverence for the mere letter of Scripture which made him
so fatally powerful in supporting the witchcraft delusion, led him
to support this theological theory of comets--but with
difference: he thought them the souls of men, wandering in space
bringing famine, pestilence, and war.
Not less strong was the same superstition in England. Based upon
mediaeval theology, it outlived the revival of learning. From a
multitude of examples a few may be selected as typical. Early in
the sixteenth century Polydore Virgil, an ecclesiastic of the
unreformed Church, alludes, in his _English History_, to the presage
of the death of the Emperor Constantine by a comet as to a simple
matter of fact; and in his work on prodigies he pushes this
superstition to its most extreme point, exhibiting comets as
preceding almost every form of calamity
In 1532, just at the transition period from the old Church to the
new, Cranmer, paving the way to his archbishopric, writes from
Germany to Henry VIII, and says of the comet then visible: "What
strange things these tokens do signify to come hereafter, God
knoweth; for they do not lightly appear but against some great matter."
Twenty years later Bishop Latimer, in an Advent sermon, speaks of
eclipses, rings about the sun, and the like, as signs of the
approaching end of the world.[179]
In 1580, under Queen Elizabeth, there was set forth an "order of
prayer to avert God's wrath from us, threatened by the late
terrible earthquake, to be used in all parish churches." In
connection with this there was also commended to the faithful "a
godly admonition for the time present"; and among the things
referred to as evidence of God's wrath are comets, eclipses, and
falls of snow
This view held sway in the Church of England during Elizabeth's
whole reign and far into the Stuart period: Strype, th
ecclesiastical annalist, gives ample evidence of this, and among
the more curious examples is the surmise that the comet of 1572 was
a token of Divine wrath provoked by the St. Bartholomew massacre.
As to the Stuart period, Archbishop Spottiswoode seems to have been
active in carrying the superstition from the sixteenth century to
the seventeenth, and Archbishop Bramhall cites Scripture in suppor
of it. Rather curiously, while the diary of Archbishop Laud shows
so much superstition regarding dreams as portents, it shows little
or none regarding comets; but Bishop Jeremy Taylor, strong as he
was, evidently favoured the usual view. John Howe, the eminent
Nonconformist divine in the latter part of the century, seems to
have regarded the comet superstition as almost a fundamental
article of belief; he laments the total neglect of comets and
portents generally, declaring that this neglect betokens want of
reverence for the Ruler of the world; he expresses contempt for
scientific inquiry regarding comets, insists that they may be
natural bodies and yet supernatural portents, and ends by saying,
"I conceive it very safe to suppose that some very considerable
thing, either in the way of judgment or mercy, may ensue, according
as the cry of persevering wickedness or of penitential prayer is
more or less loud at that time."[180]
The Reformed Church of Scotland supported the superstition just as
strongly. John Knox saw in comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven;
other authorities considered them "a warning to the king to
extirpate the Papists"; and as late as 1680, after Halley had wo
his victory, comets were announced on high authority in the
Scottish Church to be "prodigies of great judgment on these lands
for our sins, for never was the Lord more provoked by a people.
While such was the view of the clergy during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the laity generally accepted it as a matter
of course, Among the great leaders in literature there was at least
general acquiescence in it. Both Shakespeare and Milton recognise
it, whether they fully accept it or not. Shakespeare makes the Duke
of Bedford, lamenting at the bier of Henry V, say:
"Comets, importing change of time and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death.
Milton, speaking of Satan preparing for combat, says:
"On the other side
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood.
Unterrified, and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus hug
In the arctic sky, and from its horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.
We do indeed find that in some minds the discoveries of Tycho Brahe
and Kepler begin to take effect, for, in 1621, Burton in his
_Anatomy of Melancholy_ alludes to them as changing public opinion
somewhat regarding comets; and, just hefore the middle of the
century, Sir Thomas Browne expresses a doubt whether comets produce
such terrible effects, "since it is found that many of them are
above the moon."[181] Yet even as late as the last years of th
seventeenth century we have English authors of much power battling
for this supposed scriptural view and among the natural and typical
results we find, in 1682, Ralph Thoresby, a Fellow of the Royal
Society, terrified at the comet of that year, and writing in his
diary the following passage: "Lord, fit us for whatever changes it
may portend; for, though I am not ignorant that such meteors
proceed from natural causes, yet are they frequently also the
presages of imminent calamities." Interesting is it to note here
that this was Halley's comet, and that Halley was at this very
moment making those scientific studies upon it which were to fre
the civilized world forever from such terrors as distressed Thoresby.
The belief in comets as warnings against sin was especially one o
those held "always, everywhere, and by all," and by Eastern
Christians as well as by Western. One of the most striking scenes
in the history of the Eastern Church is that which took place a
the condemnation of Nikon, the great Patriarch of Moscow. Turnin
toward his judges, he pointed to a comet then blazing in the sky,
and said, "God's besom shall sweep you all away!"
Of all countries in western Europe, it was in Germany and German
Switzerland that this superstition took strongest hold. That same
depth of religious feeling which produced in those countries th
most terrible growth of witchcraft persecution, brought
superstition to its highest development regarding comets. No
country suffered more from it in the Middle Ages. At the
Reformation Luther declared strongly in favour of it. In one of his
Advent sermons he said, "The heathen write that the comet may
arise from natural causes, but God creates not one that does not
foretoken a sure calamity." Again he said, "Whatever moves in the
heaven in an unusual way is certainly a sign of God's wrath." And
sometimes, yielding to another phase of his belief, he declared
them works of the devil, and declaimed against them as "harlot
stars."[182
Melanchthon, too, in various letters refers to comets as heralds of
Heaven's wrath, classing them, with evil conjunctions of the
planets and abortive births, among the "signs" referred to in
Scripture. Zwingli, boldest of the greater Reformers in shaking off
traditional beliefs, could not shake off this, and insisted tha
the comet of 1531 betokened calamity. Arietus, a leading Protestant
theologian, declared, "The heavens are given us not merely for our
pleasure, but also as a warning of the wrath of God for the
correction of our lives." Lavater insisted that comets are signs o
death or calamity, and cited proofs from Scripture
Catholic and Protestant strove together for the glory of this
doctrine. It was maintained with especial vigour by Fromundus, th
eminent professor and Doctor of Theology at the Catholic University
of Louvain, who so strongly opposed the Copernican system; at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, even so gifted an astronomer
as Kepler yielded somewhat to the belief; and near the end of tha
century Voigt declared that the comet of 1618 clearly presaged the
downfall of the Turkish Empire, and he stigmatized as "atheists and
Epicureans" all who did not believe comets to be God's warnings.[183
II. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS TO CRUSH THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW
Out of this belief was developed a great series of efforts to
maintain the theological view of comets, and to put down foreve
the scientific view. These efforts may be divided into two classes
those directed toward learned men and scholars, through the
universities, and those directed toward the people at large
through the pulpits. As to the first of these, that learned men and
scholars might be kept in the paths of "sacred science" and "sound
learning," especial pains was taken to keep all knowledge of
the scientific view of comets as far as possible from students in
the universities. Even to the end of the seventeenth century the
oath generally required of professors of astronomy over a large
part of Europe prevented their teaching that comets are heavenly
bodies obedient to law. Efforts just as earnest were made to faste
into students' minds the theological theory. Two or three example
out of many may serve as types. First of these may be named the
teaching of Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the University of
Tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value of comets by
comparing the Almighty sending a comet, to the judge laying the
executioner's sword on the table between himself and the criminal
in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or schoolmaster
displaying the rod before naughty children. A little later we have
another churchman of great importance in that region, Schickhart,
head pastor and superintendent at Goppingen, preaching and
publishing a comet sermon, in which he denounces those who stare at
such warnings of God without heeding them, and compares them t
"calves gaping at a new barn door." Still later, at the end of the
seventeenth century, we find Conrad Dieterich, director of studies
at the University of Marburg, denouncing all scientific
investigation of comets as impious, and insisting that they are
only to be regarded as "signs and wonders."[184]
The results of this ecclesiastical pressure upon science in th
universities were painfully shown during generation after
generation, as regards both professors and students; and examples
may be given typical of its effects upon each of these two classes.
The first of these is the case of Michael Maestlin. He was by birt
a Swabian Protestant, was educated at Tubingen as a pupil of Apian,
and, after a period of travel, was settled as deacon in the little
parish of Backnang, when the comet of 1577 gave him an occasion to
apply his astronomical studies. His minute and accurate
observation of it is to this day one of the wonders of science. It
seems almost impossible that so much could be accomplished by the
naked eye. His observations agreed with those of Tycho Brahe, and
won for Maestlin the professorship of astronomy in the University
of Heidelberg. No man had so clearly proved the supralunar position
of a comet, or shown so conclusively that its motion was not
erratic, but regular. The young astronomer, though Apian's pupil
was an avowed Copernican and the destined master and friend of
Kepler. Yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he felt it
necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet
a "new and horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures
on the signification of the present comet," in which he proves
from history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but
peace purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed in
this theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his
observations had settled the supralunar character and regular
motion of comets proves this. It was a humiliation only to be
compared to that of Osiander when he wrote his grovelling preface
to the great book of Copernicus. Maestlin had his reward: when, a
few years, later his old teacher, Apian, was driven from his chair
at Tubingen for refusing to sign the _Lutheran Concord-Book_, Maestlin
was elected to his place.
Not less striking was the effect of this theological pressure upo
the minds of students. Noteworthy as an example of this is the book
of the Leipsic lawyer, Buttner. From no less than eighty-six
biblical texts he proves the Almighty's purpose of using the
heavenly bodies for the instruction of men as to future events, an
then proceeds to frame exhaustive tables, from which, the time and
place of the comet's first appearance being known, its
signification can be deduced. This manual he gave forth as
triumph of religious science, under the name of the _Comet
Hour-Book_.[185]
The same devotion to the portent theory is found in the
universities of Protestant Holland. Striking is it to see in the
sixteenth century, after Tycho Brahe's discovery, the Dutch
theologian, Gerard Vossius, Professor of Theology and Eloquence at
Leyden, lending his great weight to the superstition. "The history
of all times," he says, "shows comets to be the messengers of
misfortune. It does not follow that they are endowed with
intelligence, but that there is a deity who makes use of them to
call the human race to repentance." Though familiar with the works
of Tycho Brahe, he finds it "hard to believe" that all comets ar
ethereal, and adduces several historical examples of sublunary ones
Nor was this attempt to hold back university teaching to the old
view of comets confined to Protestants. The Roman Church was, if
possible, more strenuous in the same effort. A few examples will
serve as types, representing the orthodox teaching at the great
centres of Catholic theology.
One of these is seen in Spain. The eminent jurist Torreblanca was
recognised as a controlling authority in all the universities o
Spain, and from these he swayed in the seventeenth century th
thought of Catholic Europe, especially as to witchcraft and the
occult powers in Nature. He lays down the old cometary superstition
as one of the foundations of orthodox teaching: Begging the
question, after the fashion of his time, he argues that comets can
not be stars, because new stars always betoken good, while comets
betoken evil
The same teaching was given in the Catholic universities of the
Netherlands. Fromundus, at Louvain, the enemy of Galileo, steadily
continued his crusade against all cometary heresy.[186]
But a still more striking case is seen in Italy. The reveren
Father Augustin de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at
Rome, as late as 1673, after the new cometary theory had been
placed beyond reasonable doubt, and even while Newton was working
out its final demonstration, published a third edition of his
_Lectures on Meteorology_. It was dedicated to the Cardinal of
Hesse, and bore the express sanction of the Master of the Sacred
Palace at Rome and of the head of the religious order to which De
Angelis belonged. This work deserves careful analysis, not only as
representing the highest and most approved university teaching o
the time at the centre of Roman Catholic Christendom, but still
more because it represents that attempt to make a compromise
between theology and science, or rather the attempt to confiscate
science to the uses of theology, which we so constantly find
whenever the triumph of science in any field has become inevitable.
As to the scientific element in this compromise, De Angelis holds,
in his general introduction regarding meteorology, that the main
material cause of comets is "exhalation," and says, "If this
exhalation is thick and sticky, it blazes into a comet." And again
he returns to the same view, saying that "one form of exhalatio
is dense, hence easily inflammable and long retentive of fire, from
which sort are especially generated comets." But it is in his thir
lecture that he takes up comets specially, and his discussion of
them is extended through the fourth, fifth, and sixth lectures.
Having given in detail the opinions of various theologians and
philosophers, he declares his own in the form of two conclusions.
The first of these is that "comets are not heavenly bodies, bu
originate in the earth's atmosphere below the moon; for everything
heavenly is eternal and incorruptible, but comets have a beginning
and ending--_ergo_, comets can not be heavenly bodies." This, we ma
observe, is levelled at the observations and reasonings of Tycho
Brahe and Kepler, and is a very good illustration of the scholastic
and mediaeval method--the method which blots out an ascertained
fact by means of a metaphysical formula. His second conclusion is
that "comets are of elemental and sublunary nature; for they are
an exhalation hot and dry, fatty and well condensed, inflammable
and kindled in the uppermost regions of the air." He then goes on
to answer sundry objections to this mixture of metaphysics and
science, and among other things declares that "the fatty, sticky
material of a comet may be kindled from sparks falling from fiery
heavenly bodies or from a thunderholt"; and, again, that the
thick, fatty, sticky quality of the comet holds its tail in shape
and that, so far are comets from having their paths beyond the
moon's orbit, as Tycho Brahe and Kepler thought, he himself in 161
saw "a bearded comet so near the summit of Vesuvius that it almos
seemed to touch it." As to sorts and qualities of comets, he
accepts Aristotle's view, and divides them into bearded and
tailed.[187] He goes on into long disquisitions upon their colours,
forms, and motions. Under this latter head he again plunges deep
into a sea of metaphysical considerations, and does not reappear
until he brings up his compromise in the opinion that their
movement is as yet uncertain and not understood, but that, if we
must account definitely for it, we must say that it is effected by
angels especially assigned to this service by Divine Providence
But, while proposing this compromise between science and theology
as to the origin and movement of comets, he will hear to none as
regards their mission as "signs and wonders" and presages o
evil. He draws up a careful table of these evils, arranging them in
the following order. Drought, wind, earthquake, tempest, famine,
pestilence, war, and, to clinch the matter, declares that the comet
observed by him in 1618 brought not only war, famine, pestilence,
and earthquake, but also a general volcanic eruption, "which would
have destroyed Naples, had not the blood of the invincible martyr
Januarius withstood it."
It will be observed, even from this sketch, that, while the learned
Father Augustin thus comes infallibly to the mediaeval conclusion,
he does so very largely by scientific and essentially modern
processes, giving unwonted prominence to observation, and at times
twisting scientific observation into the strand with his
metaphysics. The observations and methods of his science are
sometimes shrewd, sometimes comical. Good examples of the latter
sort are such as his observing that the comet stood very near the
summit of Vesuvius, and his reasoning that its tail was kept in
place by its stickiness. But observations and reasonings of this
sort are always the first homage paid by theology to science as th
end of their struggle approaches.[188]
Equally striking is an example seen a little later in another part
of Europe; and it is the more noteworthy because Halley and Newto
had already fully established the modern scientific theory. Just at
the close of the seventeenth century the Jesuit Reinzer, professo
at Linz, put forth his _Meteorologia Philosophico-Politica_, in
which all natural phenomena received both a physical and a moral
interpretation. It was profusely and elaborately illustrated, and
on account of its instructive contents was in 1712 translated into
German for the unlearned reader. The comet receives, of course
great attention. "It appears," says Reinzer, "only then in the
heavens when the latter punish the earth, and through it [the
comet] not only predict but bring to pass all sorts of calamity....
And, to that end, its tail serves for a rod, its hair for weapon
and arrows, its light for a threat, and its heat for a sign of
anger and vengeance." Its warnings are threefold: (1) "Comets,
generated in the air, betoken _naturally_ drought, wind, earthquake,
famine, and pestilence." (2) "Comets can indirectly, in view of
their material, betoken wars, tumults, and the death of princes
for, being hot and dry, they bring the moistnesses [_Feuchtigkeiten_]
in the human body to an extraordinary heat and dryness, increasing
the gall; and, since the emotions depend on the temperament and
condition of the body, men are through this change driven to
violent deeds, quarrels, disputes, and finally to arms: especially
is this the result with princes, who are more delicate and also
more arrogant than other men, and whose moistnesses are more liabl
to inflammation of this sort, inasmuch as they live in luxury an
seldom restrain themselves from those things which in such a dry
state of the heavens are especially injurious." (3) "All comets,
whatever prophetic significance they may have naturally in and of
themselves, are yet principally, according to the Divine pleasure,
heralds of the death of great princes, of war, and of other such
great calamities; and this is known and proved, first of all, from
the words of Christ himself: `Nation shall rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers
places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and grea
signs shall there be from heaven.'"[189]
While such pains was taken to keep the more highly educated classes
in the "paths of scriptural science and sound learning; at the
universities, equal efforts were made to preserve the cometary
orthodoxy of the people at large by means of the pulpits. Out of
the mass of sermons for this purpose which were widely circulated
I will select just two as typical, and they are worthy of carefu
study as showing some special dangers of applying theological
methods to scientific facts. In the second half of the sixteenth
century the recognised capital of orthodox Lutheranism was
Magdeburg, and in the region tributary to this metropolis no Church
official held a more prominent station than the "Superintendent,"
or Lutheran bishop, of the neighbouring Altmark. It was this
dignitary, Andreas Celichius by name, who at Magdeburg, in 1578,
gave to the press his _Theological Reminder of the New Comet_. After
deprecating as blasphemous the attempt of Aristotle to explain th
phenomenon otherwise than as a supernatural warning from God to
sinful man, he assures his hearers that "whoever would know the
comet's real source and nature must not merely gape and stare at
the scientific theory that it is an earthy, greasy, tough, and
sticky vapour and mist, rising into the upper air and set ablaze by
the celestial heat." Far more important for them is it to know what
this vaponr is. It is really, in the opinion of Celichius, nothing
more or less than "the thick smoke of human sins, rising every
day, every hour, every moment, full of stench and horror, befor
the face of God, and becoming gradually so thick as to form a
comet, with curled and plaited tresses, which at last is kindled by
the hot and fiery anger of the Supreme Heavenly Judge." He adds
that it is probably only through the prayers and tears of Christ
that this blazing monument of human depravity becomes visible t
mortals. In support of this theory, he urges the "coming up before
God" of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah and of Nineveh, and
especially the words of the prophet regarding Babylon, "Her stench
and rottenness is come up before me." That the anger of God can
produce the conflagration without any intervention of Nature is
proved from the Psalms, "He sendeth out his word and melteth
them." From the position of the comet, its course, and the
direction of its tail he augurs especially the near approach of the
judgment day, though it may also betoken, as usual, famine,
pestilence, and war. "Yet even in these days," he mourns, "there
are people reckless and giddy enough to pay no heed to such
celestial warnings, and these even cite in their own defence the
injunction of Jeremiah not to fear signs in the heavens." This idea
he explodes, and shows that good and orthodox Christians, while not
superstitious like the heathen, know well "that God is not bound
to his creation and the ordinary course of Nature, but must often,
especially in these last dregs of the world, resort to irregula
means to display his anger at human guilt."[191]
The other typical case occurred in the following century and in
another part of Germany. Conrad Dieterich was, during the first
half of the seventeenth century, a Lutheran ecclesiastic of the
highest authority. His ability as a theologian had made hi
Archdeacon of Marburg, Professor of Philosophy and Director of
Studies at the University of Giessen, and "Superintendent," or
Lutheran bishop, in southwestern Germany. In the year 162O, on the
second Sunday in Advent, in the great Cathedral of Ulm, he
developed the orthodox doctrine of comets in a sermon, taking up
the questions: 1. What are comets? 2. What do they indicate? 3.
What have we to do with their significance? This sermon marks an
epoch. Delivered in that stronghold of German Protestantism and b
a prelate of the highest standing, it was immediately printed,
prefaced by three laudatory poems from different men of note, and
sent forth to drive back the scientific, or, as it was called, the
"godless," view of comets. The preface shows that Dieterich wa
sincerely alarmed by the tendency to regard comets as natural
appearances. His text was taken from the twenty-fifth verse of the
twenty-first chapter of St. Luke: "And there shall be signs in the
sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress
of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring." As to
what comets are, he cites a multitude of philosophers, and, finding
that they differ among themselves, he uses a form of argument not
uncommon from that day to this, declaring that this difference of
opinion proves that there is no solution of the problem save in
revelation, and insisting that comets are "signs especially sent
by the Almighty to warn the earth." An additional proof of this he
finds in the forms of comets. One, he says, took the form of
trumpet; another, of a spear; another of a goat; another, of a
torch; another, of a sword; another, of an arrow; another, of a
sabre; still another, of a bare arm. From these forms of comets he
infers that we may divine their purpose. As to their creation, h
quotes John of Damascus and other early Church authorities in
behalf of the idea that each comet is a star newly created at the
Divine command, out of nothing, and that it indicates the wrath of
God. As to their purpose, having quoted largely from the Bible and
from Luther, he winds up by insisting that, as God can make nothing
in vain, comets must have some distinct object; then, from Isaiah
and Joel among the prophets, from Matthew, Mark, and Luke among the
evangelists, from Origen and John Chrysostom among the fathers,
from Luther and Melanchthon among the Reformers, he draws variou
texts more or less conclusive to prove that comets indicate evil
and only evil; and he cites Luther's Advent sermon to the effect
that, though comets may arise in the course of Nature, they are
still signs of evil to mankind. In answer to the theory of sundr
naturalists that comets are made up of "a certain fiery, warm,
sulphurous, saltpetery, sticky fog," he declaims: "Our sins, our
sins: they are the fiery heated vapours, the thick, sticky
sulphurous clouds which rise from the earth toward heaven before
God." Throughout the sermon Dieterich pours contempt over all men
who simply investigate comets as natural objects, calls special
attention to a comet then in the heavens resembling a long broom o
bundle of rods, and declares that he and his hearers can only
consider it rightly "when we see standing before us our Lord God
in heaven as an angry father with a rod for his children." In
answer to the question what comets signify, he commits himself
entirely to the idea that they indicate the wrath of God, and
therefore calamities of every sort. Page after page is filled with
the records of evils following comets. Beginning with the creation
of the world, he insists that the first comet brought on the
deluge of Noah, and cites a mass of authorities, ranging from Moses
and Isaiah to Albert the Great and Melanchthon, in support of the
view that comets precede earthquakes, famines, wars, pestilences,
and every form of evil. He makes some parade of astronomical
knowledge as to the greatness of the sun and moon, but relapses
soon into his old line of argument. Imploring his audience not to
be led away from the well-established belief of Christendom and the
principles of their fathers, he comes back to his old assertion,
insists that "our sins are the inflammable material of whic
comets are made," and winds up with a most earnest appeal to the
Almighty to spare his people.[193]
Similar efforts from the pulpit were provoked by the great comet of
1680. Typical among these was the effort in Switzerland of Pastor
Heinrich Erni, who, from the Cathedral of Zurich, sent a circular
letter to the clergy of that region showing the connection of the
eleventh and twelfth verses of the first chapter of Jeremiah with
the comet, giving notice that at his suggestion the authorities ha
proclaimed a solemn fast, and exhorting the clergy to preach
earnestly on the subject of this warning.
Nor were the interpreters of the comet's message content with
simple prose. At the appearance of the comet of 1618, Grasser and
Gross, pastors and doctors of theology at Basle, put forth a
collection of doggerel rhymes to fasten the orthodox theory into
the minds of school-children and peasants. One of these may be
translated:
"I am a Rod in God's right hand
threatening the German and foreign land.
Others for a similar purpose taught:
"Eight things there be a Comet brings,
When it on high doth horrid range:
Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings
War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change."
Great ingenuity was shown in meeting the advance of science, in the
universities and schools, with new texts of Scripture; and Stephe
Spleiss, Rector of the Gymnasium at Schaffhausen, got great credit
by teaching that in the vision of Jeremiah the "almond rod" was
a tailed comet, and the "seething pot" a bearded one.[194]
It can be easily understood that such authoritative utterances as
that of Dieterich must have produced a great effect throughout
Protestant Christendom; and in due time we see their working in Ne
England. That same tendency to provincialism, which, save at rare
intervals, has been the bane of Massachusetts thought from that day
to this, appeared; and in 1664 we find Samuel Danforth arguing
from the Bible that "comets are portentous signals of great and
notable changes," and arguing from history that they "have bee
many times heralds of wrath to a secure and impenitent world." He
cites especially the comet of 1652, which appeared just before Mr.
Cotton's sickness and disappeared after his death. Morton also, in
his _Memorial_ recording the death of John Putnam, alludes to the
comet of 1662 as "a very signal testimony that God had the
removed a bright star and a shining light out of the heaven of hi
Church here into celestial glory above." Again he speaks of another
comet, insisting that "it was no fiery meteor caused b
exhalation, but it was sent immediately by God to awaken the secure
world," and goes on to show how in that year "it pleased God to
smite the fruits of the earth--namely, the wheat in special--with
blasting and mildew, whereby much of it was spoiled and became
profitable for nothing, and much of it worth little, being light
and empty. This was looked upon by the judicious and conscientious
of the land as a speaking providence against the unthankfulness of
many,... as also against voluptuousness and abuse of the good
creatures of God by licentiousness in drinking and fashions in
apparel, for the obtaining whereof a great part of the principal
grain was oftentimes unnecessarily expended."
But in 1680 a stronger than either of these seized upon the
doctrine and wielded it with power. Increase Mather, so open always
to ideas from Europe, and always so powerful for good or evil i
the colonies, preached his sermon on "Heaven's Alarm to the
World,... wherein is shown that fearful sights and signs in the
heavens are the presages of great calamities at hand." The text
were taken from the book of Revelation: "And the third ange
sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning, as it
were a lamp," and "Behold, the third woe cometh quickly." In this,
as in various other sermons, he supports the theological cometary
theory fully. He insists that "we are fallen into the dregs of
time," and that the day of judgment is evidently approaching. He
explains away the words of Jeremiah--"Be not dismayed at signs in
the heavens"--and shows that comets have been forerunners of
nearly every form of evil. Having done full justice to evils thu
presaged in scriptural times, he begins a similar display in modern
history by citing blazing stars which foretold the invasions o
Goths, Huns, Saracens, and Turks, and warns gainsayers by citing
the example of Vespasian, who, after ridiculing a comet, soon died.
The general shape and appearance of comets, he thinks, betoken
their purpose, and he cites Tertullian to prove them "God's sharp
razors on mankind, whereby he doth poll, and his scythe whereby he
doth shear down multitudes of sinful creatures." At last, rising to
a fearful height, he declares: "For the Lord hath fired his beacon
in the heavens among the stars of God there; the fearful sight is
not yet out of sight. The warning piece of heaven is going off.
Now, then, if the Lord discharge his murdering pieces from on high,
and men be found in their sins unfit for death, their blood shall
be upon them." And again, in an agony of supplication, he cries
out: "Do we see the sword blazing over us? Let it put us upon
crying to God, that the judgment be diverted and not return upon us
again so speedily.... Doth God threaten our very heavens? O pray
unto him, that he would not take away stars and send comets to
succeed them."[195]
Two years later, in August, 1682, he followed this with another
sermon on "The Latter Sign," "wherein is showed that the voice of
God in signal providences, especially when repeated and iterated,
ought to be hearkened unto." Here, too, of course, the comet comes
in for a large share of attention. But his tone is less sure: even
in the midst of all his arguments appears an evident misgiving. The
thoughts of Newton in science and Bayle in philosophy were
evidently tending to accomplish the prophecy of Seneca. Mather's
alarm at this is clear. His natural tendency is to uphold the idea
that a comet is simply a fire-ball flung from the hand of an
avenging God at a guilty world, but he evidently feels obliged to
yield something to the scientific spirit; hence, in the _Discourse
concerning Comets_, published in 1683, he declares: "There are
those who think that, inasmuch as comets may be supposed to proceed
from natural causes, there is no speaking voice of Heaven in them
beyond what is to be said of all other works of God. But certain it
is that many things which may happen according to the course of
Nature are portentous signs of Divine anger and prognostics of
great evils hastening upon the world." He then notices the eclipse
of August, 1672, and adds: "That year the college was eclipsed by
the death of the learned president there, worthy Mr. Chauncey and
two colonies--namely, Massachusetts and Plymouth--by the death of
two governors, who died within a twelvemonth after.... Shall, then,
such mighty works of God as comets are be insignificant things?"[196]
III. THE INVASION OF SCEPTICISM.
Vigorous as Mather's argument is, we see scepticism regarding
"signs" continuing to invade the public mind; and, in spite of hi
threatenings, about twenty years after we find a remarkable
evidence of this progress in the fact that this scepticism has
seized upon no less a personage than that colossus of orthodoxy,
his thrice illustrious son, Cotton Mather himself; and him we find,
in 1726, despite the arguments of his father, declaring in his
_Manuductio_: "Perhaps there may be some need for me to caution yo
against being dismayed at the signs of the heavens, or having any
superstitious fancies upon eclipses and the like.... I am willing
that you be apprehensive of nothing portentous in blazing stars.
For my part, I know not whether all our worlds, and even the sun
itself, may not fare the better for them."[197]
Curiously enough, for this scientific scepticism in Cotton Mather
there was a cause identical with that which had developed
superstition in the mind of his father. The same provincial
tendency to receive implicitly any new European fashion in thinking
or speech wrought upon both, plunging one into superstition and
drawing the other out of it.
European thought, which New England followed, had at last broken
away in great measure from the theological view of comets as signs
and wonders. The germ of this emancipating influence was mainly in
the great utterance of Seneca; and we find in nearly every century
some evidence that this germ was still alive. This life became more
and more evident after the Reformation period, even thoug
theologians in every Church did their best to destroy it. The firs
series of attacks on the old theological doctrine were mainly
founded in philosophic reasoning. As early as the first half of the
sixteenth century we hear Julius Caesar Scaliger protesting against
the cometary superstition as "ridiculous folly."[197b] Of more
real importance was the treatise of Blaise de Vigenere, published
at Paris in 1578. In this little book various statements regarding
comets as signs of wrath or causes of evils are given, and then
followed by a very gentle and quiet discussion, usually tending t
develop that healthful scepticism which is the parent of
investigation. A fair example of his mode of treating the subject
is seen in his dealing with a bit of "sacred science." This was
simply that "comets menace princes and kings with death because
they live more delicately than other people; and, therefore, th
air thickened and corrupted by a comet would be naturally more
injurious to them than to common folk who live on coarser food."
To this De Vigenere answers that there are very many persons who
live on food as delicate as that enjoyed by princes and kings, and
yet receive no harm from comets. He then goes on to show that many
of the greatest monarchs in history have met death without any
comet to herald it.
In the same year thoughtful scepticism of a similar sort found an
advocate in another part of Europe. Thomas Erastus, the learned and
devout professor of medicine at Heidelberg, put forth a letter
dealing in the plainest terms with the superstition. He argued
especially that there could be no natural connection between th
comet and pestilence, since the burning of an exhalation must tend
to purify rather than to infect the air. In the following year the
eloquent Hungarian divine Dudith published a letter in which th
theological theory was handled even more shrewdly. for he argued
that, if comets were caused by the sins of mortals, they woul
never be absent from the sky. But these utterances were for the
time brushed aside by the theological leaders of thought as shallow
or impious.
In the seventeenth century able arguments against the superstition,
on general grounds, began to be multiplied. In Holland, Balthasar
Bekker opposed this, as he opposed the witchcraft delusion,
on general philosophic grounds; and Lubienitzky wrote in
a compromising spirit to prove that comets were as often followed
by good as by evil events. In France, Pierre Petit, formerly
geographer of Louis XIII, and an intimate friend of Descartes,
addressed to the young Louis XIV a vehement protest against the
superstition, basing his arguments not on astronomy, but on common
sense. A very effective part of the little treatise was devoted to
answering the authority of the fathers of the early Church. To d
this, he simplv reminded his readers that St. Augustine and St.
John Damascenus had also opposed the doctrine of the antipodes. The
book did good service in France, and was translated in Germany a
few years later.[199
All these were denounced as infidels and heretics, yet none the
less did they set men at thinking, and prepare the way for a fa
greater genius; for toward the end of the same century the
philosophic attack was taken up by Pierre Bayle, and in the whole
series of philosophic champions he is chief. While professor at the
University of Sedan he had observed the alarm caused by the come
of 1680, and he now brought all his reasoning powers to bear upon
it. Thoughts deep and witty he poured out in volume after volume.
Catholics and Protestants were alike scandalized. Catholic Franc
spurned him, and Jurieu, the great Reformed divine, called hi
cometary views "atheism," and tried hard to have Protestant
Holland condemn him. Though Bayle did not touch immediately the
mass of mankind, he wrought with power upon men who gave themselves
the trouble of thinking. It was indeed unfortunate for the Church
that theologians, instead of taking the initiative in this matter,
left it to Bayle; for, in tearing down the pretended scriptura
doctrine of comets, he tore down much else: of all men in his time,
no one so thoroughly prepared the way for Voltaire.
Bayle's whole argument is rooted in the prophecy of Seneca. He
declares: "Comets are bodies subject to the ordinary law of
Nature, and not prodigies amenable to no law." He show
historically that there is no reason to regard comets as portents
of earthly evils. As to the fact that such evils occur after the
passage of comets across the sky, he compares the person believing
that comets cause these evils to a woman looking out of a window
into a Paris street and believing that the carriages pass because
she looks out. As to the accomplishment of some predictions, he
cites the shrewd saying of Henry IV, to the effect that "the
public will remember one prediction that comes true better than all
the rest that have proved false." Finally, he sums up by saying:
"The more we study man, the more does it appear that pride is his
ruling passion, and that he affects grandeur even in his misery.
Mean and perishable creature that he is, he has been able to
persuade men that he can not die without disturbing the whole
course of Nature and obliging the heavens to put themselves to
fresh expense. In order to light his funeral pomp. Foolish and
ridiculous vanity! If we had a just idea of the universe, we should
soon comprehend that the death or birth of a prince is too
insignificant a matter to stir the heavens."[200]
This great philosophic champion of right reason was followed by a
literary champion hardly less famous; for Fontenelle now gave to
the French theatre his play of _The Comet_, and a point of capita
importance in France was made by rendering the army of ignoranc
ridiculous.[200b]
Such was the line of philosophic and literary attack, as developed
from Scaliger to Fontenelle. But beneath and in the midst of all of
it, from first to last, giving firmness, strength, and new sources
of vitality to it, was the steady development of scientific effort;
and to the series of great men who patiently wrought and thought
out the truth by scientific methods through all these centuries
belong the honours of the victory.
For generations men in various parts of the world had been making
careful observations on these strange bodies. As far back as th
time when Luther and Melanchthon and Zwingli were plunged into
alarm by various comets from 1531 to 1539, Peter Apian kept his
head sufficiently cool to make scientific notes of their paths
through the heavens. A little later, when the great comet of 155
scared popes, emperors, and reformers alike, such men as Fabricius
at Vienna and Heller at Nuremberg quietly observed its path. I
vain did men like Dieterich and Heerbrand and Celich from various
parts of Germany denounce such observations and investigations a
impious; they were steadily continued, and in 1577 came the first
which led to the distinct foundation of the modern doctrine. In
that year appeared a comet which again plunged Europe into alarm.
In every European country this alarm was strong, but in Germany
strongest of all. The churches were filled with terror-stricken
multitudes. Celich preaching at Magdeburg was echoed by Heerbrand
preaching at Tubingen, and both these from thousands of othe
pulpits, Catholic and Protestant, throughout Europe. In the midst
of all this din and outcry a few men quietly but steadily observed
the monster; and Tycho Brahe announced, as the result, that its
path lay farther from the earth than the orbit of the moon. Another
great astronomical genius, Kepler, confirmed this. This distinct
beginning of the new doctrine was bitterly opposed by theologians
they denounced it as one of the evil results of that scientific
meddling with the designs of Providence against which they had so
long declaimed in pulpits and professors' chairs; they even brought
forward some astronomers ambitious or wrong-headed enough t
testify that Tycho and Kepler were in error[201]
Nothing could be more natural than such opposition; for this simpl
announcement by Tycho Brahe began a new era. It shook the very
foundation of cometary superstition. The Aristotelian view
developed by the theologians, was that what lies within the moon's
orbit appertains to the earth and is essentially transitory and
evil, while what lies beyond it belongs to the heavens and is
permanent, regular, and pure. Tycho Brahe and Kepler, therefore,
having by means of scientific observation and thought taken comet
out of the category of meteors and appearances in the neighbourhood
of the earth, and placed them among the heavenly bodies, dealt a
blow at the very foundations of the theological argument, and gave
a great impulse to the idea that comets are themselves heavenly
bodies moving regularly and in obedience to law.
IV. THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--THE FINAL
VICTORY OF SCIENCE.
Attempts were now made to compromise. It was declared that, while
some comets were doubtless supralunar, some must be sublunar. But
this admission was no less fatal on another account. During many
centuries the theory favoured by the Church had been, as we have
seen, that the earth was surrounded by hollow spheres, concentric
and transparent, forming a number of glassy strata incasing one
another "like the different coatings of an onion," and that each
of these in its movement about the earth carries one or more of the
heavenly bodies. Some maintained that these spheres were crystal;
but Lactantius, and with him various fathers of the Church, spoke
of the heavenly vault as made of ice. Now, the admission that
comets could move beyond the moon was fatal to this theory, for it
sent them crashing through these spheres of ice or crystal, and
therefore through the whole sacred fabric of the Ptolemaic theory.[202]
Here we may pause for a moment to note one of the chief differences
between scientific and theological reasoning considered in
themselves. Kepler's main reasoning as to the existence of a law
for cometary movement was right; but his secondary reasoning, that
comets move nearly in straight lines, was wrong. His right
reasoning was developed by Gassendi in France, by Borelli in Italy,
by Hevel and Doerfel in Germany, by Eysat and Bernouilli in
Switzerland, by Percy and--most important of all, as regards
mathematical demonstration--by Newton in England. The general
theory, which was true, they accepted and developed; the secondar
theory, which was found untrue, they rejected; and, as a result,
both of what they thus accepted and of what they rejected, was
evolved the basis of the whole modern cometary theory.
Very different was this from the theological method. As a rule,
when there arises a thinker as great in theology as Kepler in
science, the whole mass of his conclusions ripens into a dogma. His
disciples labour not to test it, but to establish it; and while, in
the Catholic Church, it becomes a dogma to be believed or
disbelieved under the penalty of damnation, it becomes in the
Protestant Church the basis for one more sect.
Various astronomers laboured to develop the truth discovered by
Tycho and strengthened by Kepler. Cassini seemed likely to win for
Italy the glory of completing the great structure; but he was sadly
fettered by Church influences, and was obliged to leave most of the
work to others. Early among these was Hevel. He gave reasons for
believing that comets move in parabolic curves toward the sun. Then
came a man who developed this truth further--Samuel Doerfel; and it
is a pleasure to note that he was a clergyman. The comet of 1680,
which set Erni in Switzerland, Mather in New England, and so many
others in all parts of the world at declaiming, set Doerfel at
thinking. Undismayed by the authority of Origen and St. John
Chrysostom, the arguments of Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli, the
outcries of Celich, Heerbrand, and Dieterich, he pondered over the
problem in his little Saxon parsonage, until in 1681 he set forth
his proofs that comets are heavenly bodies moving in parabolas of
which the sun is the focus. Bernouilli arrived at the same
conclusion; and, finally, this great series of men and works wa
closed by the greatest of all, when Newton, in 1686, having taken
the data furnished by the comet of 1680, demonstrated that comets
are guided in their movements by the same principle that controls
the planets in their orbits. Thus was completed the evolution of
this new truth in science.
Yet we are not to suppose that these two great series of
philosophical and scientific victories cleared the field of all
opponents. Declamation and pretended demonstration of the ol
theologic view were still heard; but the day of complete victory
dawned when Halley, after most thorough observation and
calculation, recognised the comet of 1682 as one which had already
appeared at stated periods, and foretold its return in about
seventy-five years; and the battle was fully won when Clairaut,
seconded by Lalande and Mme. Lepaute, predicted distinctly the time
when the comet would arrive at its perihelion, and this prediction
was verified.[204] Then it was that a Roman heathen philosopher was
proved more infallible and more directly under Divine inspiration
than a Roman Christian pontiff; for the very comet which th
traveller finds to-day depicted on the Bay eux tapestry as
portending destruction to Harold and the Saxons at the Norman
invasion of England, and which was regarded by Pope Calixtus as
portending evil to Christendom, was found six centuries later to
be, as Seneca had prophesied, a heavenly body obeying the great
laws of the universe, and coming at regular periods. Thencefort
the whole ponderous enginery of this superstition, with it
proof-texts regarding "signs in the heavens," its theological
reasoning to show the moral necessity of cometary warnings, and it
ecclesiastical fulminations against the "atheism, godlessness, and
infidelity" of scientific investigation, was seen by all thinking
men to be as weak against the scientific method as Indian arrows
against needle guns. Copernicus, Galileo, Cassini, Doerfel, Newton,
Halley, and Clairaut had gained the victory.[204b]
It is instructive to note, even after the main battle was lost, a
renewal of the attempt, always seen under like circumstances, to
effect a compromise, to establish a "safe science" on grounds
pseudo-scientific and pseudo-theologic. Luther, with his strong
common sense, had foreshadowed this; Kepler had expressed a
willingness to accept it. It was insisted that comets might be
heavenly bodies moving in regular orbits, and even obedient to law,
and yet be sent as "signs in the heavens." Many good men clung
longingly to this phase of the old belief, and in 1770 Semler,
professor at Halle, tried to satisfy both sides. He insisted that,
while from a scientific point of view comets could not exercise any
physical influence upon the world, yet from a religious point o
view they could exercise a moral influence as reminders of the Just
Judge of the Universe.
So hard was it for good men to give up the doctrine of "signs i
the heavens," seemingly based upon Scripture and exercising such a
healthful moral tendency! As is always the case after such
defeat, these votaries of "sacred science" exerted the greatest
ingenuity in devising statements and arguments to avert the new
doctrine. Within our own century the great Catholic champion,
Joseph de Maistre, echoed these in declaring his belief that comets
are special warnings of evil. So, too, in Protestant England, in
1818, the _Gentleman's Magazine_ stated that under the malign
influence of a recent comet "flies became blind and died early in
the season," and "the wife of a London shoemaker had four children
at a birth." And even as late as 1829 Mr. Forster, an English
physician, published a work to prove that comets produce ho
summers, cold winters, epidemics, earthquakes, clouds of midges an
locusts, and nearly every calamity conceivable. He bore especially
upon the fact that the comet of 1665 was coincident with the plague
in London, apparently forgetting that the other great cities of
England and the Continent were not thus visited; and, in a climax,
announces the fact that the comet of 1663 "made all the cats i
Westphalia sick."
There still lingered one little cloud-patch of superstition,
arising mainly from the supposed fact that comets had really been
followed by a marked rise in temperature. Even this poor basis fo
the belief that they might, after all, affect earthly affairs was
swept away, and science won here another victory; for Arago, by
thermometric records carefully kept at Paris from 1735 to
1781, proved that comets had produced no effect upon temperature.
Among multitudes of similar examples he showed that, in some years
when several comets appeared, the temperature was lower than in
other years when few or none appeared. In 1737 there were two
comets, and the weather was cool; in 1785 there was no comet, and
the weather was hot; through the whole fifty years it was shown
that comets were sometimes followed by hot weather, sometimes by
cool, and that no rule was deducible. The victory of science was
complete at every point.[206]
But in this history there was one little exhibition so curious as
to be worthy of notice, though its permanent effect upon thought
was small. Whiston and Burnet, so devoted to what they considere
sacred science, had determined that in some way comets must be
instruments of Divine wrath. One of them maintained that the
deluge was caused by the tail of a comet striking the earth; the
other put forth the theory that comets are places of punishment
for the damned--in fact, "flying hells." The theories of Whiston
and Burnet found wide acceptance also in Germany, mainly through
the all-powerful mediation of Gottsched, so long, from his
professor's chair at Leipsic, the dictator of orthodox thought, who
not only wrote a brief tractate of his own upon the subject, bu
furnished a voluminous historical introduction to the more
elaborate treatise of Heyn. In this book, which appeared at Leipsic
in 1742, the agency of comets in the creation, the flood, and the
final destruction of the world is fully proved. Both these theorie
were, however, soon discredited.
Perhaps the more interesting of them can best be met by another
which, if not fully established, appears much better based--namely,
that in 1868 the earth passed directly through the tail of a comet,
with no deluge, no sound of any wailings of the damned, with but
slight appearances here and there, only to be detected by the keen
sight of the meteorological or astronomical observer.
In our own country superstitious ideas regarding comets continued
to have some little currency; but their life was short. The
tendency shown by Cotton Mather, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, toward acknowledging the victory of science, was completed
by the utterances of Winthrop, professor at Harvard, who in 175
published two lectures on comets, in which he simply and clearly
revealed the truth, never scoffing, but reasoning quietly and
reverently. In one passage he says: "To be thrown into a pani
whenever a comet appears, on account of the ill effects which som
few of them might possibly produce, if they were not under proper
direction, betrays a weakness unbecoming a reasonable being."
A happy influence in this respect was exercised on both continents
by John Wesley. Tenaciously as he had held to the supposed
scriptural view in so many other matters of science, in this he
allowed his reason to prevail, accepted the demonstrations of
Halley, and gloried in them.[207
The victory was indeed complete. Happily, none of the fears
expressed by Conrad Dieterich and Increase Mather were realized. N
catastrophe has ensued either to religion or to morals. In the
realm of religion the Psalms of David remain no less beautiful, the
great utterances of the Hebrew prophets no less powerful; the
Sermon on the Mount, "the first commandment, and the second, which
is like unto it," the definition of "pure religion and undefiled"
by St. James, appeal no less to the deepest things in the human
heart. In the realm of morals, too, serviceable as the idea o
firebrands thrown by the right hand of an avenging God to scare a
naughty world might seem, any competent historian must find that
the destruction of the old theological cometary theory was followe
by moral improvement rather than by deterioration. We have but to
compare the general moral tone of society to-day, wretchedly
imperfect as it is, with that existing in the time when this
superstition had its strongest hold. We have only to compare the
court of Henry VIII with the court of Victoria, the reign of th
later Valois and earlier Bourbon princes with the present French
Republic, the period of the Medici and Sforzas and Borgias with the
period of Leo XIII and Humbert, the monstrous wickedness of the
Thirty Years' War with the ennobling patriotism of the
Franco-Prussian struggle, and the despotism of the miserable German
princelings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the
reign of the Emperor William.
The gain is not simply that mankind has arrived at a clearer
conception of law in the universe; not merely that thinking men see
more clearly that we are part of a system not requiring constant
patching and arbitrary interference; but perhaps best of all is the
fact that science has cleared away one more series of those dogmas
which tend to debase rather than to develop man's whole moral an
religious nature. In this emancipation from terror and fanaticism,
as in so many other results of scientific thinking, we have a proof o
the inspiration of those great words, "THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE."
CHAPTER V.
FROM GENESIS TO GEOLOGY.
I. GROWTH OF THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS.
AMONG the philosophers of Greece we find, even at an earl
period, germs of geological truth, and, what is of vas
importance, an atmosphere in which such germs could grow. These
germs were transmitted to Roman thought; an atmosphere of
tolerance continued; there was nothing which forbade unfettered
reasoning regarding either the earth's strata or the remains of
former life found in them, and under the Roman Empire a perio
of fruitful observation seemed sure to begin.
But, as Christianity took control of the world, there came a
great change. The earliest attitude of the Church toward geology
and its kindred sciences was indifferent, and even contemptuous.
According to the prevailing belief, the earth was a "falle
world," and was soon to be destroyed. Why, then, should it be
studied? Why, indeed, give a thought to it? The scorn which
Lactantius and St. Augustine had cast upon the study of
astronomy was extended largely to other sciences.[209]
But the germs of scientific knowledge and thought developed i
the ancient world could be entirely smothered neither by
eloquence nor by logic; some little scientific observation must
be allowed, though all close reasoning upon it was fettered b
theology. Thus it was that St. Jerome insisted that the broke
and twisted crust of the earth exhibits the wrath of God against
sin, and Tertullian asserted that fossils resulted from th
flood of Noah.
To keep all such observation and reasoning within orthodox
limits, St. Augustine, about the beginning of the fifth century,
began an effort to develop from these germs a growth in scienc
which should be sacred and safe. With this intent he prepared
his great commentary on the work of creation, as depicted in
Genesis, besides dwelling upon the subject in other writings.
Once engaged in this work, he gave himself to it more earnestl
than any other of the earlier fathers ever did; but his vast
powers of research and thought were not directed to actual
observation or reasoning upon observation. The keynote of hi
whole method is seen in his famous phrase, "Nothing is to be
accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is
that authority than all the powers of the human mind." All his
thought was given to studying the letter of the sacred text, an
to making it explain natural phenomena by methods purely
theological.[210]
Among the many questions he then raised and discussed may be
mentioned such as these: "What caused the creation of the stars
on the fourth day?" "Were beasts of prey and venomous animals
created before, or after, the fall of Adam? If before, how can
their creation be reconciled with God's goodness; if afterward
how can their creation be reconciled to the letter of God's
Word?" "Why were only beasts and birds brought before Adam to
be named, and not fishes and marine animals?" "Why did the
Creator not say, `Be fruitful and multiply,' to plants as well as
to animals?"[210b]
Sundry answers to these and similar questions formed the main
contributions of the greatest of the Latin fathers to the
scientific knowledge of the world, after a most thorough stud
of the biblical text and a most profound application o
theological reasoning. The results of these contributions wer
most important. In this, as in so many other fields, Augustin
gave direction to the main current of thought in western Europe,
Catholic and Protestant, for nearly thirteen centuries.
In the ages that succeeded, the vast majority of prominent
scholars followed him implicitly. Even so strong a man as Pop
Gregory the Great yielded to his influence, and such leaders of
thought as St. Isidore, in the seventh century, and the
Venerable Bede, in the eighth, planting themselves upon
Augustine's premises, only ventured timidly to extend their
conclusions upon lines he had laid down.
In his great work on _Etymologies_, Isidore took up Augustine'
attempt to bring the creation into satisfactory relations wit
the book of Genesis, and, as to fossil remains, he, like
Tertullian, thought that they resulted from the Flood of Noah.
In the following century Bede developed the same orthodox
traditions.[211]
The best guess, in a geological sense, among the followers of
St. Augustine was made by an Irish monkish scholar, who, in
order to diminish the difficulty arising from the distribution
of animals, especially in view of the fact that the same animals
are found in Ireland as in England, held that various lands now
separated were once connected. But, alas! the exigencies of
theology forced him to place their separation later than the
Flood. Happily for him, such facts were not yet known as tha
the kangaroo is found only on an island in the South Pacific,
and must therefore, according to his theory, have migrated
thither with all his progeny, and along a causeway so curiousl
constructed that none of the beasts of prey, who were his
fellow-voyagers in the ark, could follow him
These general lines of thought upon geology and its kindre
science of zoology were followed by St. Thomas Aquinas and by
the whole body of medieval theologians, so far as they gave any
attention to such subjects.
The next development of geology, mainly under Church guidance
was by means of the scholastic theology. Phrase-making wa
substituted for investigation. Without the Church and within it
wonderful contributions were thus made. In the eleventh century
Avicenna accounted for the fossils by suggesting a
"stone-making force";[212] in the thirteenth, Albert the Great
attributed them to a "formative quality;"[212b] in the followin
centuries some philosophers ventured the idea that they grew
from seed; and the Aristotelian doctrine of spontaneous
generation was constantly used to prove that these stony fossils
possessed powers of reproduction like plants and animals.[212c]
Still, at various times and places, germs implanted by Greek and
Roman thought were warmed into life. The Arabian schools seem t
have been less fettered by the letter of the Koran than the
contemporary Christian scholars by the letter of the Bible; and to
Avicenna belongs the credit of first announcing substantially the
modern geological theory of changes in the earth's surface.[212d]
The direct influence of the Reformation was at first
unfavourable to scientific progress, for nothing could be more
at variance with any scientific theory of the development of th
universe than the ideas of the Protestant leaders. That strict
adherence to the text of Scripture which made Luther and
Melanchthon denounce the idea that the planets revolve about
the sun, was naturally extended to every other scientific
statement at variance with the sacred text. There is much reason
to believe that the fetters upon scientific thought were closer
under the strict interpretation of Scripture by the early
Protestants than they had been under the older Church. The
dominant spirit among the Reformers is shown by the declaration
of Peter Martyr to the effect that, if a wrong opinion should
obtain regarding the creation as described in Genesis, "all the
promises of Christ fall into nothing, and all the life of our
religion would be lost."[213]
In the times immediately succeeding the Reformation matters went
from bad to worse. Under Luther and Melanchthon there was some
little freedom of speculation, but under their successors there
was none; to question any interpretation of Luther came to be
thought almost as wicked as to question the literal
interpretation of the Scriptures themselves. Examples of this
are seen in the struggles between those who held that birds were
created entirely from water and those who held that they wer
created out of water and mud. In the city of Lubeck, the ancient
centre of the Hanseatic League, close at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, Pfeiffer, "General Superintendent" or
bishop in those parts, published his _Pansophia Mosaica_,
calculated, as he believed, to beat back science forever. In a
long series of declamations he insisted that in the strict text
of Genesis alone is safety, that it contains all wisdom and
knowledge, human and divine. This being the case, who could
care to waste time on the study of material things and give
thought to the structure of the world? Above all, who, after
such a proclamation by such a ruler in the Lutheran Israel
would dare to talk of the "days" mentioned in Genesis a
"periods of time"; or of the "firmament" as not meaning a
solid vault over the universe; or of the "waters above the
heavens" as not contained in a vast cistern supported by the
heavenly vault; or of the "windows of heaven" as a figure of
speech?[213b]
In England the same spirit was shown even as late as the time of
Sir Matthew Hale. We find in his book on the _Origination of
Mankind_, published in 1685, the strictest devotion to a theory
of creation based upon the mere letter of Scripture, and a
complete inability to draw knowledge regarding the earth's
origin and structure from any other source.
While the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Anglican Reformers clung to
literal interpretations of the sacred books, and turned their
faces away from scientific investigation, it was among their
contemporaries at the revival of learning that there began t
arise fruitful thought in this field. Then it was, about the
beginning of the sixteenth century, that Leonardo da Vinci, as
great a genius in science as in art, broached the true idea as
to the origin of fossil remains; and his compatriot, Fracastoro
developed this on the modern lines of thought. Others in other
parts of Europe took up the idea, and, while mixing with it many
crudities, drew from it more and more truth. Toward the end o
the sixteenth century Bernard Palissy, in France, took hold of
it with the same genius which he showed in artistic creation;
but, remarkable as were his assertions of scientific realities,
they could gain little hearing. Theologians, philosophers, and
even some scientific men of value, under the sway of scholastic
phrases, continued to insist upon such explanations as tha
fossils were the product of "fatty matter set into
fermentation by heat"; or of a "lapidific juice";[214] or of a
"seminal air";[214b] or of a "tumultuous movement of
terrestrial exhalations"; and there was a prevailing belief
that fossil remains, in general, might be brought under the head
of "sports of Nature," a pious turn being given to this phrase
by the suggestion that these "sports" indicated some
inscrutable purpose of the Almighty.
This remained a leading orthodox mode of explanation in the
Church, Catholic and Protestant, for centuries.
II. EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW
But the scientific method could not be entirely hidden; and,
near the beginning of the seventeenth century, De Clave, Bitaud,
and De Villon revived it in France. Straightway the theological
faculty of Paris protested against the scientific doctrine as
unscriptural, destroyed the offending treatises, banished their
authors from Paris, and forbade them to live in towns or enter
places of public resort.[214c]
The champions of science, though depressed for a time, quietl
laboured on, especially in Italy. Half a century later, Steno,
a Dane, and Scilla, an Italian, went still further in the right
direction; and, though they and their disciples took great pains
to throw a tub to the whale, in the shape of sundry vagu
concessions to the Genesis legends, they developed geological
truth more and more.
In France, the old theological spirit remained exceedingly
powerful. About the middle of the eighteenth century Buffon made
another attempt to state simple geological truths; but th
theological faculty of the Sorbonne dragged him at once from his
high position, forced him to recant ignominiously, and to print
his recantation. It runs as follows: "I declare that I had no
intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe
most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as t
order of time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my
book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally al
which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses." Thi
humiliating document reminds us painfully of that forced upo
Galileo a hundred years before.
It has been well observed by one of the greatest of modern
authorities that the doctrine which Buffon thus "abandoned" is
as firmly established as that of the earth's rotation upon its
axis.[215] Yet one hundred and fifty years were required to secur
for it even a fair hearing; the prevailing doctrine of the
Church continued to be that "all things were made at the
beginning of the world," and that to say that stones and fossils
were made before or since "the beginning" is contrary to
Scripture. Again we find theological substitutes for scientifi
explanation ripening into phrases more and more hollow--makin
fossils "sports of Nature," or "mineral concretions," or
"creations of plastic force," or "models" made by the Creator
before he had fully decided upon the best manner of creating
various beings.
Of this period, when theological substitutes for science were
carrying all before them, there still exists a monumen
commemorating at the same time a farce and a tragedy. This i
the work of Johann Beringer, professor in the University of
Wurzburg and private physician to the Prince-Bishop--th
treatise bearing the title _Lithographiae Wirceburgensis Specimen
Primum_, "illustrated with the marvellous likenesses of two
hundred figured or rather insectiform stones." Beringer, for the
greater glory of God, had previously committed himself so
completely to the theory that fossils are simply "stones of a
peculiar sort, hidden by the Author of Nature for his own
pleasure,"[216] that some of his students determined to give his
faith in that pious doctrine a thorough trial. They therefore
prepared a collection of sham fossils in baked clay, imitating
not only plants, reptiles, and fishes of every sort that thei
knowledge or imagination could suggest, but even Hebrew and
Syriac inscriptions, one of them the name of the Almighty; and
these they buried in a place where the professor was wont to
search for specimens. The joy of Beringer on unearthing these
proofs of the immediate agency of the finger of God in creating
fossils knew no bounds. At great cost he prepared this book,
whose twenty-two elaborate plates of facsimiles were forever to
settle the question in favour of theology and against science,
and prefixed to the work an allegorical title page, wherein not
only the glory of his own sovereign, but that of heaven itself
was pictured as based upon a pyramid of these miraculous
fossils. So robust was his faith that not even a premature
exposure of the fraud could dissuade him from the publication of
his book. Dismissing in one contemptuous chapter this exposure
as a slander by his rivals, he appealed to the learned world.
But the shout of laughter that welcomed the work soon convinced
even its author. In vain did he try to suppress it; and,
according to tradition, having wasted his fortune in vain
attempts to buy up all the copies of it, and being taunted by
the rivals whom he had thought to overwhelm, he died of chagrin.
Even death did not end his misfortunes. The copies of the firs
edition having been sold by a graceless descendant to a Leipsic
bookseller, a second edition was brought out under a new title,
and this, too, is now much sought as a precious memorial of
human credulity.[217]
But even this discomfiture did not end the idea which had caused
it, for, although some latitude was allowed among the various
theologico-scientific explanations, it was still hel
meritorious to believe that all fossils were placed in the
strata on one of the creative days by the hand of the Almighty,
and that this was done for some mysterious purpose, probably fo
the trial of human faith.
Strange as it may at first seem, the theological war against a
scientific method in geology was waged more fiercely in
Protestant countries than in Catholic. The older Church had
learned by her costly mistakes, especially in the cases of
Copernicus and Galileo, what dangers to her claim of
infallibility lay in meddling with a growing science. In Italy
therefore, comparatively little opposition was made, while
England furnished the most bitter opponents to geology so long
as the controversy could be maintained, and the most active
negotiators in patching up a truce on the basis of a sha
science afterward. The Church of England did, indeed, produce
some noble men, like Bishop Clayton and John Mitchell, who stood
firmly by the scientific method; but these appear generally to
have been overwhelmed by a chorus of churchmen and dissenters,
whose mixtures of theology and science, sometimes tragic in
their results and sometimes comic, are among the most
instructive things in modern history.[217b]
We have already noted that there are generally three periods or
phases in a theological attack upon any science. The first o
these is marked by the general use of scriptural texts and
statements against the new scientific doctrine; the third by
attempts at compromise by means of far-fetched reconciliations
of textual statements with ascertained fact; but the second o
intermediate period between these two is frequently marked by
the pitting against science of some great doctrine in theology.
We saw this in astronomy, when Bellarmin and his followers
insisted that the scientific doctrine of the earth revolving
about the sun is contrary to the theological doctrine of th
incarnation. So now against geology it was urged that the
scientific doctrine that fossils represent animals which died
before Adam contradicts the theological doctrine of Adam's fall
and the statement that "death entered the world by sin."
In this second stage of the theological struggle with geology,
England was especially fruitful in champions of orthodoxy, first
among whom may be named Thomas Burnet. In the last quarter of
the seventeenth century, just at the time when Newton's great
discovery was given to the world, Burnet issued his _Sacred
Theory of the Earth_. His position was commanding; he was a royal
chaplain and a cabinet officer. Planting himself upon the famous
text in the second epistle of Peter,[218] he declares that the
flood had destroyed the old and created a new world. The
Newtonian theory he refuses to accept. In his theory of the
deluge he lays less stress upon the "opening of the windows of
heaven" than upon the "breaking up of the fountains of the
great deep." On this latter point he comes forth with great
strength. His theory is that the earth is hollow, and filled
with fluid like an egg. Mixing together sundry texts from
Genesis and from the second epistle of Peter, the theological
doctrine of the "Fall," an astronomical theory regarding the
ecliptic, and various notions adapted from Descartes, he
insisted that, before sin brought on the Deluge, the earth wa
of perfect mathematical form, smooth and beautiful, "like an
egg," with neither seas nor islands nor valleys nor rocks,
"with not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture," and that all creation
was equally perfect
In the second book of his great work Burnet went still further.
As in his first book he had mixed his texts of Genesis and St.
Peter with Descartes, he now mixed the account of the Garden o
Eden in Genesis with heathen legends of the golden age, and
concluded that before the flood there was over the whole earth
perpetual spring, disturbed by no rain more severe than the
falling of the dew
In addition to his other grounds for denying the earlier
existence of the sea, he assigned the reason that, if there had
been a sea before the Deluge, sinners would have learned to build
ships, and so, when the Deluge set in, could have saved themselves.
The work was written with much power, and attracted universa
attention. It was translated into various languages, and calle
forth a multitude of supporters and opponents in all parts of
Europe. Strong men rose against it, especially in England, and
among them a few dignitaries of the Church; but the Church
generally hailed the work with joy. Addison praised it in a
Latin ode, and for nearly a century it exercised a strong
influence upon European feeling, and aided to plant more deeply
than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existin
is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the Flood, it was
beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every imperfection.
A few years later came another writer of the highest
standing--William Whiston, professor at Cambridge, who in 1696
published his _New Theory of the Earth_. Unlike Burnet, he
endeavoured to avail himself of the Newtonian idea, and brought
in, to aid the geological catastrophe caused by human sin,
comet, which broke open "the fountains of the great deep."
But, far more important than either of these champions, there
arose in the eighteenth century, to aid in the subjection of
science to theology, three men of extraordinary power--Joh
Wesley, Adam Clarke, and Richard Watson. All three were men of
striking intellectual gifts, lofty character, and noble purpose,
and the first-named one of the greatest men in English history
yet we find them in geology hopelessly fettered by the mere
letter of Scripture, and by a temporary phase in theology. As in
regard to witchcraft and the doctrine of comets, so in regard to
geology, this theological view drew Wesley into enormou
error.[220] The great doctrine which Wesley, Watson, Clarke, and
their compeers, following St. Augustine, Bede, Peter Lombard
and a long line of the greatest minds in the universal Church,
thought it especially necessary to uphold against geologists
was, that death entered the world by sin--by the first
transgression of Adam and Eve. The extent to which the supposed
necessity of upholding this doctrine carried Wesley seems now
almost beyond belief. Basing his theology on the declaratio
that the Almighty after creation found the earth and all created
things "very good," he declares, in his sermon on the _Cause and
Cure of Earthquakes_, that no one who believes the Scriptures can
deny that "sin is the moral cause of earthquakes, whatever
their natural cause may be." Again, he declares that earthquakes
are the "effect of that curse which was brought upon the earth
by the original transgression." Bringing into connection with
Genesis the declaration of St. Paul that "the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now," he finds
additional scriptural proof that the earthquakes were the resul
of Adam's fall. He declares, in his sermon on _God's Approbation
of His Works_, that "before the sin of Adam there were
no agitations within the bowels of the earth, no violent
convulsions, no concussions of the earth, no earthquakes, but
all was unmoved as the pillars of heaven. There were then no
such things as eruptions of fires; no volcanoes or burnin
mountains." Of course, a science which showed that earthquakes
had been in operation for ages before the appearance of man on
the planet, and which showed, also, that those very earthquakes
which he considered as curses resultant upon the Fall were
really blessings, producing the fissures in which we find today
those mineral veins so essential to modern civilization, was
entirely beyond his comprehension. He insists that earthquakes
are "God's strange works of judgment, the proper effect and
punishment of sin."
So, too, as to death and pain. In his sermon on the _Fall of Man_
he took the ground that death and pain entered the world by
Adam's transgression, insisting that the carnage now going on
among animals is the result of Adam's sin. Speaking of the
birds, beasts, and insects, he says that, before sin entered the
world by Adam's fall, "none of these attempted to devour or in
any way hurt one another"; that "the spider was then as
harmless as the fly and did not then lie in wait for blood."
Here, again, Wesley arrayed his early followers against geology,
which reveals, in the fossil remains of carnivorous animals,
pain and death countless ages before the appearance of man. Th
half-digested fragments of weaker animals within the fossilized
bodies of the stronger have destroyed all Wesley's arguments in
behalf of his great theory.[221]
Dr. Adam Clarke held similar views. He insisted that thorns and
thistles were given as a curse to human labour, on account of
Adam's sin, and appeared upon the earth for the first time after
Adam's fall. So, too, Richard Watson, the most prolific writer
of the great evangelical reform period, and the author of the
_Institutes_, the standard theological treatise on the evangelical
side, says, in a chapter treating of the Fall, and especially o
the serpent which tempted Eve: "We have no reason at all to
believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or
degree until his transformation. That he was then degraded to a
reptile, to go upon his belly, imports, on the contrary, an
entire alteration and loss of the original form." All tha
admirable adjustment of the serpent to its environment which
delights naturalists was to the Wesleyan divine simply an evi
result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Yet here again geology was
obliged to confront theology in revealing the _python_ in the
Eocene, ages before man appeared.[222]
The immediate results of such teaching by such men was to throw
many who would otherwise have resorted to observation and
investigation back upon scholastic methods. Again reappears the
old system of solving the riddle by phrases. In 1733, Dr
Theodore Arnold urged the theory of "models," and insisted that
fossils result from "infinitesimal particles brought togethe
in the creation to form the outline of all the creatures and
objects upon and within the earth"; and Arnold's work gained
wide acceptance.[222]
Such was the influence of this succession of great men that
toward the close of the last century the English opponents of
geology on biblical grounds seemed likely to sweep all before
them. Cramping our whole inheritance of sacred literature within
the rules of a 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
feeling 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!"
John Howard summoned England to oppose "those scientific
systems which are calculated to tear up in the public mind every
remaining attachment to Christianity."
With this special attack upon geological science by means of the
dogma of Adam's fall, the more general attack by the literal
interpretation of the text was continued. The legendary husks
and rinds of our sacred books were insisted upon as equall
precious and nutritious with the great moral and religiou
truths which they envelop. Especially precious were the six
days--each "the evening and the morning"--and the exac
statements as to the time when each part of creation came int
being. To save these, the struggle became more and more desperate.
Difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many
now living 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 half a century since, the Rev. J. Mellor Brown, the Rev.
Henry Cole, and others were hurling at all geologists alike, and
especially at such Christian scholars as Dr. Buckland and Dean
Conybeare and Pye Smith and Prof. Sedgwick, the epithets of
"infidel," "impugner of the sacred record," and "assailant of
the volume of God."[223]
The favourite weapon of the orthodox party was the charge that
the geologists were "attacking the truth of God." 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."[223b]
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 me
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 honour to religion and to himself by
quietly accepting the claims of science and making the best of
them, despite all these clamours. This man was Nicholas Wiseman
better known afterward as Cardinal Wiseman. The conduct of this
pillar of the Roman Catholic Church contrasts admirably with
that of timid Protestants, who were filling England with shrieks
and denunciations.[224]
And here let it be noted that one of the most interesting
skirmishes in this war occurred in New England. Prof. Stuart, of
Andover, justly honoured as a Hebrew scholar, declared 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 "the evening and the 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 surmounted 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 wit
science and the broader scholarship of Yale.[224b]
Perhaps the most singular attempt against geology was made by a
fine survival of the eighteenth century Don-Dean Cockburn, of
York--to _scold_ its champions off the field. Having no adequat
knowledge of the new science, he opened a battery of abuse,
giving it to the world at large from the pulpit and through the
press, and even through private letters. From his pulpit in York
Minster he denounced Mary Somerville by name for those studie
in physical geography which have made her name honoured
throughout the world.
But the special object of his antipathy was the Britis
Association for the Advancement of Science. He issued a pamphlet
against it which went through five editions in two years, sent
solemn warnings to its president, and in various ways made life
a burden to Sedgwick, Buckland, and other eminent investigators
who ventured to state geological facts as they found them.
These weapons were soon seen to be ineffective; they were like
Chinese gongs and dragon lanterns against rifled cannon; the
work of science went steadily on.[225]
III. THE FIRST GREAT EFFORT AT COMPROMISE, BASED ON
THE FLOOD OF NOAH
Long before the end of the struggle already described, even at
a very early period, the futility of the usual scholastic
weapons had been seen by the more keen-sighted champions of
orthodoxy; and, as the difficulties of the ordinary attack upo
science became more and more evident, many of these champions
endeavoured to patch up a truce. So began the third stage in the
war--the period of attempts at compromise.
The position which the compromise party took was that the
fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah.
This position was strong, for it was apparently based upon
Scripture. Moreover, it had high ecclesiastical sanction, som
of the fathers having held that fossil remains, even on the
highest mountains, represented animals destroyed at the Deluge.
Tertullian was especially firm on this point, and St. Augustin
thought that a fossil tooth discovered in North Africa must have
belonged to one of the giants mentioned in Scripture.[225b]
In the sixteenth century especially, weight began to be attached
to this idea by those who felt the worthlessness of various
scholastic explanations. Strong men in both the Catholic and the
Protestant camps accepted it; but the man who did most to give
it an impulse into modern theology was Martin Luther. He easily
saw that scholastic phrase-making could not meet the difficulties
raised by fossils, and he naturally urged the doctrine of their
origin at Noah's Flood.[226]
With such support, it soon became the dominant theory in
Christendom: nothing seemed able to stand against it; but before
the end of the same sixteenth century it met some serious
obstacles. Bernard Palissy, one of the most keen-sighted of
scientific thinkers in France, as well as one of the most
devoted of Christians, showed that it was utterly untenable.
Conscientious investigators in other parts of Europe, and
especially in Italy, showed the same thing; all in vain.[226b]
In vain did good men protest against the injury sure to be
brought upon religion by tying it to a scientific theory sure to
be exploded; the doctrine that fossils are the remains of
animals drowned at the Flood continued to be upheld by the grea
majority of theological leaders for nearly three centuries as
"sound doctrine," and as a blessed means of reconciling science
with Scripture. To sustain this scriptural view, efforts energetic
and persistent were put forth both by Catholics and Protestants.
In France, the learned Benedictine, Calmet, in his great work
on the Bible, accepted it as late as the beginning of th
eighteenth century, believing the mastodon's bones exhibited by
Mazurier to be those of King Teutobocus, and holding them
valuable testimony to the existence of the giants mentioned in
Scripture and of the early inhabitants of the earth overwhelmed
by the Flood.[226c]
But the greatest champion appeared in England. We have already
seen how, near the close of the seventeenth century, Thoma
Burnet prepared the way in his _Sacred Theory of the Earth_ by
rejecting the discoveries of Newton, and showing how sin led to
the breaking up of the "foundations of the great deep" "and w
have also seen how Whiston, in his _New Theory of the Earth_,
while yielding a little and accepting the discoveries of Newton,
brought in a comet to aid in producing the Deluge; but far more
important than these in permanent influence was John Woodward,
professor at Gresham College, a leader in scientific thought at
the University of Cambridge, and, as a patient collector of
fossils and an earnest investigator of their meaning, deserving
of the highest respect. In 1695 he published his _Natural History
of the Earth_, and rendered one great service to science, for he
yielded another point, and thus destroyed the foundations for
the old theory of fossils. He showed that they were not "sports
of Nature," or "models inserted by the Creator in the strata
for some inscrutable purpose," but that they were really remains
of living beings, as Xenophanes had asserted two thousand years
before him. So far, he rendered a great service both to science
and religion; but, this done, the text of the Old Testament
narrative and the famous passage in St. Peter's Epistle were too
strong for him, and he, too, insisted that the fossils were
produced by the Deluge. Aided by his great authority, the
assault on the true scientific position was vigorous: Mazurier
exhibited certain fossil remains of a mammoth discovered in
France as bones of the giants mentioned in Scripture; Father
Torrubia did the same thing in Spain; Increase Mather sent to
England similar remains discovered in America, with a like statement.
For the edification of the faithful, such "bones of the giants
mentioned in Scripture" were hung up in public places. Jurieu
saw some of them thus suspended in one of the churches of
Valence; and Henrion, apparently under the stimulus thus given,
drew up tables showing the size of our antediluvian ancestors,
giving the height of Adam as 123 feet 9 inches and that of Eve
as 118 feet 9 inches and 9 lines.[228]
But the most brilliant service rendered to the theological
theory came from another quarter for, in 1726, Scheuchzer,
having discovered a large fossil lizard, exhibited it to the
world as the "human witness of the Deluge":[228b] this grea
discovery was hailed everywhere with joy, for it seemed to prove
not only that human beings were drowned at the Deluge, but tha
"there were giants in those days." Cheered by the applause thus
gained, he determined to make the theological position
impregnable. Mixing together various texts of Scripture with
notions derived from the philosophy of Descartes and the
speculations of Whiston, he developed the theory that "the
fountains of the great deep" were broken up by the direct
physical action of the hand of God, which, being literall
applied to the axis of the earth, suddenly stopped the earth's
rotation, broke up "the fountains of the great deep," spille
the water therein contained, and produced the Deluge. But his
service to sacred science did not end here, for he prepared a
edition of the Bible, in which magnificent engravings in great
number illustrated his view and enforced it upon all readers. Of
these engravings no less than thirty-four were devoted to th
Deluge alone.[228c
In the midst all this came an episode very comical but very
instructive; for it shows that the attempt to shape the
deductions of science to meet the exigencies of dogma 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; and, fearing that
these new discoveries might be used to support the Mosai
accounts of the Deluge, all his wisdom and wit were compacte
into arguments to prove that the fossil fishes were remains of
fishes intended for food, but spoiled and thrown away by
travellers; that the fossil shells were accidentally dropped by
crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land; and tha
the fossil bones found between Paris and Etampes were parts of
a skeleton belonging to the cabinet of some ancient philosopher.
Through chapter after chapter, Voltaire, obeying the suppose
necessities of his theology, fought desperately the growing
results of the geologic investigations of his time.[229
But far more prejudicial to Christianity was the continued
effort on the other side to show that the fossils were caused by
the Deluge of Noah.
No supposition was too violent to support this theory, which was
considered vital to the Bible. By taking the mere husks and
rinds of biblical truth for truth itself, by taking sacred
poetry as prose, and by giving a literal interpretation of it
the followers of Burnet, Whiston, and Woodward 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, zoological, astronomical
proofs that no universal deluge, or deluge covering any larg
part of the earth, had taken place within the last six thousand
or sixty thousand years; in vain did so enlightened a churchman
as Bishop Clayton declare that the Deluge could not have
extended beyond that district where Noah lived before the Flood;
in vain did others, like Bishop Croft and Bishop Stillingfleet
and the nonconformist Matthew Poole, show that the Deluge might
not have been and probably was not universal; 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, to clinch the matter,
Worthington and men like him insisted that any argument to show
that fossils were not remains of animals drowned at the Delug
of Noah was "infidelity." In England, France, and Germany, belief
that the fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah was widely
insisted upon as part of that faith essential to salvation.[230]
But the steady work of science went on: not all the force of the
Church--not even the splendid engravings in Scheuchzer's
Bible--could stop it, and the foundations of this theological
theory began to crumble away. The process was, indeed, slow; it
required a hundred and twenty years for the searchers of God's
truth, as revealed in Nature--such men as Hooke, Linnaeus,
Whitehurst, Daubenton, Cuvier, and William Smith--to push thei
works under this fabric of error, and, by statements which could
not be resisted, to undermine it. As we arrive at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, science is becoming irresistible in
this field. Blumenbach, Von Buch, and Schlotheim led the way,
but most important on the Continent was the work of Cuvier. In
the early years of the present century his researches among
fossils began to throw new light into the whole subject of
geology. He was, indeed, very conservative, and even more war
and diplomatic; seeming, like Voltaire, to feel that "among
wolves one must howl a little." It was a time of reaction
Napoleon had made peace with the Church, and to disturb that
peace was akin to treason. By large but vague concessions Cuvier
kept the theologians satisfied, while he undermined their
strongest fortress. The danger was instinctively felt by some of
the champions of the Church, and typical among these was
Chateaubriand, who in his best-known work, once so great, now so
little--the _Genius of Christianity_--grappled with the questions
of creation by insisting upon a sort of general deception "in
the beginning," under which everything was created by a sudden
fiat, but with appearances of pre-existence. His words are as
follows: "It was part of the perfection and harmony of th
nature which was displayed before men's eyes that the deserted
nests of last year's birds should be seen on the trees, and that
the seashore should be covered with shells which had been the
abode of fish, and yet the world was quite new, and nests an
shells had never been inhabited."[231] But the real victory was
with Brongniart, who, about 1820, gave forth his work on fossil
plants, and thus built a barrier against which the enemies o
science raged in vain.[231b]
Still the struggle was not ended, and, a few years later, a
forlorn hope was led in England by Granville Penn.
His fundamental thesis was that "our globe has undergone onl
two revolutions, the Creation and the Deluge, and both by the
immediate fiat of the Almighty"; he insisted that the Creation
took place in exactly six days of ordinary time, each made up of
"the evening and the morning"; and he ended with a piece of
that peculiar presumption so familiar to the world, by calling
on Cuvier and all other geologists to "ask for the old paths
and walk therein until they shall simplify their system and
reduce their numerous revolutions to the two events or epochs
only--the six days of Creation and the Deluge."[232c] Th
geologists showed no disposition to yield to this peremptory
summons; on the contrary, the President of the British
Geological Society, and even so eminent a churchman an
geologist as Dean Buckland, soon acknowledged that facts obliged
them to give up the theory that the fossils of the coal measure
were deposited at the Deluge of Noah, and to deny that the
Deluge was universal.
The defection of Buckland was especially felt by the orthodox
party. His ability, honesty, and loyalty to his profession, a
well as his position as Canon of Christ Church and Professor of
Geology at Oxford, gave him great authority, which he exerted to
the utmost in soothing his brother ecclesiastics. In his
inaugural lecture he had laboured to show that geology confirmed
the accounts of Creation and the Flood as given in Genesis, and
in 1823, after his cave explorations had revealed overwhelming
evidences of the vast antiquity of the earth, he had still clung
to the Flood theory in his _Reliquiae Diluvianae_.
This had not, indeed, fully satisfied the anti-scientific party,
but as a rule their attacks upon him took the form not so much
of abuse as of humorous disparagement. An epigram by
Shuttleworth, afterward Bishop of Chichester, in imitation of
Pope's famous lines upon Newton, ran as follows:
"Some doubts were once expressed about the Flood
Buckland arose, and all was clear as mud."
On his leaving Oxford for a journey to southern Europe, Dean
Gaisford was heard to exclaim: "Well, Buckland is gone t
Italy; so, thank God, we shall have no more of this geology!"
Still there was some comfort as long as Buckland held to the
Deluge theory; but, on his surrender, the combat deepened:
instead of epigrams and caricatures came bitter attacks, an
from the pulpit and press came showers of missiles. The worst of
these were hurled at Lyell. As we have seen, he had published in
1830 his _Principles of Geology_. Nothing could have been more
cautious. It simply gave an account of the main discoveries up
to that time, drawing the necessary inferences with plain yet
convincing logic, and it remains to this day one of those works
in which the Anglo-Saxon race may most justly take pride,--one of
the land-marks in the advance of human thought.
But its tendency was inevitably at variance with the Chaldean
and other ancient myths and legends regarding the Creation and
Deluge which the Hebrews had received from the older
civilizations among their neighbours, and had incorporated into
the sacred books which they transmitted to the modern world; it
was therefore extensively "refuted."
Theologians and men of science influenced by them insisted that
his minimizing of geological changes, and his laying stress on
the gradual action of natural causes still in force, endangere
the sacred record of Creation and left no place for miraculous
intervention; and when it was found that he had entirely cast
aside their cherished idea that the great geological changes of
the earth's surface and the multitude of fossil remains were
due to the Deluge of Noah, and had shown that a far longer time
was demanded for Creation than any which could possibly b
deduced from the Old Testament genealogies and chronicles
orthodox indignation burst forth violently; eminent dignitaries
of the Church attacked him without mercy and for a time he wa
under social ostracism.
As this availed little, an effort was made on the scientific
side to crush him beneath the weighty authority of Cuvier; but
the futility of this effort was evident when it was found that
thinking men would no longer listen to Cuvier and persisted i
listening to Lyell. The great orthodox text-book, Cuvier's
_Theory of the Earth_, became at once so discredited in the
estimation of men of science that no new edition of it was
called for, while Lyell's work speedily ran through twelve
editions and remained a firm basis of modern thought.[233]
As typical of his more moderate opponents we may take Fairholme,
who in 1837 published his _Mosaic Deluge_, and argued that no
early convulsions of the earth, such as those supposed by
geologists, could have taken place, because there could have
been no deluge "before moral guilt could possibly have bee
incurred"--that is to say, before the creation of mankind. In
touching terms he bewailed the defection of the President of the
Geological Society and Dean Buckland--protesting against
geologists who "persist in closing their eyes upon the solemn
declarations of the Almighty"
Still the geologists continued to seek truth: the germs planted
especially by William Smith, "the Father of English Geology"
were developed by a noble succession of investigators, and the
victory was sure. Meanwhile those theologians who felt that
denunciation of science as "godless" could accomplish little,
laboured upon schemes for reconciling geology with Genesis. Some
of these show amazing ingenuity, but an eminent religious
authority, going over them with great thoroughness, has well
characterized them as "daring and fanciful." Such attempts hav
been variously classified, but the fact regarding them all is
that each mixes up more or less of science with more or less of
Scripture, and produces a result more or less absurd. Though a
few men here and there have continued these exercises, the
capitulation of the party which set the literal account of the
Deluge of Noah against the facts revealed by geology was at las
clearly made.[234]
One of the first evidences of the completeness of this surrender
has been so well related by the eminent physiologist, Dr. W. B.
Carpenter, that it may best be given in his own words: "You ar
familiar with a book of considerable value, Dr. W. Smith's
_Dictionary of the Bible_. I happened to know the influences under
which that dictionary was framed. The idea of the publisher and
of the editor was to give as much scholarship and such results
of modern criticism as should be compatible with a very
judicious conservatism. There was to be no objection to geology,
but the universality of the Deluge was to be strictly
maintained. The editor committed the article _Deluge_ to a man o
very considerable ability, but when the article came to him he
found that it was so excessively heretical that he could not
venture to put it in. There was not time for a second article
under that head, and if you look in that dictionary you will
find under the word _Deluge_ a reference to _Flood_. Before _Flood_
came, a second article had been commissioned from a source that
was believed safely conservative; but when the article came in
it was found to be worse than the first. A third article wa
then commissioned, and care was taken to secure its `safety.' If
you look for the word _Flood_ in the dictionary, you will find a
reference to _Noah_. Under that name you will find an article
written by a distinguished professor of Cambridge, of which I
remember that Bishop Colenso said to me at the time, `In a very
guarded way the writer concedes the whole thing.' You will see
by this under what trammels scientific thought has laboured in
this department of inquiry."[235
A similar surrender was seen when from a new edition of Horne's
_Introduction to the Scriptures_, the standard textbook of
orthodoxy, its accustomed use of fossils to prove the
universality of the Deluge was quietly dropped.[235b]
A like capitulation in the United States was foreshadowed in
1841, when an eminent Professor of Biblical Literature and
interpretation in the most important theological seminary of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, Dr. Samuel Turner, showed his
Christian faith and courage by virtually accepting the new view;
and the old contention was utterly cast away by the thinking men
of another great religious body when, at a later period, two
divines among the most eminent for piety and learning in the
Methodist Episcopal Church inserted in the _Biblical Cyclopaedia_,
published under their supervision, a candid summary of th
proofs from geology, astronomy, and zoology that the Deluge of
Noah was not universal, or even widely extended, and this
without protest from any man of note in any branch of the
American Church.[235c]
The time when the struggle was relinquished by enlightened
theologians of the Roman Catholic Church may be fixed at about
1862, when Reusch, Professor of Theology at Bonn, in his work on
_The Bible and Nature_, cast off the old diluvial theory and all
its supporters, accepting the conclusions of science.[236]
But, though the sacred theory with the Deluge of Noah as a
universal solvent for geological difficulties was evidently
dying, there still remained in various quarters a touching
fidelity to it. In Roman Catholic countries the old theory was
widely though quietly cherished, and taught from the religiou
press, the pulpit, and the theological professor's chair. Pope
Pius IX was doubtless in sympathy with this feeling when, about
1850, he forbade the scientific congress of Italy to meet at
Bologna.[236b]
In 1856 Father Debreyne congratulated the theologians of Franc
on their admirable attitude: "Instinctively," he says, "they
still insist upon deriving the fossils from Noah's Flood."[236c]
In 1875 the Abbe Choyer published at Paris and Angers a
text-book widely approved by Church authorities, in which he
took similar ground; and in 1877 the Jesuit father Bosizio
published at Mayence a treatise on _Geology and the Deluge_
endeavouring to hold the world to the old solution of the
problem, allowing, indeed, that the "days" of Creation were
long periods, but making atonement for this concession by sneers
at Darwin.[236d
In the Russo-Greek Church, in 1869, Archbishop Macarius, of
Lithuania, urged the necessity of believing that Creation in six
days of ordinary time and the Deluge of Noah are the only causes
of all that geology seeks to explain; and, as late as 1876,
another eminent theologian of the same Church went even farther,
and refused to allow the faithful to believe that any change had
taken place since "the beginning" mentioned in Genesis, when
the strata of the earth were laid, tilted, and twisted, and the
fossils scattered among them by the hand of the Almighty durin
six ordinary days.[237]
In the Lutheran branch of the Protestant Church we also find
echoes of the old belief. Keil, eminent in scriptural
interpretation at the University of Dorpat, gave forth in 1860
a treatise insisting that geology is rendered futile and its
explanations vain by two great facts: the Curse which drove
Adam and Eve out of Eden, and the Flood that destroyed al
living things save Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark.
In 1867, Phillippi, and in 1869, Dieterich, both theologians of
eminence, took virtually the same ground in Germany, the latter
attempting to beat back the scientific hosts with a phras
apparently pithy, but really hollow--the declaration tha
"modern geology observes what is, but has no right to judge
concerning the beginning of things." As late as 1876, Zugler
took a similar view, and a multitude of lesser lights, through
pulpit and press, brought these antiscientific doctrines to bear
upon the people at large--the only effect being to arouse grave
doubts regarding Christianity among thoughtful men, and
especially among young men, who naturally distrusted a cause
using such weapons.
For just at this time the traditional view of the Deluge
received its death-blow, and in a manner entirely unexpected. By
the investigations of George Smith among the Assyrian tablets o
the British Museum, in 1872, and by his discoveries just
afterward in Assyria, it was put beyond a reasonable doubt that
a great mass of accounts in Genesis are simply adaptations of
earlier and especially of Chaldean myths and legends. While this
proved to be the fact as regards the accounts of Creation and
the fall of man, it was seen to be most strikingly so as regards
the Deluge. The eleventh of the twelve tablets, on which the
most important of these inscriptions was found, was almost
wholly preserved, and it revealed in this legend, dating from
a time far earlier than that of Moses, such features peculiar to
the childhood of the world as the building of the great ship or
ark to escape the flood, the careful caulking of its seams, the
saving of a man beloved of Heaven, his selecting and taking with
him into the vessel animals of all sorts in couples, the
impressive final closing of the door, the sending forth
different birds as the flood abated, the offering of sacrifice
when the flood had subsided, the joy of the Divine Being who ha
caused the flood as the odour of the sacrifice reached his
nostrils; while throughout all was shown that partiality for the
Chaldean sacred number seven which appears so constantly in the
Genesis legends and throughout the Hebrew sacred books.
Other devoted scholars followed in the paths thus opened--Sayce
in England, Lenormant in France, Schrader in Germany--with the
result that the Hebrew account of the Deluge, to which for ages
theologians had obliged all geological research to conform, was
quietly relegated, even by most eminent Christian scholars, to
the realm of myth and legend.[238]
Sundry feeble attempts to break the force of this discovery, and an
evidently widespread fear to have it known, have certainly impaired
not a little the legitimate influence of the Christian clergy.
And yet this adoption of Chaldean myths into the Hebrew
Scriptures furnishes one of the strongest arguments for th
value of our Bible as a record of the upward growth of man; for,
while the Chaldean legend primarily ascribes the Deluge to the
mere arbitrary caprice of one among many gods (Bel), the Hebrew
development of the legend ascribes it to the justice, the
righteousness, of the Supreme God; thus showing the evolution of
a higher and nobler sentiment which demanded a moral cause
adequate to justify such a catastrophe.
Unfortunately, thus far, save in a few of the broader and noble
minds among the clergy, the policy of ignoring such new
revelations has prevailed, and the results of this policy, both
in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries, are not far to
seek. What the condition of thought is among the middle classes
of France and Italy needs not to be stated here. In Germany, as
a typical fact, it may be mentioned that there was in the year
1881 church accommodation in the city of Berlin for but two pe
cent of the population, and that even this accommodation was
more than was needed. This fact is not due to the want of a deep
religious spirit among the North Germans: no one who has lived
among them can doubt the existence of such a spirit; but it is
due mainly to the fact that, while the simple results of
scientific investigation have filtered down among the people at
large, the dominant party in the Lutheran Church has steadily
refused to recognise this fact, and has persisted in imposing on
Scripture the fetters of literal and dogmatic interpretation
which Germany has largely outgrown. A similar danger threatens
every other country in which the clergy pursue a similar policy.
No thinking man, whatever may be his religious views, can fail
to regret this. A thoughtful, reverent, enlightened clergy is a
great blessing to any country. and anything which undermines
their legitimate work of leading men out of the worship of
material things to the consideration of that which is highest is
a vast misfortune.[239]
IV. FINAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--THE VICTORY OF
SCIENCE COMPLETE.
Before concluding, it may be instructive to note a few
especially desperate attempts at truces or compromises, such as
always appear when the victory of any science has become
absolutely sure. Typical among the earliest of these may be
mentioned the effort of Carl von Raumer in 1819. With much
pretension to scientific knowledge, but with aspirations bounded
by the limits of Prussian orthodoxy, he made a laboured attempt
to produce a statement which, by its vagueness, haziness, and
"depth," should obscure the real questions at issue. Thi
statement appeared in the shape of an argument, used by Bertran
and others in the previous century, to prove that fossil remain
of plants in the coal measures had never existed as livin
plants, but had been simply a "result of the development of
imperfect plant embryos"; and the same misty theory was
suggested to explain the existence of fossil animals without
supposing the epochs and changes required by geological science.
In 1837 Wagner sought to uphold this explanation; but it was so
clearly a mere hollow phrase, unable to bear the weight of the
facts to be accounted for, that it was soon given up.
Similar attempts were made throughout Europe, the most
noteworthy appearing in England. In 1853 was issued an anonymous
work having as its title _A Brief and Complete Refutation of the
Anti-Scriptural Theory of Geologists_: the author having revived
an old idea, and put a spark of life into it--this idea being
that "all the organisms found in the depths of the earth were mad
on the first of the six creative days, as models for the plants and
animals to be created on the third, fifth, and sixth days."[240]
But while these attempts to preserve the old theory as to fossil
remains of lower animals were thus pressed, there appeared upon
the geological field a new scientific column far more terrible
to the old doctrines than any which had been seen previously.
For, just at the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, geologists began to examine the caves and beds of drift
in various parts of the world; and within a few years from that
time a series of discoveries began in France, in Belgium, in
England, in Brazil, in Sicily, in India, in Egypt, and in
America, which established the fact that a period of time much
greater than any which had before been thought of had elapsed
since the first human occupation of the earth. The chronologies
of Archbishop Usher, Petavius, Bossuet, and the other great
authorities on which theology had securely leaned, were found
worthless. It was clearly seen that, no matter how well based
upon the Old Testament genealogies and lives of the patriarchs
all these systems must go for nothing. The most conservative
geologists were gradually obliged to admit that man had been
upon the earth not merely six thousand, or sixty thousand, or
one hundred and sixty thousand years. And when, in 1863, Sir
Charles Lyell, in his book on _The Antiquity of Man_, retracted
solemnly his earlier view--yielding with a reluctance almost
pathetic, but with a thoroughness absolutely convincing--the last
stronghold of orthodoxy in this field fell.[241
The supporters of a theory based upon the letter of Scripture,
who had so long taken the offensive, were now obliged to fight
upon the defensive and at fearful odds. Various lines of defenc
were taken; but perhaps the most pathetic effort was that made
in the year 1857, in England, by Gosse. As a naturalist he had
rendered great services to zoological science, but he now
concentrated his energies upon one last effort to save the
literal interpretation of Genesis and the theological structur
built upon it. In his work entitled _Omphalos_ he developed the
theory previously urged by Granville Penn, and asserted a new
principle called "prochronism." In accordance with this, all
things were created by the Almighty hand literally within the
six days, each made up of "the evening and the morning," and
each great branch of creation was brought into existence in an
instant. Accepting a declaration of Dr. Ure, that "neither
reason nor revelation will justify us in extending the origin of
the material system beyond six thousand years from our own
days," Gosse held that all the evidences of convulsive change
and long epochs in strata, rocks, minerals, and fossils are
simply "_appearances_"--only that and nothing more. Amon
these mere "appearances," all created simultaneously, were the
glacial furrows and scratches on rocks, the marks of retreat on
rocky masses, as at Niagara, the tilted and twisted strata, the
piles of lava from extinct volcanoes, the fossils of every sort
in every part of the earth, the foot-tracks of birds and
reptiles, the half-digested remains of weaker animals found in
the fossilized bodies of the stronger, the marks of hyenas,
teeth on fossilized bones found in various caves, and even the
skeleton of the Siberian mammoth at St. Petersburg with lumps of
flesh bearing the marks of wolves' teeth--all these, with all
gaps and imperfections, he urged mankind to believe came into
being in an instant. The preface of the work is especiall
touching, and it ends with the prayer that science an
Scripture may be reconciled by his theory, and "that the God of
truth will deign so to use it, and if he do, to him be all the
glory."[242] At the close of the whole book Gosse declared: "The
field is left clear and undisputed for the one witness on the
opposite side, whose testimony is as follows: `In six days
Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in the
is.'" This quotation he placed in capital letters, as the final
refutation of all that the science of geology had built.
In other parts of Europe desperate attempts were made even late
to save the letter of our sacred books by the revival of a
theory in some respects more striking. To shape this theory to
recent needs, vague reminiscences of a text in Job regardin
fire beneath the earth, and vague conceptions of speculations
made by Humboldt and Laplace, were mingled with Jewish
tradition. Out of the mixture thus obtained Schubert developed
the idea that the Satanic "principalities and powers" formerly
inhabiting our universe plunged it into the chaos from which it
was newly created by a process accurately described in Genesis.
Rougemont made the earth one of the "morning stars" of Job
reduced to chaos by Lucifer and his followers, and thence
developed in accordance with the nebular hypothesis. Kurtz
evolved from this theory an opinion that the geological
disturbances were caused by the opposition of the devil to th
rescue of our universe from chaos by the Almighty. Delitzsch put
a similar idea into a more scholastic jargon; but most desperat
of all were the statements of Dr. Anton Westermeyer, of Munich,
in _The Old Testament vindicated from Modern Infidel Objections_.
The following passage will serve to show his ideas: "By the
fructifying brooding of the Divine Spirit on the waters of the
deep, creative forces began to stir; the devils who inhabited
the primeval darkness and considered it their own abode saw that
they were to be driven from their possessions, or at least that
their place of habitation was to be contracted, and they
therefore tried to frustrate God's plan of creation and exert
all that remained to them of might and power to hinder or at
least to mar the new creation." So came into being "the
horrible and destructive monsters, these caricatures and
distortions of creation," of which we have fossil remains. Dr.
Westermeyer goes on to insist that "whole generations called
into existence by God succumbed to the corruption of the devil,
and for that reason had to be destroyed"; and that "in the
work of the six days God caused the devil to feel his power in
all earnest, and made Satan's enterprise appear miserable an
vain."[243]
Such was the last important assault upon the strongholds of
geological science in Germany; and, in view of this and others
of the same kind, it is little to be wondered at that when, in
1870, Johann Silberschlag made an attempt to again base geology
upon the Deluge of Noah, he found such difficulties that, in
touching passage, he expressed a desire to get back to the
theory that fossils were "sports of Nature."[243b]
But the most noted among efforts to keep geology well within the
letter of Scripture is of still more recent date. In the year
1885 Mr. Gladstone found time, amid all his labours and cares as
the greatest parliamentary leader in England, to take the field
in the struggle for the letter of Genesis against geology.
On the face of it his effort seemed Quixotic, for he confessed
at the outset that in science he was "utterly destitute of that
kind of knowledge which carries authority," and his argument
soon showed that this confession was entirely true
But he had some other qualities of which much might be expected
great skill in phrase-making, great shrewdness in adapting the
meanings of single words to conflicting necessities in
discussion, wonderful power in erecting showy structures of
argument upon the smallest basis of fact, and a facility almost
preternatural in "explaining away" troublesome realities. So
striking was his power in this last respect, that a humorous
London chronicler once advised a bigamist, as his only hope, to
induce Mr. Gladstone to explain away one of his wives.
At the basis of this theologico-geological structure Mr
Gladstone placed what he found in the text of Genesis: "A grand
fourfold division" of animated Nature "set forth in an orderl
succession of times." And he arranged this order and succession
of creation as follows: "First, the water population;
secondly, the air population; thirdly, the land population of
animals; fourthly, the land population consummated in man.
His next step was to slide in upon this basis the apparently
harmless proposition that this division and sequence "is
understood to have been so affirmed in our time by natural
science that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact."
Finally, upon these foundations he proceeded to build an
argument out of the coincidences thus secured between the record
in the Hebrew sacred books and the truths revealed by science as
regards this order and sequence, and he easily arrived at the
desired conclusion with which he crowned the whole structure,
namely, as regards the writer of Genesis, that "his knowledge
was divine."[244]
Such was the skeleton of the structure; it was abundantly
decorated with the rhetoric in which Mr. Gladstone is so skilful
an artificer, and it towered above "the average man" as a
structure beautiful and invincible--like some Chinese fortress
in the nineteenth century, faced with porcelain and defended
with crossbows
Its strength was soon seen to be unreal. In an essay admirable
in its temper, overwhelming in its facts, and absolutely
convincing in its argument, Prof. Huxley, late President of the
Royal Society, and doubtless the most eminent contemporary
authority on the scientific questions concerned, took up the matter.
Mr. Gladstone's first proposition, that the sacred writings give
us a great "fourfold division" created "in an orderly
succession of times," Prof. Huxley did not presume to gainsay.
As to Mr. Gladstone's second proposition, that "this grea
fourfold division... created in an orderly succession o
times... has been so affirmed in our own time by natural science
that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact," Prof. Huxley showed that, as a matter of
fact, no such "fourfold division" and "orderly succession"
exist; that, so far from establishing Mr. Gladstone's assumption
that the population of water, air, and land followed each other
in the order given, "all the evidence we possess goes to prove
that they did not"; that the distribution of fossils through the
various strata proves that some land animals originated before
sea animals; that there has been a mixing of sea, land, and air
"population" utterly destructive to the "great fourfold
division" and to the creation "in an orderly succession of
times"; that, so far is the view presented in the sacred text,
as stated by Mr. Gladstone, from having been "so affirmed in
our own time by natural science, that it may be taken as a
demonstrated conclusion and established fact" that Mr.
Gladstone's assertion is "directly contradictory to facts known
to every one who is acquainted with the elements of natural
science"; that Mr. Gladstone's only geological authority,
Cuvier, had died more than fifty years before, when geological
science was in its infancy [and he might have added, when it was
necessary to make every possible concession to the Church]; and,
finally, he challenged Mr. Gladstone to produce any contemporary
authority in geological science who would support his so-calle
scriptural view. And when, in a rejoinder, Mr. Gladstone
attempted to support his view on the authority of Prof. Dana,
Prof. Huxley had no difficulty in showing from Prof. Dana'
works that Mr. Gladstone's inference was utterly unfounded.
But, while the fabric reared by Mr. Gladstone had been thus
undermined by Huxley on the scientific side, another opponent
began an attack from the biblical side. The Rev. Canon Driver,
professor at Mr. Gladstone's own University of Oxford, took u
the question in the light of scriptural interpretation. In
regard to the comparative table drawn up by Sir J. W. Dawson,
showing the supposed correspondence between the scriptural an
the geological order of creation, Canon Driver said: "The two
series are evidently at variance. The geological record contains
no evidence of clearly defined periods corresponding to the
`days' of Genesis. In Genesis, vegetation is complete two days
before animal life appears. Geology shows that they appear
simultaneously--even if animal life does not appear first. In
Genesis, birds appear together with aquatic creatures, and
precede all land animals; according to the evidence of geology
birds are unknown till a period much later than that at which
aquatic creatures (including fishes and amphibia) abound, and
they are preceded by numerous species of land animals--in
particular, by insects and other `creeping things.'" Of the
Mosaic account of the existence of vegetation before the
creation of the sun, Canon Driver said, " No reconciliation of
this representation with the data of science has yet been found";
and again: "From all that has been said, however reluctan
we may be to make the admission, only one conclusion seems
possible. Read without prejudice or bias, the narrative of
Genesis i, creates an impression at variance with the facts
revealed by science." The eminent professor ends by saying that
the efforts at reconciliation are "different modes o
obliterating the characteristic features of Genesis, and of
reading into it a view which it does not express."
Thus fell Mr. Gladstone's fabric of coincidences between the
"great fourfold division" in Genesis and the facts ascertained
by geology. Prof. Huxley had shattered the scientific parts of
the structure, Prof. Driver had removed its biblica
foundations, and the last great fortress of the opponents of
unfettered scientific investigation was in ruins
In opposition to all such attempts we may put a noble utterance
by a clergyman who has probably done more to save what is
essential in Christianity among English-speaking people than any
other ecclesiastic of his time. The late Dean of Westminster,
Dr. Arthur Stanley, was widely known and beloved on both
continents. In his memorial sermon after the funeral of Sir
Charles Lyell he said: "It is now clear to diligent students of
the Bible that the first and second chapters of Genesis contain
two narratives of the creation side by side, differing from each
other in almost every particular of time and place and order. It
is well known that, when the science of geology first arose, it
was involved in endless schemes of attempted reconciliation with
the letter of Scripture. There were, there are perhaps still,
two modes of reconciliation of Scripture and science, which have
been each in their day attempted, _and each has totally and
deservedly failed_. One is the endeavour to wrest the words of
the Bible from their natural meaning and _force it to speak the
language of science_." And again, speaking of the earliest known
example, which was the interpolation of the word "not" in
Leviticus xi, 6, he continues: "This is the earliest instance
of _the falsification of Scripture to meet the demands of
science_; and it has been followed in later times by the variou
efforts which have been made to twist the earlier chapters of
the book of Genesis into _apparent_ agreement with the last
results of geology--representing days not to be days, morning
and evening not to be morning and evening, the Deluge not to be
the Deluge, and the ark not to be the ark."
After a statement like this we may fitly ask, Which is the mor
likely to strengthen Christianity for its work in the twentiet
century which we are now about to enter--a large, manly, honest,
fearless utterance like this of Arthur Stanley, or
hair-splitting sophistries, bearing in their every line the
germs of failure, like those attempted by Mr. Gladstone
The world is finding that the scientific revelation of creatio
is ever more and more in accordance with worthy conceptions of
that great Power working in and through the universe. More and
more it is seen that inspiration has never ceased, and that its
prophets and priests are not those who work to fit the letter of
its older literature to the needs of dogmas and sects, but
those, above all others, who patiently, fearlessly, and
reverently devote themselves to the search for truth as truth,
in the faith that there is a Power in the universe wise enough
to make truth-seeking safe and good enough to make truth-telling
useful.[248]
CHAPTER VI.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN EGYPTOLOGY, AND
ASSYRIOLOGY.
I. THE SACRED CHRONOLOGY.
IN the great ranges of investigation which bear most directly
upon the origin of man, there are two in which Science within
the last few years has gained final victories. The significance
of these in changing, and ultimately in reversing, one of the
greatest currents of theological thought, can hardly be
overestimated; not even the tide set in motion by Cusa,
Copernicus, and Galileo was more powerful to bring in a new
epoch of belief.
The first of these conquests relates to the antiquity of man
on the earth
The fathers of the early Christian Church, receiving all parts
of our sacred books as equally inspired, laid little, if any,
less stress on the myths, legends, genealogies, and tribal,
family, and personal traditions contained in the Old and the New
Testaments, than upon the most powerful appeals, the most
instructive apologues, and the most lofty poems of prophets,
psalmists, and apostles. As to the age of our planet and the
life of man upon it, they found in the Bible a carefully
recorded series of periods, extending from Adam to the building
of the Temple at Jerusalem, the length of each period being
explicitly given.
Thus they had a biblical chronology--full, consecutive, and
definite--extending from the first man created to an event of
known date well within ascertained profane history; as a result,
the early Christian commentators arrived at conclusions varyin
somewhat, but in the main agreeing. Some, like Origen, Eusebius,
Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, and the great fathers
generally of the first three centuries, dwelling especially upon
the Septuagint version of the Scriptures, thought that man'
creation took place about six thousand years before the
Christian era. Strong confirmation of this view was found in a
simple piece of purely theological reasoning: for, just as the
seven candlesticks of the Apocalypse were long held to prove th
existence of seven heavenly bodies revolving about the earth, so
it was felt that the six days of creation prefigured six
thousand years during which the earth in its first form was to
endure; and that, as the first Adam came on the sixth day,
Christ, the second Adam, had come at the sixth millennia
period. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, in the second century
clinched this argument with the text, "One day is with the Lord
as a thousand years."
On the other hand, Eusebius and St. Jerome, dwelling more
especially upon the Hebrew text, which we are brought up to
revere, thought that man's origin took place at a somewhat
shorter period before the Christian era; and St. Jerome's
overwhelming authority made this the dominant view throughout
western Europe during fifteen centuries.
The simplicity of these great fathers as regards chronology i
especially reflected from the tables of Eusebius. In these,
Moses, Joshua, and Bacchus,--Deborah, Orpheus, and the
Amazons,--Abimelech, the Sphinx, and OEdipus, appear together as
personages equally real, and their positions in chronology
equally ascertained.
At times great bitterness was aroused between those holding the
longer and those holding the shorter chronology, but after all
the difference between them, as we now see, was trivial; and it
may be broadly stated that in the early Church, "always,
everywhere, and by all," it was held as certain, upon the
absolute warrant of Scripture, that man was created from four to
six thousand years before the Christian era
To doubt this, and even much less than this, was to ris
damnation. St. Augustine insisted that belief in the antipodes
and in the longer duration of the earth than six thousand years
were deadly heresies, equally hostile to Scripture. Philastrius
the friend of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, whose fearful
catalogue of heresies served as a guide to intolerance
throughout the Middle Ages, condemned with the same holy horro
those who expressed doubt as to the orthodox number of years
since the beginning of the world, and those who doubted an
earthquake to be the literal voice of an angry God, or who
questioned the plurality of the heavens, or who gainsaid the
statement that God brings out the stars from his treasures and
hangs them up in the solid firmament above the earth every night.
About the beginning of the seventh century Isidore of Seville,
the great theologian of his time, took up the subject. He
accepted the dominant view not only of Hebrew but of all othe
chronologies, without anything like real criticism. The
childlike faith of his system may be imagined from his summaries
which follow. He tells us
"Joseph lived one hundred and five years. Greece began to
cultivate grain.
"The Jews were in slavery in Egypt one hundred and forty-four
years. Atlas discovered astrology."
"Joshua ruled for twenty-seven years. Ericthonius yoked horses together."
"Othniel, forty years. Cadmus introduced letters into Greece."
"Deborah, forty years. Apollo discovered the art of medicine and
invented the cithara."
"Gideon, forty years. Mercury invented the lyre and gave it to Orpheus."
Reasoning in this general way, Isidore kept well under the
longer date; and, the great theological authority of southern
Europe having thus spoken, the question was virtually at rest
throughout Christendom for nearly a hundred years.
Early in the eighth century the Venerable Bede took up th
problem. Dwelling especially upon the received Hebrew text of
the Old Testament, he soon entangled himself in very serious
difficulties; but, in spite of the great fathers of the first
three centuries, he reduced the antiquity of man on the earth by
nearly a thousand years, and, in spite of mutterings against him
as coming dangerously near a limit which made the theological
argument from the six days of creation to the six ages of the
world look doubtful, his authority had great weight, and did
much to fix western Europe in its allegiance to the genera
system laid down by Eusebius and Jerome
In the twelfth century this belief was re-enforced by a tide of
thought from a very different quarter. Rabbi Moses Maimonides
and other Jewish scholars, by careful study of the Hebrew text,
arrived at conclusions diminishing the antiquity of man still
further, and thus gave strength throughout the Middle Ages to
the shorter chronology: it was incorporated into the sacred
science of Christianity; and Vincent of Beauvais, in his great
_Speculum Historiale_, forming part of that still more enormous
work intended to sum up all the knowledge possessed by the ages
of faith, placed the creation of man at about four thousand
years before our era.[252]
At the Reformation this view was not disturbed. The same manner
of accepting the sacred text which led Luther, Melanchthon, and
the great Protestant leaders generally, to oppose the Copernican
theory, fixed them firmly in this biblical chronology; th
keynote was sounded for them by Luther when he said, "We know,
on the authority of Moses, that longer ago than six thousand
years the world did not exist." Melanchthon, more exact, fixed
the creation of man at 3963 B. C.
But the great Christian scholars continued the old endeavour to
make the time of man's origin more precise: there seems to hav
been a sort of fascination in the subject which developed a long
array of chronologists, all weighing the minutest indications in
our sacred books, until the Protestant divine De Vignolles, who
had given forty years to the study of biblical chronology,
declared in 1738 that he had gathered no less than two hundred
computations based upon Scripture, and no two alike.
As to the Roman Church, about 1580 there was published, by
authority of Pope Gregory XIII, the Roman Martyrology, and this,
both as originally published and as revised in 1640 under Pope
Urban VIII, declared that the creation of man took place 5199
years before Christ.
But of all who gave themselves up to these chronologica
studies, the man who exerted the most powerful influence upo
the dominant nations of Christendom was Archbishop Usher. I
1650 he published his _Annals of the Ancient and New Testaments_,
and it at once became the greatest authority for al
English-speaking peoples. Usher was a man of deep and wid
theological learning, powerful in controversy; and his careful
conclusion, after years of the most profound study of the Hebrew
Scriptures, was that man was created 4004 years before the
Christian era. His verdict was widely received as final; his
dates were inserted in the margins of the authorized version o
the English Bible, and were soon practically regarded as
equally inspired with the sacred text itself: to question them
seriously was to risk preferment in the Church and reputation in
the world at large.
The same adhesion to the Hebrew Scriptures which had influenced
Usher brought leading men of the older Church to the same view:
men who would have burned each other at the stake for their
differences on other points, agreed on this: Melanchthon and
Tostatus, Lightfoot and Jansen, Salmeron and Scaliger, Petavius
and Kepler, inquisitors and reformers, Jesuits and Jansenists,
priests and rabbis, stood together in the belief that the
creation of man was proved by Scripture to have taken plac
between 3900 and 4004 years before Christ
In spite of the severe pressure of this line of authorities,
extending from St. Jerome and Eusebius to Usher and Petavius, in
favour of this scriptural chronology, even devoted Christian
scholars had sometimes felt obliged to revolt. The first great
source of difficulty was increased knowledge regarding the
Egyptian monuments. As far back as the last years of the
sixteenth century Joseph Scaliger had done what he could to lay
the foundations of a more scientific treatment of chronology,
insisting especially that the historical indications in Persia,
in Babylon, and above all in Egypt, should be brought to bear on
the question. More than that, he had the boldness to urge that
the chronological indications of the Hebrew Scriptures should be
fully and critically discussed in the light of Egyptian and
other records, without any undue bias from theological
considerations. His idea may well be called inspired; yet it had
little effect as regards a true view of the antiquity of man,
even upon himself, for the theological bias prevailed above all
his reasonings, even in his own mind. Well does a brilliant
modern writer declare that, "among the multitude of strong men
in modern times abdicating their reason at the command of thei
prejudices, Joseph Scaliger is perhaps the most striking example."
Early in the following century Sir Walter Raleigh, in his
_History of the World_ (1603-1616), pointed out the danger o
adhering to the old system. He, too, foresaw one of the results
of modern investigation, stating it in these words, which have
the ring of prophetic inspiration: "For in Abraham's time all
the then known parts of the world were developed.... Egypt had
many magnificent cities,... and these not built with sticks, but
of hewn stone,... which magnificence needed a parent of more
antiquity than these other men have supposed." In view of these
considerations Raleigh followed the chronology of the Septuagint
version, which enabled him to give to the human race a few mor
years than were usually allowed.
About the middle of the seventeenth century Isaac Vossius, one
of the most eminent scholars of Christendom, attempted to bring
the prevailing belief into closer accordance with ascertained
facts, but, save by a chosen few, his efforts were rejected. In
some parts of Europe a man holding new views on chronology was
by no means safe from bodily harm. As an example of the extrem
pressure exerted by the old theological system at times upon
honest scholars, we may take the case of La Peyrere, who about
the middle of the seventeenth century put forth his book on the
Pre-Adamites--an attempt to reconcile sundry well-known
difficulties in Scripture by claiming that man existed on eart
before the time of Adam. He was taken in hand at once; great
theologians rushed forward to attack him from all parts of
Europe; within fifty years thirty-six different refutations of
his arguments had appeared; the Parliament of Paris burned the
book, and the Grand Vicar of the archdiocese of Mechlin threw
him into prison and kept him there until he was forced, not only
to retract his statements, but to abjure his Protestantism.
In England, opposition to the growing truth was hardly less
earnest. Especially strong was Pearson, afterward Master of
Trinity and Bishop of Chester. In his treatise on the Creed,
published in 1659, which has remained a theologic classic, he
condemned those who held the earth to be more than fifty-six
hundred years old, insisted that the first man was created just
six days later, declared that the Egyptian records were forged,
and called all Christians to turn from them to "the infallible
annals of the Spirit of God."
But, in spite of warnings like these, we see the new idea
cropping out in various parts of Europe. In 1672, Sir John
Marsham published a work in which he showed himself bold and
honest. After describing the heathen sources of Oriental
history, he turns to the Christian writers, and, having used the
history of Egypt to show that the great Church authorities were
not exact, he ends one important argument with the following
words: "Thus the most interesting antiquities of Egypt hav
been involved in the deepest obscurity by the very interpreter
of her chronology, who have jumbled everything up (_qui omnia
susque deque permiscuerunt_), so as to make them match with their
own reckonings of Hebrew chronology. Truly a very bad example,
and quite unworthy of religious writers."
This sturdy protest of Sir John against the dominant system and
against the "jumbling" by which Eusebius had endeavoured t
cut down ancient chronology within safe and sound orthodox
limits, had little effect. Though eminent chronologists of the
eighteenth century, like Jackson, Hales, and Drummond, gave
forth multitudes of ponderous volumes pleading for a period
somewhat longer than that generally allowed, and insisting that
the received Hebrew text was grossly vitiated as regards
chronology, even this poor favour was refused them; the mass of
believers found it more comfortable to hold fast the faith
committed to them by Usher, and it remained settled that man wa
created about four thousand years before our era.
To those who wished even greater precision, Dr. John Lightfoot
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, the great
rabbinical scholar of his time, gave his famous demonstration
from our sacred books that "heaven and earth, centre and
circumference, were created together, in the same instant, and
clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and ma
was created by the Trinity on the twenty-third of October, 4004
B. C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
This tide of theological reasoning rolled on through th
eighteenth century, swollen by the biblical researches of
leading commentators, Catholic and Protestant, until it came in
much majesty and force into our own nineteenth century. At the
very beginning of the century it gained new strength from
various great men in the Church, among whom may be especially
named Dr. Adam Clarke, who declared that, "to preclude the
possibility of a mistake, the unerring Spirit of God directed Mose
in the selection of his facts and the ascertaining of his dates."
All opposition to the received view seemed broken down, and a
late as 1835--indeed, as late as 1850--came an announcement in
the work of one of the most eminent Egyptologists, Sir J. G.
Wilkinson, to the effect that he had modified the results he had
obtained from Egyptian monuments, in order that his chronology
might not interfere with the received date of the Deluge of
Noah.[256
II. THE NEW CHRONOLOGY.
But all investigators were not so docile as Wilkinson, and there
soon came a new train of scientific thought which rapidly
undermined all this theological chronology. Not to speak of
other noted men, we have early in the present century Young
Champollion, and Rosellini, beginning a new epoch in the study
of the Egyptian monuments. Nothing could be more cautious tha
their procedure, but the evidence was soon overwhelming in
favour of a vastly longer existence of man in the Nile Valley
than could be made to agree with even the longest duration then
allowed by theologians.
For, in spite of all the suppleness of men like Wilkinson, it
became evident that, whatever system of scriptural chronology
was adopted, Egypt was the seat of a flourishing civilization at
a period before the "Flood of Noah," and that no such flood had
ever interrupted it. This was bad, but worse remained behind: it
was soon clear that the civilization of Egypt began earlier than
the time assigned for the creation of man, even according to the
most liberal of the sacred chronologists.
As time went on, this became more and more evident. The long
duration assigned to human civilization in the fragments of
Manetho, the Egyptian scribe at Thebes in the third century B. C.,
was discovered to be more accordant with truth than th
chronologies of the great theologians; and, as the present
century has gone on, scientific results have been reached
absolutely fatal to the chronological view based by the
universal Church upon Scripture for nearly two thousand years.
As is well known, the first of the Egyptian kings of who
mention is made upon the monuments of the Nile Valley is Mena,
or Menes. Manetho had given a statement, according to which Mena
must have lived nearly six thousand years before the Christian
era. This was looked upon for a long time as utterl
inadmissible, as it was so clearly at variance with the
chronology of our own sacred books; but, as time went on, large
fragments of the original work of Manetho were more carefully
studied and distinguished from corrupt transcriptions, the lists
of kings at Karnak, Sacquarah, and the two temples at Abydos
were brought to light, and the lists of court architects wer
discovered. Among all these monuments the scholar who visits
Egypt is most impressed by the sculptured tablets giving the
lists of kings. Each shows the monarch of the period doing
homage to the long line of his ancestors. Each of these
sculptured monarchs has near him a tablet bearing his name. That
great care was always taken to keep these imposing records
correct is certain; the loyalty of subjects, the devotion of
priests, and the family pride of kings were all combined in
this; and how effective this care was, is seen in the fact that
kings now known to be usurpers are carefully omitted. The lists
of court architects, extending over the period from Seti t
Darius, throw a flood of light over the other records.
Comparing, then, all these sources, and applying an average from
the lengths of the long series of well-known reigns to the
reigns preceding, the most careful and cautious scholars have
satisfied themselves that the original fragments of Manetho
represent the work of a man honest and well informed, and, after
making all allowances for discrepancies and the overlapping of
reigns, it has become clear that the period known as the reign
of Mena must be fixed at more than three thousand years B. C. In
this the great Egyptologists of our time concur. Mariette, th
eminent French authority, puts the date at 5004 B. C.; Brugsch
the leading German authority, puts it at about 4500 B. C.; and
Meyer, the latest and most cautious of the historians of
antiquity, declares 3180 B. C. the latest possible date that ca
be assigned it. With these dates the foremost English
authorities, Sayce and Flinders Petrie, substantially agree.
This view is also confirmed on astronomical grounds by Mr.
Lockyer, the Astronomer Royal. We have it, then, as the resul
of a century of work by the most acute and trained
Egyptologists, and with the inscriptions upon the temples and
papyri before them, both of which are now read with as muc
facility as many medieval manuscripts, that the reign of Mena
must be placed more than five thousand years ago.
But the significance of this conclusion can not be fully
understood until we bring into connection with it some othe
facts revealed by the Egyptian monuments.
The first of these is that which struck Sir Walter Raleigh,
that, even in the time of the first dynasties in the Nile
Valley, a high civilization had already been developed. Take,
first, man himself: we find sculptured upon the early monuments
types of the various races--Egyptians, Israelites, negroes, and
Libyans--as clearly distinguishable in these paintings an
sculptures of from four to six thousand years ago as the same
types are at the present day. No one can look at these
sculptures upon the Egyptian monuments, or even the drawings of
them, as given by Lepsius or Prisse d' Avennes, without being
convinced that they indicate, even at that remote period, a
difference of races so marked that long previous ages must have
been required to produce it.
The social condition of Egypt revealed in these early monuments
of art forces us to the same conclusion. Those earliest
monuments show that a very complex society had even then been
developed. We not only have a separation between the priestly
and military orders, but agriculturists, manufacturers, and
traders, with a whole series of subdivisions in each of these
classes. The early tombs show us sculptured and painted
representations of a daily life which even then had been develope
into a vast wealth and variety of grades, forms, and usages
Take, next, the political and military condition. One fact out
of many reveals a policy which must have been the result of lon
experience. Just as now, at the end of the nineteenth century,
the British Government, having found that they can not rely upon
the native Egyptians for the protection of the country, are
drilling the negroes from the interior of Africa as soldiers, so
the celebrated inscription of Prince Una, as far back as the
sixth dynasty, speaks of the Maksi or negroes levied and drilled
by tens of thousands for the Egyptian army
Take, next, engineering. Here we find very early operations in
the way of canals, dikes, and great public edifices, so bold in
conception and thorough in execution as to fill our greates
engineers of these days with astonishment. The quarrying,
conveyance, cutting, jointing, and polishing of the enormous
blocks in the interior of the Great Pyramid alone are the marvel
of the foremost stone-workers of our century.
As regards architecture, we find not only the pyramids, which
date from the very earliest period of Egyptian history, and
which are to this hour the wonder of the world for size, for
boldness, for exactness, and for skilful contrivance, but also
the temples, with long ranges of colossal columns wrought i
polished granite, with wonderful beauty of ornamentation, wit
architraves and roofs vast in size and exquisite in adjustment,
which by their proportions tax the imagination, and lead th
beholder to ask whether all this can be real.
As to sculpture, we have not only the great Sphinx of Gizeh, so
marvellous in its boldness and dignity, dating from the ver
first period of Egyptian history, but we have ranges of sphinxes,
heroic statues, and bas-reliefs, showing that even in the early
ages this branch of art had reached an amazing development.
As regards the perfection of these, Lubke, the most eminent
German authority on plastic art, referring to the early works in
the tombs about Memphis, declares that, "as monuments of th
period of the fourth dynasty, they are an evidence of the high
perfection to which the sculpture of the Egyptians had
attained." Brugsch declares that "every artistic production of
those early days, whether picture, writing, or sculpture, bears
the stamp of the highest perfection in art." Maspero, the most
eminent French authority in this field, while expressing his
belief that the Sphinx was sculptured even before the time of
Mena, declares that "the art which conceived and carved this
prodigious statue was a finished art--an art which had attained
self-mastery and was sure of its effects"; while, among the
more eminent English authorities, Sayce tells us that "art is at
its best in the age of the pyramid-builders," and Sir Jame
Fergusson declares, "We are startled to find Egyptian art
nearly as perfect in the oldest periods as in any of the later."
The evidence as to the high development of Egyptian sculpture in
the earlier dynasties becomes every day more overwhelming. What
exquisite genius the early Egyptian sculptors showed in their
lesser statues is known to all who have seen those most precious
specimens in the museum at Cairo, which were wrought before the
conventional type was adopted in obedience to religious considerations
In decorative and especially in ceramic art, as early as the
fourth and fifth dynasties, we have vases, cups, and other
vessels showing exquisite beauty of outline and a general sense
of form almost if not quite equal to Etruscan and Grecian wor
of the best periods.
Take, next, astronomy. Going back to the very earliest period of
Egyptian civilization, we find that the four sides of the Great
Pyramid are adjusted to the cardinal points with the utmost
precision. "The day of the equinox can be taken by observing
the sun set across the face of the pyramid, and the neighbouring
Arabs adjust their astronomical dates by its shadow." Yet this
is but one out of many facts which prove that the Egyptians, a
the earliest period of which their monuments exist, had arrive
at knowledge and skill only acquired by long ages of observation
and thought. Mr. Lockyer, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, ha
recently convinced himself, after careful examination of various
ruined temples at Thebes and elsewhere, that they were placed
with reference to observations of stars. To state his conclusion
in his own words: "There seems a very high probability that
three thousand, and possibly four thousand, years before Chris
the Egyptians had among them men with some knowledge of
astronomy, and that six thousand years ago the course of the sun
through the year was practically very well known, and methods
had been invented by means of which in time it might be better
known; and that, not very long after that, they not only
considered questions relating to the sun, but began to take up
other questions relating to the position and movement of the stars."
The same view of the antiquity of man in the Nile valley is
confirmed by philologists. To use the words of Max Duncker: "The
oldest monuments of Egypt--and they are the oldest monuments in
the world--exhibit the Egyptian in possession of the art of
writing." It is found also, by the inscriptions of the early
dynasties, that the Egyptian language had even at that early
time been developed in all essential particulars to the highest
point it ever attained. What long periods it must have required
for such a development every scholar in philology can imagine.
As regards medical science, we have the Berlin papyrus, which,
although of a later period, refers with careful specification to
a medical literature of the first dynasty.
As regards archaeology, the earliest known inscriptions point to
still earlier events and buildings, indicating a long sequence
in previous history.
As to all that pertains to the history of civilization, no man
of fair and open mind can go into the museums of Cairo or the
Louvre or the British Museum and look at the monuments of those
earlier dynasties without seeing in them the results of a
development in art, science, laws, customs, and language, which
must have required a vast period before the time of Mena. And
this conclusion is forced upon us all the more invincibly when
we consider the slow growth of ideas in the earlier stages of
civilization as compared with the later--a slowness of growth
which has kept the natives of many parts of the world in that
earliest civilization to this hour. To this we must add the fact
that Egyptian civilization was especially immobile: its
development into castes is but one among many evidences that it
was the very opposite of a civilization developed rapidly.
As to the length of the period before the time of Mena, there
is, of course, nothing exact. Manetho gives lists of great
personages before that first dynasty, and these extend over
twenty-four thousand years. Bunsen, one of the most learned of
Christian scholars, declares that not less than ten thousand
years were necessary for the development of civilization up to
the point where we find it in Mena's time. No one can clai
precision for either of these statements, but they are valuable
as showing the impression of vast antiquity made upon the most
competent judges by the careful study of those remains: n
unbiased judge can doubt that an immensely long period of years
must have been required for the development of civilization up
to the state in which we there find it.
The investigations in the bed of the Nile confirm these views.
That some unwarranted conclusions have at times been announced
is true; but the fact remains that again and again rude potter
and other evidences of early stages of civilization have been
found in borings at places so distant from each other, and at
depths so great, that for such a range of concurring facts,
considered in connection with the rate of earthy deposit by the
Nile, there is no adequate explanation save the existence of man
in that valley thousands on thousands of years before th
longest time admitted by our sacred chronologists.
Nor have these investigations been of a careless character.
Between the years 1851 and 1854, Mr. Horner, an extremel
cautious English geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in four rows
at intervals of eight English miles, at right angles to th
Nile, in the neighbourhood of Memphis. In these pottery was
brought up from various depths, and beneath the statue of
Rameses II at Memphis from a depth of thirty-nine feet. At the
rate of the Nile deposit a careful estimate has declared this to
indicate a period of over eleven thousand years. So eminent a
German authority, in geography as Peschel characterizes
objections to such deductions as groundless. However this ma
be, the general results of these investigations, taken in
connection with the other results of research, are convincing.
And, finally, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a series of
archaeologists of the highest standing, French, German, English,
and American, have within the past twenty years discovered
relics of a savage period, of vastly earlier date than the time
of Mena, prevailing throughout Egypt. These relics have been
discovered in various parts of the country, from Cairo to Luxor,
in great numbers. They are the same sort of prehistoric
implements which prove to us the early existence of man in so
many other parts of the world at a geological period so remote
that the figures given by our sacred chronologists are but
trivial. The last and most convincing of these discoveries, that
of flint implements in the drift, far down below the tombs of
early kings at Thebes, and upon high terraces far above the
present bed of the Nile, will be referred to later.
But it is not in Egypt alone that proofs are found of the utter
inadequacy of the entire chronological system derived from our
sacred books. These results of research in Egypt are strikingly
confirmed by research in Assyria and Babylonia. Prof. Sayce
exhibits various proofs of this. To use his own words regarding
one of these proofs: "On the shelves of the British Museum you
may see huge sun-dried bricks, on which are stamped the names
and titles of kings who erected or repaired the temples wher
they have been found.... They must... have reigned before the
time when, according to the margins of our Bibles, the Flood o
Noah was covering the earth and reducing such bricks as these to
their primeval slime.
This conclusion was soon placed beyond a doubt. The lists o
king's and collateral inscriptions recovered from the temples of
the great valley between the Tigris and Euphrates, and th
records of astronomical observations in that region, showed that
there, too, a powerful civilization had grown up at a period far
earlier than could be made consistent with our sacre
chronology. The science of Assyriology was thus combined with
Egyptology to furnish one more convincing proof that, preciou
as are the moral and religious truths in our sacred books and
the historical indications which they give us, these truths an
indications are necessarily inclosed in a setting of myth and
legend.[264]
CHAPTER VII.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY
I. THE THUNDER-STONES.
WHILE the view of chronology based upon the literal acceptance
of Scripture texts was thus shaken by researches in Egypt,
another line of observation and thought was slowly developed,
even more fatal to the theological view.
From a very early period there had been dug from the earth, i
various parts of the world, strangely shaped masses of stone,
some rudely chipped, some polished: in ancient times the larger
of these were very often considered as thunderbolts, the smaller
as arrows, and all of them as weapons which had been hurled by
the gods and other supernatural personages. Hence a sort of
sacredness attached to them. In Chaldea, they were built into
the wall of temples; in Egypt, they were strung about the necks
of the dead. In India, fine specimens are to this day seen upon
altars, receiving prayers and sacrifices.
Naturally these beliefs were brought into the Christian
mythology and adapted to it. During the Middle Ages many of
these well-wrought stones were venerated as weapons, which
during the "war in heaven" had been used in driving forth
Satan and his hosts; hence in the eleventh century an Emperor of
the East sent to the Emperor of the West a "heaven axe"; and
in the twelfth century a Bishop of Rennes asserted the value of
thunder-stones as a divinely- appointed means of securing succes
in battle, safety on the sea, security against thunder, and
immunity from unpleasant dreams. Even as late as the seventeenth
century a French ambassador brought a stone hatchet, which
still exists in the museum at Nancy, as a present to the
Prince-Bishop of Verdun, and claimed for it health-giving virtues
In the last years of the sixteenth century Michael Mercati trie
to prove that the "thunder-stones" were weapons or implement
of early races of men; but from some cause his book was not
published until the following century, when other thinkers had
begun to take up the same idea, and then it had to contend with
a theory far more accordant with theologic modes of reasoning in
science. This was the theory of the learned Tollius, who in 1649
told the world that these chipped or smoothed stones were
"generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a
cloud by the circumposed humour."
But about the beginning of the eighteenth century a fact o
great importance was quietly established. In the year 1715 a
large pointed weapon of black flint was found in contact with
the bones of an elephant, in a gravel bed near Gray's Inn Lane
in London. The world in general paid no heed to this: if the
attention of theologians was called to it, they dismissed it
summarily with a reference to the Deluge of Noah; but the
specimen was labelled, the circumstances regarding it were
recorded, and both specimen and record carefully preserved.
In 1723 Jussieu addressed the French Academy on _The Origin and
Uses of Thunder-stones_. He showed that recent travellers from
various parts of the world had brought a number of weapons and
other implements of stone to France, and that they wer
essentially similar to what in Europe had been known a
"thunder-stones." A year later this fact was clinched into the
scientific mind of France by the Jesuit Lafitau, who published
a work showing the similarity between the customs of aborigines
then existing in other lands and those of the early inhabitant
of Europe. So began, in these works of Jussieu and Lafitau, the
science of Comparative Ethnography.
But it was at their own risk and peril that thinkers drew from
these discoveries any conclusions as to the antiquity of man.
Montesquieu, having ventured to hint, in an early edition of his
_Persian Letters_, that the world might be much older than ha
been generally supposed, was soon made to feel danger both to
his book and to himself, so that in succeeding editions h
suppressed the passage.
In 1730 Mahudel presented a paper to the French Academy o
Inscriptions on the so-called "thunder-stones," and also
presented a series of plates which showed that these were stone
implements, which must have been used at an early period in
human history.
In 1778 Buffon, in his _Epoques de la Nature_, intimated his
belief that "thunder-stones" were made by early races of men;
but he did not press this view, and the reason for his reserv
was obvious enough: he had already one quarrel with th
theologians on his hands, which had cost him dear--public
retraction and humiliation. His declaration, therefore,
attracted little notice.
In the year 1800 another fact came into the minds of thinkin
men in England. In that year John Frere presented to the London
Society of Antiquaries sundry flint implements found in the clay
beds near Hoxne: that they were of human make was certain, and,
in view of the undisturbed depths in which they were found, th
theory was suggested that the men who made them must have lived at
a very ancient geological epoch; yet even this discovery and theory
passed like a troublesome dream, and soon seemed to be forgotten.
About twenty years later Dr. Buckland published a discussion of
the subject, in the light of various discoveries in the drift
and in caves. It received wide attention, but theology was
soothed by his temporary concession that these striking relics
of human handiwork, associated with the remains of various
extinct animals, were proofs of the Deluge of Noah.
In 1823 Boue, of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, showed t
Cuvier sundry human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits o
the upper Rhine, and suggested that they were of an earl
geological period; this Cuvier virtually, if not explicitly,
denied. Great as he was in his own field, he was not a great
geologist; he, in fact, led geology astray for many years.
Moreover, he lived in a time of reaction; it was the period of
the restored Bourbons, of the Voltairean King Louis XVIII,
governing to please orthodoxy. Boue's discovery was, therefore,
at first opposed, then enveloped in studied silence.
Cuvier evidently thought, as Voltaire had felt under simila
circumstances, that "among wolves one must howl a little"; and
his leading disciple, Elie de Beaumont, who succeeded, him i
the sway over geological science in France, was even more
opposed to the new view than his great master had been. Boue's
discoveries were, therefore, apparently laid to rest forever.[269
In 1825 Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, was explored by the Rev
Mr. McEnery, a Roman Catholic clergyman, who seems to have been
completely overawed by orthodox opinion in England and
elsewhere; for, though he found human bones and implements
mingled with remains of extinct animals, he kept his notes in
manuscript, and they were only brought to light more than thirty
years later by Mr. Vivian.
The coming of Charles X, the last of the French Bourbons, to the
throne, made the orthodox pressure even greater. It was th
culmination of the reactionary period--the time in France when
a clerical committee, sitting at the Tuileries, took such
measures as were necessary to hold in check all science that was
not perfectly "safe"; the time in Austria when Kaiser Fran
made his famous declaration to sundry professors, that what he
wanted of them was simply to train obedient subjects, and that
those who did not make this their purpose would be dismissed;
the time in Germany when Nicholas of Russia and the princelings
and ministers under his control, from the King of Prussia
downward, put forth all their might in behalf of "scriptura
science"; the time in Italy when a scientific investigator,
arriving at any conclusion distrusted by the Church, was sure o
losing his place and in danger of losing his liberty; the time
in England when what little science was taught was held in due
submission to Archdeacon Paley; the time in the United States
when the first thing essential in science was, that it b
adjusted to the ideas of revival exhorters.
Yet men devoted to scientific truth laboured on; and in 1828
Tournal, of Narbonne, discovered in the cavern of Bize specimens
of human industry, with a fragment of a human skeleton, among
bones of extinct animals. In the following year Christol
published accounts of his excavations in the caverns of Gard; he
had found in position, and under conditions which forbade the
idea of after-disturbance, human remains mixed with bones of the
extinct hyena of the early Quaternary period. Little general
notice was taken of this, for the reactionary orthodox
atmosphere involved such discoveries in darkness.
But in the French Revolution of 1830 the old
politico-theological system collapsed: Charles X and his
advisers fled for their lives; the other continental monarchs
got glimpses of new light; the priesthood in charge of education
were put on their good behaviour for a time, and a better era began.
Under the constitutional monarchy of the house of Orleans i
France and Belgium less attention was therefore paid by
Government to the saving of souls; and we have in rapid
succession new discoveries of remains of human industry, an
even of human skeletons so mingled with bones of extinct animal
as to give additional proofs that the origin of man was at a
period vastly earlier than any which theologians had dreamed of.
A few years later the reactionary clerical influence against
science in this field rallied again. Schmerling in 1833 ha
explored a multitude of caverns in Belgium, especially at Engi
and Engihoul, and had found human skulls and bones closely
associated with bones of extinct animals, such as the cave bear,
hyena, elephant, and rhinoceros, while mingled with these were
evidences of human workmanship in the shape of chipped flin
implements; discoveries of a similar sort had been made by De
Serres in France and by Lund in Brazil; but, at least as far as
continental Europe was concerned, these discoveries were
received with much coolness both by Catholic leaders of opinion
in France and Belgium and by Protestant leaders in England and
Holland. Schmerling himself appears to have been overawed, an
gave forth a sort of apologetic theory, half scientific, hal
theologic, vainly hoping to satisfy the clerical side.
Nor was it much better in England. Sir Charles Lyell, so devoted
a servant of prehistoric research thirty years later, was still
holding out against it on the scientific side; and, as to the
theological side, it was the period when that great churchman,
Dean Cockburn, was insulting geologists from the pulpit of York
Minster, and the Rev. Mellor Brown denouncing geology as "a
black art," "a forbidden province" and when, in America, Prof.
Moses Stuart and others like him were belittling the work of
Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock
In 1840 Godwin Austin presented to the Royal Geological Society
an account of his discoveries in Kent's Cavern, near Torquay
and especially of human bones and implements mingled with bone
of the elephant, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, and other extinct
animals; yet this memoir, like that of McEnery fifteen years
before, found an atmosphere so unfavourable that it was not published.
II. THE FLINT WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS.
At the middle of the nineteenth century came the beginning of a
new epoch in science--an epoch when all these earlier
discoveries were to be interpreted by means of investigations in
a different field: for, in 1847, a man previously unknown to the
world at large, Boucher de Perthes, published at Paris the first
volume of his work on _Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities_, an
in this he showed engravings of typical flint implements and
weapons, of which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in
the high drift beds near Abbeville, in northern France
The significance of this discovery was great indeed--far greater
than Boucher himself at first supposed. The very title of his
book showed that he at first regarded these implements and
weapons as having belonged to men overwhelmed at the Deluge of
Noah; but it was soon seen that they were something very
different from proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis: for
they were found in terraces at great heights above the rive
Somme, and, under any possible theory having regard to fact,
must have been deposited there at a time when the river system
of northern France was vastly different from anything known
within the historic period. The whole discovery indicated a
series of great geological changes since the time when thes
implements were made, requiring cycles of time compared to whic
the space allowed by the orthodox chronologists was as nothing
His work was the result of over ten years of research and
thought. Year after year a force of men under his direction had
dug into these high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme,
and in his book he now gave, in the first full form, the results
of his labour. So far as France was concerned, he was met at
first by what he calls "a conspiracy of silence," and then by
a contemptuous opposition among orthodox scientists, at the head
of whom stood Elie de Beaumont.
This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that
Boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the
orthodox theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that
these fossils were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of Noah,
and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis
seemed to help the matter. His opponents felt instinctively
that such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and
they were right: Boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to
account for them by the orthodox theory
And it must be confessed that not a little force was added t
the opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes
himself. Gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his
own worst enemy. Carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped
to the most astounding conclusions. The engravings in the later
volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human
features and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are
worthy of a comic almanac; and at the National Museum of
Archaeology at St. Germain, beneath the shelves bearing the
remains which he discovered, which mark the beginning of a new
epoch in science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worth
of a penny museum, but from which he drew the most unwarranted
inferences as to the language, religion, and usages o
prehistoric man
Boucher triumphed none the less. Among his bitter opponents a
first was Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for
materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St.
Acheul--and was converted: for he found implements similar to
those of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of
man during the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a year later made
similar discoveries.
But most important was the evidence of the truth which now came
from other parts of France and from other countries. The French
leaders in geological science had been held back not only by awe
of Cuvier but by recollections of Scheuchzer. Ridicule has
always been a serious weapon in France, and the ridicule which
finally overtook the supporters of the attempt of Scheuchzer,
Mazurier, and others, to square geology with Genesis, was stil
remembered. From the great body of French geologists, therefore
Boucher secured at first no aid. His support came from the other
side of the Channel. The most eminent English geologists, such
as Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, visited the beds at Abbeville
and St. Acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries o
Boucher, Rigollot, and their colleagues were real, and then
quietly but firmly told England the truth.
And now there appeared a most effective ally in France. The
arguments used against Boucher de Perthes and some of the other
early investigators of bone caves had been that the implement
found might have been washed about and turned over by great
floods, and therefore that they might be of a recent period; but
in 1861 Edward Lartet published an account of his own
excavations at the Grotto of Aurignac, and the proof that ma
had existed in the time of the Quaternary animals was complete.
This grotto had been carefully sealed in prehistoric times by a
stone at its entrance; no interference from disturbing currents
of water had been possible; and Lartet found, in place, bones of
eight out of nine of the main species of animals which
characterize the Quaternary period in Europe; and upon them marks
of cutting implements, and in the midst of them coals and ashes.
Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and
his English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was
carefulness in making researches and a sobriety in stating
results which converted many of those who had been repelled b
the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes. The two colleagues found
in the stony deposits made by the water dropping from the roof
of the cave at Eyzies the bones of numerous animals extinct or
departed to arctic regions--one of these a vertebra of a
reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with
these were found evidences of fire.
Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing; yet ther
still remained here and there gainsayers in the supposed
interest of Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing
array of facts, insisted that in some way, by some combination
of circumstances, these bones of extinct animals of vastly
remote periods might have been brought into connection with all
these human bones and implements of human make in all these
different places, refusing to admit that these ancient relics of
men and animals were of the same period. Such gainsayer
virtually adopted the reasoning of quaint old Persons, who,
having maintained that God created the world "about five
thousand sixe hundred and odde yeares agoe," added, "And if
they aske what God was doing before this short number of yeares,
we answere with St. Augustine replying to such curious
questioners, that He was framing Hell for them." But a new class
of discoveries came to silence this opposition. At La Madeleine
in France, at the Kessler cave in Switzerland, and at various
other places, were found rude but striking carvings an
engravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of
those long-vanished species; and these specimens, or casts of
them, were soon to be seen in all the principal museums. They
showed the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, and various other
animals of the Quaternary period, carved rudely but vigorously
by contemporary men; and, to complete the significance of these
discoveries, travellers returning from the icy regions of North
America brought similar carvings of animals now existing in
those regions, made by the Eskimos during their long arctic
winters to-day.[275
As a result of these discoveries and others like them, showing
that man was not only contemporary with long-extinct animals of
past geological epochs, but that he had already developed int
a stage of culture above pure savagery, the tide of thought
began to turn. Especially was this seen in 1863, when Lyel
published the first edition of his _Geological Evidence of the
Antiquity of Man_; and the fact that he had so long opposed the
new ideas gave force to the clear and conclusive argument which
led him to renounce his early scientific beliefs.
Research among the evidences of man's existence in the early
Quaternary, and possibly in the Tertiary period, was now pressed
forward along the whole line. In 1864 Gabriel Mortillet founded
his review devoted to this subject; and in 1865 the first of a
series of scientific congresses devoted to such researches was
held in Italy. These investigations went on vigorously in all
parts of France and spread rapidly to other countries. The
explorations which Dupont began in 1864, in the caves of
Belgium, gave to the museum at Brussels eighty thousand flint
implements, forty thousand bones of animals of the Quaternary
period, and a number of human skulls and bones found mingled
with these remains. From Germany, Italy, Spain, America, India
and Egypt similar results were reported.
Especially noteworthy were the further explorations of the caves
and drift throughout the British Islands. The discovery by
Colonel Wood, In 1861, of flint tools in the same strata with
bones of the earlier forms of the rhinoceros, was but typical of
many. A thorough examination of the caverns of Brixham and
Torquay, by Pengelly and others, made it still more evident that
man had existed in the early Quaternary period. The existence of
a period before the Glacial epoch or between different glacial
epochs in England, when the Englishman was a savage, using rude
stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more
significant, there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution
even in the history of that period. It was found that this
ancient Stone epoch showed progress and development. In th
upper layers of the caves, with remains of the reindeer, who,
although he has migrated from these regions, still exists in
more northern climates, were found stone implements revealing
some little advance in civilization; next below these, sealed up
in the stalagmite, came, as a rule, another layer, in which the
remains of reindeer were rare and those of the mammoth more
frequent, the implements found in this stratum being les
skilfully made than those in the upper and more recent layers;
and, finally, in the lowest levels, near the floors of these
ancient caverns, with remains of the cave bear and others of the
most ancient extinct animals, were found stone implements
evidently of a yet ruder and earlier stage of human progress. No
fairly unprejudiced man can visit the cave and museum at
Torquay without being convinced that there were a gradation and
an evolution in these beginnings of human civilization. The
evidence is complete; the masses of breccia taken from the cave,
with the various soils, implements, and bones carefully kept in
place, put this progress beyond a doubt
All this indicated a great antiquity for the human race, but in
it lay the germs of still another great truth, even more
important and more serious in its consequences to the older
theologic view, which will be discussed in the following chapter
But new evidences came in, showing a yet greater antiquity of
man. Remains of animals were found in connection with human
remains, which showed not only that man was living in times mor
remote than the earlier of the new investigators had dared
dream, but that some of these early periods of his existenc
must have been of immense length, embracing climatic changes
betokening different geological periods; for with remains of
fire and human implements and human bones were found not only
bones of the hairy mammoth and cave bear, woolly rhinoceros,
and reindeer, which could only have been deposited there in
time of arctic cold, but bones of the hyena, hippopotamus,
sabre-toothed tiger, and the like, which could only have bee
deposited when there was in these regions a torrid climate. The
conjunction of these remains clearly showed that man had lived
in England early enough and long enough to pass through times
when there was arctic cold and times when there was torrid heat;
times when great glaciers stretched far down into England and
indeed into the continent, and times whe England had a land
connection with the European continent, and the European
continent with Africa, allowing tropical animals to migrate
freely from Africa to the middle regions of England.
The question of the origin of man at a period vastly earlier
than the sacred chronologists permitted was thus absolutely
settled, but among the questions regarding the existence of man
at a period yet more remote, the Drift period, there was one
which for a time seemed to give the champions of science some
difficulty. The orthodox leaders in the time of Boucher de
Perthes, and for a considerable time afterward, had a weapon of
which they made vigorous use: the statement that no human bones
had yet been discovered in the drift. The supporters of science
naturally answered that few if any other bones as small as those
of man had been found, and that this fact was an additional
proof of the great length of the period since man had lived wit
the extinct animals; for, since specimens of human workmanship
proved man's existence as fully as remains of his bones could
do, the absence or even rarity of human and other small bone
simply indicated the long periods of time required for
dissolving them away.
Yet Boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown, and
filled with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones
would yet be found in the midst of the flint implements, and i
1863 he claimed that this prophecy had been fulfilled by the
discovery at Moulin Quignon of a portion of a human jaw deep in
the early Quaternary deposits. But his triumph was short-lived:
the opposition ridiculed his discovery; they showed that he had
offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human
remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky
labourer had deceived him. The result of this was that the men
of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon
discovery was not proven.
But ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the early
Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in variou
other parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin
Quignon relic was of little importance
We have seen that researches regarding the existence of
prehistoric man in England and on the Continent were at first
mainly made in the caverns; but the existence of man in th
earliest Quaternary period was confirmed on both sides of the
English Channel, in a way even more striking, by the clos
examination of the drift and early gravel deposits. The results
arrived at by Boucher de Perthes were amply confirmed in
England. Rude stone implements were found in terraces a hundred
feet and more above the levels at which various rivers of Great
Britain now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at
the time when they were deposited, the rivers of Great Britai
in many cases were entirely different from those of the presen
period, and formed parts of the river system of the European
continent. Researches in the high terraces above the Thames and
the Ouse, as well as at other points in Great Britain, placed
beyond a doubt the fact that man existed on the British Islands
at a time when they were connected by solid land with the
Continent, and made it clear that, within the period of the
existence of man in northern Europe, a large portion of th
British Islands had been sunk to depths between fifteen hundred
and twenty-five hundred feet beneath the Northern Ocean,--had
risen again from the water,--had formed part of the continent of
Europe, and had been in unbroken connection with Africa, so tha
elephants, bears, tigers, lions, the rhinoceros and
hippopotamus, of species now mainly extinct, had left their
bones in the same deposits with human implements as far north as
Yorkshire. Moreover, connected with this fact came in the new
conviction, forced upon geologists by the more carefu
examination of the earth and its changes, that such elevations
and depressions of Great Britain and other parts of the worl
were not necessarily the results of sudden cataclysms, but
generally of slow processes extending through vast cycles of
years--processes such as are now known to be going on in variou
parts of the world. Thus it was that the six or seven thousan
years allowed by the most liberal theologians of former times
were seen more and more clearly to be but a mere nothing in the
long succession of ages since the appearance of man.
Confirmation of these results was received from various other
parts of the world. In Africa came the discovery of flint
implements deep in the hard gravel of the Nile Valley at Luxor
and on the high hills behind Esneh. In America the discoveries
at Trenton, N. J., and at various places in Delaware, Ohio,
Minnesota, and elsewhere, along the southern edge of the drift
of the Glacial epochs, clinched the new scientific truth ye
more firmly; and the statement made by an eminent America
authority is, that "man was on this continent when the climate
and ice of Greenland extended to the mouth of New York harbour."
The discoveries of prehistoric remains on the Pacific coast, and
especially in British Columbia, finished completely the last
chance at a reasonable contention by the adherents of the older
view. As to these investigations on the Pacific slope of the
United States, the discoveries of Whitney and others in
California had been so made and announced that the judgment of
scientific men regarding them was suspended until the visit o
perhaps the greatest living authority in his department, Alfre
Russel Wallace, in 1887. He confirmed the view of Prof. Whitney
and others with the statement that "both the actual remains and
works of man found deep under the lava-flows of Pliocene age show
that he existed in the New World at least as early as in the
Old." To this may be added the discoveries in British Columbia,
which prove that, since man existed in these regions, "valleys
have been filled up by drift from the waste of mountains to
depth in some cases of fifteen hundred feet; this covered by a
succession of tuffs, ashes, and lava-streams from volcanoes long
since extinct, and finally cut down by the present rivers
through beds of solid basalt, and through this accumulation of
lavas and gravels." The immense antiquity of the human remain
in the gravels of the Pacific coast is summed up by a most
eminent English authority and declared to be proved, "first, by
the present river systems being of subsequent date, sometimes
cutting through them and their superincumbent lava-cap to a depth
of two thousand feet; secondly, by the great denudation that ha
taken place since they were deposited, for they sometimes lie o
the summits of mountains six thousand feet high; thirdly, by the
fact that the Sierra Nevada has been partly elevated since their
formation."[280]
As an important supplement to these discoveries of ancient
implements came sundry comparisons made by eminent physiologists
between human skulls and bones found in different places and
under circumstances showing vast antiquity.
Human bones had been found under such circumstances as early as
1835 at Cannstadt near Stuttgart, and in 1856 in the Neanderthal
near Dusseldorf; but in more recent searches they had been
discovered in a multitude of places, especially in Germany,
France, Belgium, England, the Caucasus, Africa, and North and
South America. Comparison of these bones showed that even in
that remote Quaternary period there were great differences o
race, and here again came in an argument for the yet earlier
existence of man on the earth; for long previous periods must
have been required to develop such racial differences.
Considerations of this kind gave a new impulse to the belie
that man's existence might even date back into the Tertiary
period. The evidence for this earlier origin of man was ably
summed up, not only by its brilliant advocate, Mortillet, but by
a former opponent, one of the most conservative of modern
anthropologists, Quatrefages; and the conclusion arrived at by
both was, that man did really exist in the Tertiary period. The
acceptance of this conclusion was also seen in the more recen
work of Alfred Russel Wallace, who, though very cautious an
conservative, placed the origin of man not only in the Tertiar
period, but in an earlier stage of it than most had dared
assign--even in the Miocene
The first thing raising a strong presumption, if not giving
proof, that man existed in the Tertiary, was the fact that from
all explored parts of the world came in more and more evidence
that in the earlier Quaternary man existed in different,
strongly marked races and in great numbers. From all regions
which geologists had explored, even from those the most distant
and different from each other, came this same evidence--from
northern Europe to southern Africa; from France to China; from
New Jersey to British Columbia; from British Columbia to Peru.
The development of man in such numbers and in so many different
regions, with such differences of race and at so early a period
must have required a long previous time.
This argument was strengthened by discoveries of bones bearing
marks apparently made by cutting instruments, in the Tertiary
formations of France and Italy, and by the discoveries of what
were claimed to be flint implements by the Abbe Bourgeois in France,
and of implements and human bones by Prof. Capellini in Italy.
On the other hand, some of the more cautious men of science are
still content to say that the existence of man in the Tertiary
period is not yet proven. As to his existence throughout the
Quaternary epoch, no new proofs are needed; even so determined
a supporter of the theological side as the Duke of Argyll has
been forced to yield to the evidence.
Of attempts to make an exact chronological statement throwing
light on the length of the various prehistoric periods, the most
notable have been those by M. Morlot, on the accumulated strat
of the Lake of Geneva; by Gillieron, on the silt of Lake
Neufchatel; by Horner, in the delta deposits of Egypt; and b
Riddle, in the delta of the Mississippi. But while these have
failed to give anything like an exact result, all these
investigations together point to the central truth, so amply
established, of the vast antiquity of man, and the utter
inadequacy of the chronology given in our sacred books. The
period of man's past life upon our planet, which has been fixed
by the universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," is
thus perfectly proved to be insignificant compared with those
vast geological epochs during which man is now known to hav
existed.[283]
CHAPTER VIII.
THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ANTHROPOLOG
IN the previous chapters we have seen how science, especially
within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has thoroughly
changed the intelligent thought of the world in regard to the
antiquity of man upon our planet; and how the fabric built upon
the chronological indications in our sacred books--first, by the
early fathers of the Church, afterward by the medieval doctors
and finally by the reformers and modern orthodox
chronologists--has virtually disappeared before an entirel
different view forced upon us, especially by Egyptian and
Assyrian studies, as well as by geology and archeology.
In this chapter I purpose to present some outlines of the work
of Anthropology, especially as assisted by Ethnology, in showing
what the evolution of human civilization has been.
Here, too, the change from the old theological view based upo
the letter of our sacred books to the modern scientific view
based upon evidence absolutely irrefragable is complete. Here,
too, we are at the beginning of a vast change in the basis and
modes of thought upon man--a change even more striking than
that accomplished by Copernicus and Galileo, when they
substituted for a universe in which sun and planets revolve
about the earth a universe in which the earth is but the merest
grain or atom revolving with other worlds, larger and smaller, about
the sun; and all these forming but one among innumerable systems.
Ever since the beginning of man's effective thinking upon the
great problems around him, two antagonistic views have existed
regarding the life of the human race upon earth. The first of
these is the belief that man was created "in the beginning" a
perfect being, endowed with the highest moral and intellectual
powers, but that there came a "fall," and, as its result, the
entrance into the world of evil, toil, sorrow, and death.
Nothing could be more natural than such an explanation of the
existence of evil, in times when men saw everywhere miracle an
nowhere law. It is, under such circumstances, by far the most
easy of explanations, for it is in accordance with the
appearances of things: men adopted it just as naturally as they
adopted the theory that the Almighty hangs up the stars a
lights in the solid firmament above the earth, or hides the sun
behind a mountain at night, or wheels the planets around the
earth, or flings comets as "signs and wonders" to scare a
wicked world, or allows evil spirits to control thunder,
lightning, and storm, and to cause diseases of body and mind, or
opens the "windows of heaven" to let down "the waters that be
above the heavens," and thus to give rain upon the earth
A belief, then, in a primeval period of innocence and
perfection--moral, intellectual, and physical--from which men
for some fault fell, is perfectly in accordance with what w
should expect
Among the earliest known records of our race we find this view
taking shape in the Chaldean legends of war between the gods,
and of a fall of man; both of which seemed necessary to explain
the existence of evil.
In Greek mythology perhaps the best-known statement was made by
Hesiod: to him it was revealed, regarding the men of the most
ancient times, that they were at first "a golden race," tha
"as gods they were wont to live, with a life void of care,
without labour and trouble; nor was wretched old age at al
impending; but ever did they delight themselves out of the reach
of all ills, and they died as if overcome by sleep; all
blessings were theirs: of its own will the fruitful field would
bear them fruit, much and ample, and they gladly used to reap
the labours of their hands in quietness along with many good
things, being rich in flocks and true to the blessed gods." But
there came a "fall," caused by human curiosity. Pandora, the
first woman created, received a vase which, by divine command,
was to remain closed; but she was tempted to open it, and troubles,
sorrow, and disease escaped into the world, hope alone remaining
So, too, in Roman mythological poetry the well-known picture by
Ovid is but one among the many exhibitions of this same belief
in a primeval golden age--a Saturnian cycle; one of the
constantly recurring attempts, so universal and so natural in
the early history of man, to account for the existence of evil,
care, and toil on earth by explanatory myths and legends.
This view, growing out of the myths, legends, and theologies of
earlier peoples, we also find embodied in the sacred tradition
of the Jews, and especially in one of the documents which form
the impressive poem beginning the books attributed to Moses. As
to the Christian Church, no word of its Blessed Founder
indicates that it was committed by him to this theory, or that
he even thought it worthy of his attention. How, like so many
other dogmas never dreamed of by Jesus of Nazareth and those who
knew him best, it was developed, it does not lie within the
province of this chapter to point out; nor is it worth our
while to dwell upon its evolution in the early Church, in the
Middle Ages, at the Reformation, and in various branches of the
Protestant Church: suffice it that, though among
English-speaking nations by far the most important influence in
its favour has come from Milton's inspiration rather than fro
that of older sacred books, no doctrine has been mor
universally accepted, "always, everywhere, and by all," from
the earliest fathers of the Church down to the present hour.
On the other hand appeared at an early period the opposite
view--that mankind, instead of having fallen from a high
intellectual, moral, and religious condition, has slowly rise
from low and brutal beginnings. In Greece, among the
philosophers contemporary with Socrates, we find Critias
depicting a rise of man, from a time when he was beastlike and
lawless, through a period when laws were developed, to a time
when morality received enforcement from religion; but among al
the statements of this theory the most noteworthy is that given
by Lucretius in his great poem on _The Nature of Things_. Despite
its errors, it remains among the most remarkable examples of
prophetic insight in the history of our race. The inspiration of
Lucretius gave him almost miraculous glimpses of truth; his vie
of the development of civilization from the rudest beginnings to
the height of its achievements is a wonderful growth, rooted i
observation and thought, branching forth into a multitude of
striking facts and fancies; and among these is the statement
regarding the sequence of inventions:
"Man's earliest arms were fingers, teeth, and nails
And stones and fragments from the branching woods
Then copper next; and last, as latest traced
The tyrant, iron."
Thus did the poet prophesy one of the most fruitful achievements
of modern science: the discovery of that series of epochs which
has been so carefully studied in our century.
Very striking, also, is the statement of Horace, though his idea
is evidently derived from Lucretius. He dwells upon man's first
condition on earth as low and bestial, and pictures him lurkin
in caves, progressing from the use of his fists and nails, first
to clubs, then to arms which he had learned to forge, and,
finally, to the invention of the names of things, to literature
and to laws.[287
During the mediaeval ages of faith this view was almost entirely
obscured, and at the Reformation it seemed likely to remain so.
Typical of the simplicity of belief in "the Fall" cherished
among the Reformers is Luther's declaration regarding Adam and
Eve. He tells us, "they entered into the garden about noon, and
having a desire to eat, she took the apple; then came the
fall--according to our account at about two o'clock." But in the
revival of learning the old eclipsed truth reappeared, and in
the first part of the seventeenth century we find that, among
the crimes for which Vanini was sentenced at Toulouse to have
his tongue torn out and to be burned alive, was his belief that
there is a gradation extending upward from the lowest to the
highest form of created beings.
Yet, in the same century, the writings of Bodin, Bacon
Descartes, and Pascal were evidently undermining the old idea of
"the Fall." Bodin especially, brilliant as were his services to
orthodoxy, argued lucidly against the doctrine of general huma
deterioration.
Early in the eighteenth century Vico presented the philosophy o
history as an upward movement of man out of animalism and
barbarism. This idea took firm hold upon human thought, and in
the following centuries such men as Lessing and Turgot gave new
force to it.
The investigations of the last forty years have shown that
Lucretius and Horace were inspired prophets: what they saw by
the exercise of reason illumined by poetic genius, has been now
thoroughly based upon facts carefully ascertained and
arranged--until Thomsen and Nilsson, the northern
archaeologists, have brought these prophecies to eviden
fulfilment, by presenting a scientific classification dividin
the age of prehistoric man in various parts of the world between
an old stone period, a new stone period, a period of beaten
copper, a period of bronze, and a period of iron, and arraying
vast masses of facts from all parts of the world, fitting
thoroughly into each other, strengthening each other, and
showing beyond a doubt that, instead of a _fall_, there has been
a _rise_ of man, from the earliest indications in the Quaternary,
or even, possibly, in the Tertiary period.[288]
The first blow at the fully developed doctrine of "the Fall"
came, as we have seen, from geology. According to that doctrine,
as held quite generally from its beginnings among the fathers
and doctors of the primitive Church down to its culmination in
the minds of great Protestants like John Wesley, the statement
in our sacred books that "death entered the world by sin" was
taken as a historic fact, necessitating the conclusion that,
before the serpent persuaded Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit,
death on our planet was unknown. Naturally, when geology
revealed, in the strata of a period long before the coming o
man on earth, a vast multitude of carnivorous tribes fitted to
destroy their fellow-creatures on land and sea, and within the
fossilized skeletons of many of these the partially digested
remains of animals, this doctrine was too heavy to be carried,
and it was quietly dropped.
But about the middle of the nineteenth century the doctrine of
the rise of man as opposed to the doctrine of his "fall"
received a great accession of strength from a source most
unexpected. As we saw in the last chapter, the facts proving the
great antiquity of man foreshadowed a new and even more
remarkable idea regarding him. We saw, it is true, that the
opponents of Boucher de Perthes, while they could not deny his
discovery of human implements in the drift, were successful in
securing a verdict of "Not prove " as regarded his discovery
of human bones; but their triumph was short-lived. Many previou
discoveries, little thought of up to that time, began to be
studied, and others were added which resulted not merely in
confirming the truth regarding the antiquity of man, but in
establishing another doctrine which the opponents of scienc
regarded with vastly greater dislike--the doctrine that man ha
not fallen from an original high estate in which he was created
about six thousand years ago, but that, from a period vastly
earlier than any warranted by the sacred chronologists, he has
been, in spite of lapses and deteriorations, rising.
A brief review of this new growth of truth may be useful. As
early as 1835 Prof. Jaeger had brought out from a quantity of
Quaternary remains dug up long before at Cannstadt, nea
Stuttgart, a portion of a human skull, apparently of very low
type. A battle raged about it for a time, but this finally
subsided, owing to uncertainties arising from the circumstances
of the discovery.
In 1856, in the Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf, among Quaternar
remains gathered on the floor of a grotto, another skull wa
found bearing the same evidence of a low human type. As in the
case of the Cannstadt skull, this again was fiercely debated,
and finally the questions regarding it were allowed to remain in
suspense. But new discoveries were made: at Eguisheim, at Brux,
at Spy, and elsewhere, human skulis were found of a similarly
low type; and, while each of the earlier discoveries was open to
debate, and either, had no other been discovered, might have
been considered an abnormal specimen, the combination of all
these showed conclusively that not only had a race of men
existed at that remote period, but that it was of a type as low
as the lowest, perhaps below the lowest, now known
Research was now redoubled, and, as a result, human skulls an
complete skeletons of various types began to be discovered in
the ancient deposits of many other parts of the world, and
especially in France, Belgium, Germany, the Caucasus, Africa,
and North and South America.
But soon began to emerge from all these discoveries a fact of
enormous importance. The skulls and bones found at Cro Magnon
Solutre, Furfooz, Grenelle, and elsewhere, were compared, and it
was thus made certain that various races had already appeared
and lived in various grades of civilization, even in those
exceedingly remote epochs; that even then there were various
strata of humanity ranging from races of a very low to those o
a very high type; and that upon any theory--certainly upon the
theory of the origin of mankind from a single pair--two things
were evident: first, that long, slow processes during vas
periods of time must have been required for the differentiation
of these races, and for the evolution of man up to the point
where the better specimens show him, certainly in the earl
Quaternary and perhaps in the Tertiary period; and, secondly,
that there had been from the first appearance of man, of which
we have any traces, an _upward_ tendency[291
This second conclusion, the upward tendency of man from low
beginnings, was made more and more clear by bringing int
relations with these remains of human bodies and of extinct
animals the remains of human handiwork. As stated in the last
chapter, the river drift and bone caves in Great Britain
France, and other parts of the world, revealed a progression,
even in the various divisions of the earliest Stone period; for,
beginning at the very lowest strata of these remains, on the
floors of the caverns, associated mainly with the bones of
extinct animals, such as the cave bear, the hairy elephant, and
the like, were the rudest implements then, in strata above
these, sealed in the stalagmite of the cavern floors, lying with
the bones of animals extinct but more recent, stone implements
were found, still rude, but, as a rule, of an improved type;
and, finally, in a still higher stratum, associated with bones
of animals like the reindeer and bison, which, though not
extinct, have departed to other climates, were rude stone
implements, on the whole of a still better workmanship. Such was
the foreshadowing, even at that early rude Stone period, of the
proofs that the tendency of man has been from his earliest epoch
and in all parts of the world, as a rule, upward.
But this rule was to be much further exemplified. About 1850,
while the French and English geologists were working more
especially among the relics of the drift and cave periods, noted
archaeologists of the North--Forchammer, Steenstrup, and
Worsaae--were devoting themselves to the investigation of
certain remains upon the Danish Peninsula. These remains were of
two kinds: first, there were vast shell-heaps or accumulations
of shells and other refuse cast aside by rude tribes which at
some unknown age in the past lived on the shores of the Baltic
principally on shellfish. That these shell-heaps were very
ancient was evident: the shells of oysters and the like found in
them were far larger than any now found on those coasts; thei
size, so far from being like that of the corresponding varieties
which now exist in the brackish waters of the Baltic, was in
every case like that of those varieties which only thrive in the
waters of the open salt sea. Here was a clear indication that at
the time when man formed these shell-heaps those coasts were in
far more direct communication with the salt sea than at present,
and that sufficient time must have elapsed since that period to have
wrought enormous changes in sea and land throughout those regions.
Scattered through these heaps were found indications of a grade
of civilization when man still used implements of stone, but
implements and weapons which, though still rude, showed a
progress from those of the drift and early cave period, some of
them being of polished stone.
With these were other evidences that civilization had
progressed. With implements rude enough to have survived from
early periods, other implements never known in the drift and
bone caves began to appear, and, though there were few if an
bones of other domestic animals, the remains of dogs were found;
everything showed that there had been a progress in civilization
between the former Stone epoch and this.
The second series of discoveries in Scandinavia was made in the
peat-beds: these were generally formed in hollows or bowls
varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, and a section of them,
like a section of the deposits in the bone caverns, showed a
gradual evolution of human culture. The lower strata in these
great bowls were found to be made up chiefly of mosses and
various plants matted together with the trunks of fallen trees,
sometimes of very large diameter; and the botanical examination
of the lowest layer of these trees and plants in the various
bowls revealed a most important fact: for this layer, the first
in point of time, was always of the Scotch fir--which now grows
nowhere in the Danish islands, and can not be made to grow
anywhere in them--and of plants which are now extinct in these
regions, but have retreated within the arctic circle. Coming u
from the bottom of these great bowls there was found above the
first layer a second, in which were matted together masses of
oak trees of different varieties; these, too, were relics of
bygone epoch, since the oak has almost entirely disappeared from
Denmark. Above these came a third stratum made up of fallen
beech trees; and the beech is now, and has been since the
beginning of recorded history, the most common tree of the
Danish Peninsula.
Now came a second fact of the utmost importance as connected
with the first. Scattered, as a rule, through the lower of these
deposits, that of the extinct fir trees and plants, were found
implements and weapons of smooth stone; in the layer of oak
trees were found implements of bronze; and among the layer of
beeches were found implements and weapons of iron.
The general result of these investigations in these two sources,
the shell mounds and the peat deposits, was the same: the first
civilization evidenced in them was marked by the use of stone
implements more or less smooth, showing a progress from the
earlier rude Stone period made known by the bone caves; then
came a later progress to a higher civilization, marked by the
use of bronze implements; and, finally, a still higher
development when iron began to be used.
The labours of the Danish archaeologists have resulted in th
formation of a great museum at Copenhagen, and on the specimens
they have found, coupled with those of the drift and bone caves
is based the classification between the main periods or
divisions in the evolution of the human race above referred to.
It was not merely in Scandinavian lands that these results wer
reached; substantially the same discoveries were made in Ireland
and France, in Sardinia and Portugal, in Japan and in Brazil, in
Cuba and in the United States; in fact, as a rule, in nearly
every part of the world which was thoroughly examined.[294]
But from another quarter came a yet more striking indication of
this same evolution. As far back as the year 1829 there were
discovered, in the Lake of Zurich, piles and other antiquities
indicating a former existence of human dwellings, standing in
the water at some distance from the shore; but the usual mixture
of thoughtlessness and dread of new ideas seems to have
prevailed, and nothing was done until about 1853, when new
discoveries of the same kind were followed up vigorously, and
Rutimeyer, Keller, Troyon, and others showed not only in the
Lake of Zurich, but in many other lakes in Switzerland, remains
of former habitations, and, in the midst of these, great numbers
of relics, exhibiting the grade of civilization which those
lakedwellers had attained
Here, too, were accumulated proofs of the upward tendency of the
human race. Implements of polished stone, bone, leather, pottery
of various grades, woven cloth, bones of several kinds of
domestic animals, various sorts of grain, bread which had been
preserved by charring, and a multitude of evidences of progress
never found among the earlier, ruder relics of civilization,
showed yet more strongly that man had arrived here at a stil
higher stage than his predecessor of the drift, cave, and
shell-heap periods, and had gone on from better to better.
Very striking evidences of this upward tendency were found in
each class of implements. As by comparing the chipped flin
implements of the lower and earlier strata in the cave period
with those of the later and upper strata we saw progress, so, in
each of the periods of polished stone, bronze, and iron, we see
by similar comparisons, a steady progress from rude to perfected
implements; and especially is this true in the remains of th
various lake-dwellings, for among these can be traced out
constant increase in the variety of animals domesticated, and
gradual improvements in means of subsistence and in ways of living.
Incidentally, too, a fact, at first sight of small account, but
on reflection exceedingly important, was revealed. The earlier
bronze implements were frequently found to imitate in various
minor respects implements of stone; in other words, forms were
at first given to bronze implements natural in working stone, but
not natural in working bronze. This showed the _direction_ of the
development--that it was upward from stone to bronze, not downwar
from bronze to stone; that it was progress rather than decline.
These investigations were supplemented by similar researches
elsewhere. In many other parts of the world it was found that
lake-dwellers had existed in different grades of civilization,
but all within a certain range, intermediate between the
cave-dwellers and the historic period. To explain this epoch of
the lake-dwellers History came in with the account given b
Herodotus of the lake-dwellings on Lake Prasias, which gave
protection from the armies of Persia. Still more important,
Comparative Ethnography showed that to-day, in various parts of
the world, especially in New Guinea and West Africa, races o
men are living in lake-dwellings built upon piles, and with a
range of implements and weapons strikingly like many of those
discovered in these ancient lake deposits of Switzerland.
In Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, and
other countries, remains of a different sort were also found,
throwing light on this progress. The cromlechs, cranogs, mounds,
and the like, though some of them indicate the work of weaker
tribes pressed upon by stronger, show, as a rule, the same
upward tendency
At a very early period in the history of these discoveries,
various attempts were made--nominally in the interest of
religion, but really in the interest of sundry creeds and
catechisms framed when men knew little or nothing of natural
laws--to break the force of such evidences of the progress an
development of the human race from lower to higher. Out of all
the earlier efforts two may be taken as fairly typical, for they
exhibit the opposition to science as developed under two
different schools of theology, each working in its own way. The
first of these shows great ingenuity and learning, and is
presented by Mr. Southall in his book, published in 1875,
entitled _The Recent Origin of the World_. In this he grapples
first of all with the difficulties presented by the early dat
of Egyptian civilization, and the keynote of his argument is the
statement made by an eminent Egyptologist, at a period before
modern archaeological discoveries were well understood, that
"Egypt laughs the idea of a rude Stone age, a polished Stone age,
a Bronze age, an Iron age, to scorn."
Mr. Southall's method was substantially that of the lat
excellent Mr. Gosse in geology. Mr. Gosse, as the readers o
this work may remember, felt obliged, in the supposed interest
of Genesis, to urge that safety to men's souls might be found i
believing that, six thousand years ago, the Almighty, for some
inscrutable purpose, suddenly set Niagara pouring very near the
spot where it is pouring now; laid the various strata, and
sprinkled the fossils through them like plums through a
pudding; scratched the glacial grooves upon the rocks, and did
a vast multitude of things, subtle and cunning, little and
great, in all parts of the world, required to delude geologist
of modern times into the conviction that all these things wer
the result of a steady progress through long epochs. On a
similar plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning of
his book, as a final solution of the problem, the declaration
that Egypt, with its high civilization in the time of Mena, with
its races, classes, institutions, arrangements, language,
monuments--all indicating an evolution through a vast previous
history--was a sudden creation which came fully made from the
hands of the Creator. To use his own words, "The Egyptians had
no Stone age, and were born civilized."
There is an old story that once on a time a certain jovial King
of France, making a progress through his kingdom, was received
at the gates of a provincial town by the mayor's deputy, wh
began his speech on this wise: "May it please your Majesty,
there are just thirteen reasons why His Honour the Mayor can not
be present to welcome you this morning. The first of these
reasons is that he is dead." On this the king graciously
declared that this first reason was sufficient, and that he
would not trouble the mayor's deputy for the twelve others
So with Mr. Southall's argument: one simple result of scientific
research out of many is all that it is needful to state, and
this is, that in these later years we have a new and convincing
evidence of the existence of prehistoric man in Egypt in his
earliest, rudest beginnings; the very same evidence which we
find in all other parts of the world which have been carefully
examined. This evidence consists of stone implements and weapons
which have been found in Egypt in such forms, at such points,
and in such positions that when studied in connection with thos
found in all other parts of the world, from New Jersey t
California, from France to India, and from England to the
Andaman Islands, they force upon us the conviction that
civilization in Egypt, as in all other parts of the world, was
developed by the same slow process of evolution from the rudest
beginnings.
It is true that men learned in Egyptology had discouraged th
idea of an earlier Stone age in Egypt, and that among these were
Lepsius and Brugsch; but these men were not trained i
prehistoric archaeology; their devotion to the study of the
monuments of Egyptian civilization had evidently drawn them away
from sympathy, and indeed from acquaintance, with the work of
men like Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Nilsson, Troyon, and
Dawkins. But a new era was beginning. In 1867 Worsaae calle
attention to the prehistoric implements found on the borders of
Egypt; two years later Arcelin discussed such stone implements
found beneath the soil of Sakkara and Gizeh, the very focus o
the earliest Egyptian civilization; in the same year Hamy and
Lenormant found such implements washed out from the depths
higher up the Nile at Thebes, near the tombs of the kings; and
in the following year they exhibited more flint implements found
at various other places. Coupled with these discoveries was the
fact that Horner and Linant found a copper knife at twenty-four
feet, and pottery at sixty feet, below the surface. In 1872 Dr.
Reil, director of the baths at Helouan, near Cairo, discovered
implements of chipped flint; and in 1877. Dr Jukes Brown made
similar discoveries in that region. In 1878 Oscar Fraas, summing
up the question, showed that the stone implements were mainly
such as are found in the prehistoric deposits of othe
countries, and that, Zittel having found them in the Libya
Desert, far from the oases, there was reason to suppose that
these implements were used before the region became a desert and
before Egypt was civilized. Two years later Dr. Mook, of
Wurzburg, published a work giving the results of his
investigations, with careful drawings of the rude stone
implements discovered by him in the upper Nile Valley, and it
was evident that, while some of these implements differed
slightly from those before known, the great mass of them were of
the character so common in the prehistoric deposits of other
parts of the world.
A yet more important contribution to this mass of facts was made
by Prof. Henry Haynes, of Boston, who in the winter of 1877 and
1878 began a very thorough investigation of the subject, and
discovered, a few miles east of Cairo, many flint implements.
The significance of Haynes's discoveries was twofold: First,
there were, among these, stone axes like those found in the
French drift beds of St. Acheul, showing that the men who made
or taught men how to make these in Egypt were passing through
the same phase of savagery as that of Quaternary France;
secondly, he found a workshop for making these implements
proving that these flint implements were not brought into Egyp
by invaders, but were made to meet the necessities of the
country. From this first field Prof. Haynes went to Helouan,
north of Cairo, and there found, as Dr. Reil had done, various
worked flints, some of them like those discovered by M. Riviere
in the caves of southern France; thence he went up the Nile to
Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes, began a thorough search in
the Tertiary limestone hills, and found multitudes of chipped
stone implements, some of them, indeed, of original forms, bu
most of forms common in other parts of the world under simila
circumstances, some of the chipped stone axes correspondin
closely to those found in the drift beds of northern France.
All this seemed to show conclusively that, long ages before th
earliest period of Egyptian civilization of which the monuments
of the first dynasties give us any trace, mankind in the Nile
Valley was going through the same slow progress from the period
when, standing just above the brutes, he defended himself with
implements of rudely chipped stone.
But in 1881 came discoveries which settled the question
entirely. In that year General Pitt-Rivers, a Fellow of the
Royal Society and President of the Anthropological Institute,
and J. F. Campbell, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of
England, found implements not only in alluvial deposits,
associated with the bones of the zebra, hyena, and other animal
which have since retreated farther south, but, at Djebel Assas,
near Thebes, they found implements of chipped flint in the hard,
stratified gravel, from six and a half to ten feet below th
surface; relics evidently, as Mr. Campbell says, "beyond
calculation older than the oldest Egyptian temples and tombs."
They certainly proved that Egyptian civilization had not issued
in its completeness, and all at once, from the hand of th
Creator in the time of Mena. Nor was this all. Investigators of
the highest character and ability--men like Hull and Flinders
Petrie--revealed geological changes in Egypt requiring enormous
periods of time, and traces of man's handiwork dating from a
period when the waters in the Nile Valley extended hundreds of
feet above the present level. Thus was ended the contention of
Mr. Southall.
Still another attack upon the new scientific conclusions came
from France, when in 1883 the Abbe Hamard, Priest of the
Oratory, published his _Age of Stone and Primitive Man_. He had
been especially vexed at the arrangement of prehistoric
implements by periods at the Paris Exposition of 1878; he
bitterly complains of this as having an anti-Christian tendency,
and rails at science as "the idol of the day." He attack
Mortillet, one of the leaders in French archaeology, with a
great display of contempt; speaks of the "venom" in books on
prehistoric man generally; complains that the Church is too mild
and gentle with such monstrous doctrines; bewails the
concessions made to science by some eminent preachers; and
foretells his own martyrdom at the hands of men of science.
Efforts like this accomplished little, and a more legitimat
attempt was made to resist the conclusions of archaeology by
showing that knives of stone were used in obedience to a sacred
ritual in Egypt for embalming, and in Judea for circumcision,
and that these flint knives might have had this later origin.
But the argument against the conclusions drawn from this view
was triple: First, as we have seen, not only stone knives, bu
axes and other implements of stone similar to those of
prehistoric period in western Europe were discovered; secondly,
these implements were discovered in the hard gravel drift of a
period evidently far earlier than that of Mena; and, thirdly,
the use of stone implements in Egyptian and Jewish sacred
functions within the historic period, so far from weakening th
force of the arguments for the long and slow development o
Egyptian civilization from the men who used rude flint
implements to the men who built and adorned the great temples of
the early dynasties, is really an argument in favour of that
long evolution. A study of comparative ethnology has made it
clear that the sacred stone knives and implements of the
Egyptian and Jewish priestly ritual were natural survivals of
that previous period. For sacrificial or ritual purposes, th
knife of stone was considered more sacred than the knife of
bronze or iron, simply because it was ancient; just as to-day
in India, Brahman priests kindle the sacred fire not with
matches or flint and steel, but by a process found in the
earliest, lowest stages of human culture--by violently boring a
pointed stick into another piece of wood until a spark comes;
and just as to-day, in Europe and America, the architecture of
the Middle Ages survives as a special religious form in the
erection of our most recent churches, and to such an extent that
thousands on thousands of us feel that we can not worship fitly
unless in the midst of windows, decorations, vessels,
implements, vestments, and ornaments, no longer used for other
purposes, but which have survived in sundry branches of the
Christian Church, and derived a special sanctity from the fact
that they are of ancient origin.
Taking, then, the whole mass of testimony together, even though
a plausible or very strong argument against single evidences may
be made here and there, the force of its combined mass remains,
and leaves both the vast antiquity of man and the evolution of
civilization from its lowest to its highest forms, as proved b
the prehistoric remains of Egypt and so many other countries i
all parts of the world, beyond a reasonable doubt. Most
important of all, the recent discoveries in Assyria have thrown
a new light upon the evolution of the dogma of "the fall of
man." Reverent scholars like George Smith, Sayce, Delitzsch
Jensen, Schrader, and their compeers have found in the Ninevite
records the undoubted source of that form of the fall legend
which was adopted by the Hebrews and by them transmitted to
Christianity.[301]
CHAPTER IX.
THE "FALL OF MAN" AND ETHNOLOGY.
WE have seen that, closely connected with the main lines of
investigation in archaeology and anthropology, there were other
researches throwing much light on the entire subject. In a
previous chapter we saw especially that Lafitau and Jussieu were
among the first to collect and compare facts bearing on the
natural history of man, gathered by travellers in various parts
of the earth, thus laying foundations for the science of
comparative ethnology. It was soon seen that ethnology had most
important bearings upon the question of the material,
intellectual, moral, and religious evolution of the human race;
in every civilized nation, therefore, appeared scholars who
began to study the characteristics of various groups of men as
ascertained from travellers, and to compare the results thus
gained with each other and with those obtained by archaeology.
Thus, more and more clear became the evidences that the tendency
of the race has been upward from low beginnings. It was found
that groups of men still existed possessing characteristics of
those in the early periods of development to whom the drift and
caves and shell-heaps and pile-dwellings bear witness; groups o
men using many of the same implements and weapons, building
their houses in the same way, seeking their food by the same
means, enjoying the same amusements, and going through the same
general stages of culture; some being in a condition corresponding
to the earlier, some to the later, of those early periods.
From all sides thus came evidence that we have still upon the
earth examples of all the main stages in the development of
human civilization; that from the period when man appears little
above the brutes, and with little if any religion in any
accepted sense of the word, these examples can be arranged in an
ascending series leading to the highest planes which humanity
has reached; that philosophic observers may among these examples
study existing beliefs, usages, and institutions back through
earlier and earlier forms, until, as a rule, the whole evolution
can be easily divined if not fully seen. Moreover, the basis of
the whole structure became more and more clear: the fact that
"the lines of intelligence have always been what they are, and
have always operated as they do now; that man has progressed
from the simple to the complex, from the particular to the general."
As this evidence from ethnology became more and more strong, its
significance to theology aroused attention, and naturally mos
determined efforts were made to break its force. On the
Continent the two great champions of the Church in this field
were De Maistre and De Bonald; but the two attempts which may b
especially recalled as the most influential among
English-speaking peoples were those of Whately, Archbishop o
Dublin, and the Duke of Argyll.
First in the combat against these new deductions of science wa
Whately. He was a strong man, whose breadth of thought and
liberality in practice deserve all honour; but these very
qualities drew upon him the distrust of his orthodox brethren
and, while his writings were powerful in the first half of the
present century to break down many bulwarks of unreason, he
seems to have been constantly in fear of losing touch with the
Church, and therefore to have promptly attacked some scientific
reasonings, which, had he been a layman, not holding a brief fo
the Church, he would probably have studied with more care an
less prejudice. He was not slow to see the deeper significance
of archaeology and ethnology in their relations to the
theological conception of "the Fall," and he set the battle in
array against them
His contention was, to use his own words, that "no community
ever did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from
state of utter barbarism into anything that can be called
civilization"; and that, in short, all imperfectly civilized,
barbarous, and savage races are but fallen descendants of race
more fully civilized. This view was urged with his usual
ingenuity and vigour, but the facts proved too strong for him:
they made it clear, first, that many races were without simple
possessions, instruments, and arts which never, probably, could
have been lost if once acquired--as, for example, pottery, the
bow for shooting, various domesticated animals, spinning, the
simplest principles of agriculture, household economy, and the
like; and, secondly, it was shown as a simple matter of fact
that various savage and barbarous tribes _had_ raised themselves
by a development of means which no one from outside could have
taught them; as in the cultivation and improvement of various
indigenous plants, such as the potato and Indian corn among th
Indians of North America; in the domestication of various
animals peculiar to their own regions, such as the llama among
the Indians of south America; in the making of sundry fabrics
out of materials and by processes not found among other nations,
such as the bark cloth of the Polynesians; and in the
development of weapons peculiar to sundry localities, but known
in no others, such as the boomerang in Australia.
Most effective in bringing out the truth were such works as
those of Sir John Lubbock and Tylor; and so conclusive were
they that the arguments of Whately were given up as untenable by
the other of the two great champions above referred to, and an
attempt was made by him to form the diminishing number of
thinking men supporting the old theological view on a new line
of defence.
This second champion, the Duke of Argyll, was a man of wide
knowledge and strong powers in debate, whose high moral sense
was amply shown in his adhesion to the side of the American
Union in the struggle against disunion and slavery, despite the
overwhelming majority against him in the high aristocracy to
which he belonged. As an honest man and close thinker, the duke
was obliged to give up completely the theological view of the
antiquity of man. The whole biblical chronology as held by the
universal Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," he
sacrificed, and gave all his powers in this field to support the
theory of "the Fall." _Noblesse oblige_: the duke and his
ancestors had been for centuries the chief pillars of the Church
of Scotland, and it was too much to expect that he could break
away from a tenet which forms really its "chief cornerstone."
Acknowledging the insufficiency of Archbishop Whately's
argument, the duke took the ground that the lower, barbarous,
savage, brutal races were the remains of civilized races which
in the struggle for existence, had been pushed and driven off to
remote and inclement parts of the earth, where the conditions
necessary to a continuance in their early civilization were
absent; that, therefore, the descendants of primeval, civilized
men degenerated and sank in the scale of culture. To use his own
words, the weaker races were "driven by the stronger to th
woods and rocks," so that they became "mere outcasts of the
human race.
In answer to this, while it was conceded, first, that there hav
been examples of weaker tribes sinking in the scale of culture
after escaping from the stronger into regions unfavourable to
civilization, and, secondly, that many powerful nations have
declined and decayed, it was shown that the men in the most
remote and unfavourable regions have not always been the lowest
in the scale; that men have been frequently found "among the
woods and rocks" in a higher state of civilization than on the
fertile plains, such examples being cited as Mexico, Peru, and
even Scotland; and that, while there were many examples of
special and local decline, overwhelming masses of facts point t
progress as a rule.
The improbability, not to say impossibility, of many of th
conclusions arrived at by the duke appeared more and more
strongly as more became known of the lower tribes of mankind. It
was necessary on his theory to suppose many things which our
knowledge of the human race absolutely forbids us to believe:
for example, it was necessary to suppose that the Australians or
New Zealanders, having once possessed so simple and convenient
an art as that of the potter, had lost every trace of it; and
that the same tribes, having once had so simple a means of
saving labour as the spindle or small stick weighted at one end
for spinning, had given it up and gone back to twisting threads
with the hand. In fact, it was necessary to suppose that one of
the main occupations of man from "the beginning" had been the
forgetting of simple methods, processes, and implements whic
all experience in the actual world teaches us are never entirely
forgotten by peoples who have once acquired them.
Some leading arguments of the duke were overthrown by simple
statements of fact. Thus, his instance of the Eskimo as pushed
to the verge of habitable America, and therefore living in the
lowest depths of savagery, which, even if it were true, by no
means proved a general rule, was deprived of its force by the
simple fact that the Eskimos are by no means the lowest race on
the American continent, and that various tribes far more
centrally and advantageously placed, as, for instance, those in
Brazil, are really inferior to them in the scale of culture.
Again, his statement that "in Africa there appear to be no
traces of any time when the natives were not acquainted with the
use of iron," is met by the fact that from the Nile Valley to
the Cape of Good Hope we find, wherever examination has been
made, the same early stone implements which in all other part
of the world precede the use of iron, some of which would not
have been made had their makers possessed iron. The duke als
tried to show that there were no distinctive epochs of stone,
bronze, and iron, by adducing the fact that some stone
implements are found even in some high civilizations. This is
indeed a fact. We find some few European peasants to-day using
stone mallet-heads; but this proves simply that the old stone
mallet-heads have survived as implements cheap and effective.
The argument from Comparative Ethnology in support of the view
that the tendency of mankind is upward has received strength
from many sources. Comparative Philology shows that in the less
civilized, barbarous, and savage races childish forms of speech
prevail--frequent reduplications and the like, of which we have
survivals in the later and even in the most highly developed
languages. In various languages, too, we find relics of ancient
modes of thought in the simplest words and expressions used for
arithmetical calculations. Words and phrases for this purpose
are frequently found to be derived from the words for hands,
feet, fingers, and toes, just as clearly as in our own language
some of our simplest measures of length are shown by their names
to have been measures of parts of the human body, as the cubit,
the foot, and the like, and therefore to date from a time whe
exactness was not required. To add another out of many examples,
it is found to-day that various rude nations go through the
simplest arithmetical processes by means of pebbles. Into our
own language, through the Latin, has come a word showing that
our distant progenitors reckoned in this way: the word
_calculate_ gives us an absolute proof of this. According to the
theory of the Duke of Argyll, men ages ago used pebbles
(_calculi_) in performing the simplest arithmetical calculation
because we to-day "_calculate_." No reduction to absurdity could
be more thorough. The simple fact must be that we "calculate
because our remote ancestors used pebbles in their arithmetic.
Comparative Literature and Folklore also show among peoples of
a low culture to-day childish modes of viewing nature, and
childish ways of expressing the relations of man to nature, such
as clearly survive from a remote ancestry; noteworthy among
these are the beliefs in witches and fairies, and multitudes of
popular and poetic expressions in the most civilized nations.
So,too, Comparative Ethnography, the basis of Ethnology, shows
in contemporary barbarians and savages a childish love of
playthings and games, of which we have many survivals.
All these facts, which were at first unobserved or observed as
matters of no significance, have been brought into connection
with a fact in biology acknowledged alike by all important
schools; by Agassiz on one hand and by Darwin on the
other--namely, as stated by Agassiz, that "the young states o
each species and group resemble older forms of the same group,"
or, as stated by Darwin, that "in two or more groups o
animals, however much they may at first differ from each othe
in structure and habits, if they pass through closely similar
embryonic stages, we may feel almost assured that they hav
descended from the same parent form, and are therefore closely
related."[308]
CHAPTER X.
THE "FALL OF MAN" AND HISTORY
THE history of art, especially as shown by architecture, in the
noblest monuments of the most enlightened nations of antiquity;
gives abundant proofs of the upward tendency of man from the
rudest and simplest beginnings. Many columns of early Egyptian
temples or tombs are but bundles of Nile reeds slightly
conventionalized in stone; the temples of Greece, including not
only the earliest forms, but the Parthenon itself, while in
parts showing an evolution out of Egyptian and Assyrian
architecture, exhibit frequent reminiscences and even imitations
of earlier constructions in wood; the medieval cathedrals, whil
evolved out of Roman and Byzantine structures, constantly show
unmistakable survivals of prehistoric construction.[310]
So, too, general history has come in, illustrating the unknow
from the known: the development of man in the prehistoric period
from his development within historic times. Nothing is more
evident from history than the fact that weaker bodies of men
driven out by stronger do not necessarily relapse into
barbarism, but frequently rise, even under the most unfavourable
circumstances, to a civilization equal or superior to that from
which they have been banished. Out of very many examples showing
this law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical.
The Slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races
that they gave the modern world a new word to express the most
hopeless servitude, have developed powerful civilizations
peculiar to themselves; the, barbarian tribes who ages ago took
refuge amid the sand-banks and morasses of Holland, have
developed one of the world's leading centres of civilization;
the wretched peasants who about the fifth century took refuge
from invading hordes among the lagoons and mud banks of Venetia,
developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the
wonders of human history; the Puritans, driven from the
civilization of Great Britain to the unfavourable climate, soil,
and circumstances of early New England,--the Huguenots, driven
from France, a country admirably fitted for the highest growth
of civilization, to various countries far less fitted for such
growth,--the Irish peasantry, driven in vast numbers from their
own island to other parts of the world on the whole less fitted
to them--all are proofs that, as a rule, bodies of men once
enlightened, when driven to unfavourable climates and brought
under the most depressing circumstances, not only retain what
enlightenment they have, but go on increasing it. Besides these,
we have such cases as those of criminals banished to various
penal colonies, from whose descendants has been developed a
better morality; and of pirates, like those of the Bounty,
whose descendants, in a remote Pacific island, became sober,
steady citizens. Thousands of examples show the prevalence of
this same rule--that men in masses do not forget the main gains
of their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations,
their tendency is upward.
Another class of historic facts also testifies in the mos
striking manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and
destruction of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessl
vitiated. These catastrophes are seen more and more to be bu
steps in, this development. The crumbling away of the grea
ancient civilizations based upon despotism, whether the
despotism of monarch, priest, or mob--the decline and fall of
Roman civilization, for example, which, in his most remarkable
generalization, Guizot has shown to have been necessary to th
development of the richer civilization of modern Europe; the
terrible struggle and loss of the Crusades, which once appeared
to be a mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in,
with the downfall of feudalism, the beginnings of the
centralizing, civilizing monarchical period; the French
Revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic passion
but now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the
monarchical to the constitutional epoch: all show that even
widespread deterioration and decline--often, indeed, the
greatest political and moral catastrophes--so far from leading
to a fall of mankind, tend in the long run to raise humanity to
higher planes.
Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids, Ethnology
Philology, and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs
of the upward evolution of humanity since the appearance of man
upon our planet.
Nor have these researches been confined to progress in man's
material condition. Far more important evidences have been found
of upward evolution in his family, social, moral, intellectual,
and religious relations. The light thrown on this subject by
such men as Lubbock, Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Draper, Max
Muller, and a multitude of others, despite mistakes, haltings,
stumblings, and occasional following of delusive paths, is among
the greatest glories of the century now ending. From all these
investigators in their various fields, holding no brief for any
system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth, comes the
same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of lower.
The process has been indeed slow and painful, but this does not
prove that it may not become more rapid and less fruitful in
sorrow as humanity goes on.[312]
While, then, it is not denied that many instances of
retrogression can be found, the consenting voice of unbiased
investigators in all lands has declared more and more that the
beginnings of our race must have been low and brutal, and that
the tendency has been upward. To combat this conclusion by
examples of decline and deterioration here and there has become
impossible: as well try to prove that, because in the
Mississippi there are eddies in which the currents flow
northward, there is no main stream flowing southward; or that,
because trees decay and fall, there is no law of upward growt
from germ to trunk, branches, foliage, and fruit.
A very striking evidence that the theological theory had become
untenable was seen when its main supporter in the scientific
field, Von Martius, in the full ripeness of his powers, publicly
declared his conversion to the scientific view.
Yet, while the tendency of enlightened human thought in recent
times is unmistakable, the struggle against the older view is
not yet ended. The bitterness of the Abbe Hamard in France has
been carried to similar and even greater extremes among sundr
Protestant bodies in Europe and America. The simple truth of
history mates it a necessity, unpleasant though it be, to
chronicle two typical examples in the United States.
In the year 1875 a leader in American industrial enterprise
endowed at the capital of a Southern State a university which
bore his name. It was given into the hands of one of the
religious sects most powerful in that region, and a bishop of
that sect became its president. To its chair of Geology was
called Alexander Winchell, a scholar who had already won
eminence as a teacher and writer in that field, a professor
greatly beloved and respected in the two universities with which
he had been connected, and a member of the sect which the
institution of learning above referred to represented.
But his relations to this Southern institution were destined t
be brief. That his lectures at the Vanderbilt University were
learned, attractive, and stimulating, even his enemies were
forced to admit; but he was soon found to believe that there ha
been men earlier than the period as signed to Adam, and even
that all the human race are not descended from Adam. His desire
was to reconcile science and Scripture, and he was now treated
by a Methodist Episcopal Bishop in Tennessee just as, two
centuries before, La Peyrere had been treated, for a similar
effort, by a Roman Catholic vicar-general in Belgium. The
publication of a series of articles on the subject,
contributed by the professor to a Northern religious newspaper
at its own request, brought matters to a climax; for, the
articles having fallen under the notice of a leading
Southwestern organ of the denomination controlling the Vanderbilt
University, the result was a most bitter denunciation of
Prof. Winchell and of his views. Shortly afterward the
professor was told by Bishop McTyeire that "our people are o
the opinion that such views are contrary to the plan of
redemption," and was requested by the bishop to quietly resign
his chair, To this the professor made the fitting reply: "If
the board of trustees have the manliness to dismiss me for cause,
and declare the cause, I prefer that they should do it. No power
on earth could persuade me to resign."
"We do not propose," said the bishop, with quite gratuitous
suggestiveness, "to treat you as the Inquisition treated Galileo."
"But what you propose is the same thing," rejoined Dr. Winchell.
"It is ecclesiastical proscription for an opinion which must be
settled by scientific evidence.
Twenty-four hours later Dr. Winchell was informed that his chair
had been abolished, and its duties, with its salary, added to
those of a colleague; the public were given to understand tha
the reasons were purely economic; the banished scholar was
heaped with official compliments, evidently in hope that he woul
keep silence.
Such was not Dr. Winchell's view. In a frank letter to the
leading journal of the university town he stated the whole
matter. The intolerance-hating press of the country, religious
and secular, did not hold its peace. In vain the authorities of
the university waited for the storm to blow over. It was evident
at last, that a defence must be made, and a local organ of the
sect, which under the editorship of a fellow-professor had always
treated Dr. Winchell's views with the luminous inaccuracy which
usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's teachings,
assumed the task. In the articles which followed, the usual
scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be
"absurd," "vague and unintelligible," "preposterous and
gratuitous." This new champion stated that "the objections drawn
from the fossiliferous strata and the like are met by reference
to the analogy of Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of
adults when they were but a day old, and by the Flood of Noah and
other cataclysms, which, with the constant change of Nature, are
sufficient to account for the phenomena in question"
Under inspiration of this sort the Tennessee Conference of the
religious body in control of the university had already, in
October, 1878, given utterance to its opinion of unsanctified
science as follows: "This is an age in which scientific atheism
having divested itself of the habiliments that most adorn and
dignify humanity, walks abroad in shameless denudation. The
arrogant and impertinent claims of this `science, falsely so
called,' have been so boisterous and persistent, that the
unthinking mass have been sadly deluded; but our university
alone has had the courage to lay its young but vigorous hand upon
the mane of untamed Speculation and say, `We will have no more
of this.'" It is a consolation to know how the result, thus
devoutly sought, has been achieved; for in the "ode" sung a
the laying of the corner-stone of a new theological building of
the same university, in May, 1880, we read:
"Science and Revelation here
In perfect harmony appear,
Guiding young feet along the road
Through grace and Nature up to God."
It is also pleasing to know that, while an institution calling
itself a university thus violated the fundamental principles on
which any institution worthy of the name must be based, anothe
institution which has the glory of being the first in the entire
North to begin something like a university organization--the
State University of Michigan--recalled Dr. Winchell at once to
his former professorship, and honoured itself by maintaining him
in that position, where, unhampered, he was thereafter able to
utter his views in the midst of the largest body of students o
the American Continent.
Disgraceful as this history was to the men who drove out
Dr. Winchell, they but succeeded, as various similar bodies of
men making similar efforts have done, in advancing their supposed
victim to higher position and more commanding influence.[316]
A few years after this suppression of earnest Christian thought
at an institution of learning in the western part of our
Southern States, there appeared a similar attempt in sundry
seaboard States of the South.
As far back as the year 1857 the Presbyterian Synod of
Mississippi passed the following resolution
"_Whereas_, We live in an age in which the most insidious attacks
are made on revealed religion through the natural sciences, and
as it behooves the Church at all times to have men capable of
defending the faith once delivered to the saints;
"_Resolved_, That this presbytery recommend the endowment of a
professorship of Natural Science as connected with revealed
religion in one or more of our theological seminaries."
Pursuant to this resolution such a chair was established in the
theological seminary at Columbia, S. C., and James Woodrow was
appointed professor. Dr. Woodrow seems to have been admirably
fitted for the position--a devoted Christian man, accepting the
Presbyterian standards of faith in which he had been brought up
and at the same time giving every effort to acquaint himsel
with the methods and conclusions of science. To great natural
endowments he added constant labours to arrive at the truth in
this field. Visiting Europe, he made the acquaintance of many of
the foremost scientific investigators, became a student i
university lecture rooms and laboratories, an interested hearer
in scientific conventions, and a correspondent of leading men of
science at home and abroad. As a result, he came to th
conclusion that the hypothesis of evolution is the only one
which explains various leading facts in natural science. This he
taught, and he also taught that such a view is not incompatible
with a true view of the sacred Scriptures.
In 1882 and 1883 the board of directors of the theological
seminary, in fear that "scepticism in the world is using alleged
discoveries in science to impugn the Word of God," requested
Prof. Woodrow to state his views in regard to evolution. The
professor complied with this request in a very powerful address,
which was published and widely circulated, to such effect that
the board of directors shortly afterward passed resolutions
declaring the theory of evolution as defined by Prof. Woodro
not inconsistent with perfect soundness in the faith.
In the year 1884 alarm regarding Dr. Woodrow's teachings began
to show itself in larger proportions, and a minority report was
introduced into the Synod of South Carolina declaring that "th
synod is called upon to decide not upon the question whether the
said views of Dr. Woodrow contradict the Bible in its highest
and absolute sense, but upon the question whether they
contradict the interpretation of the Bible by the Presbyterian
Church in the United States."
Perhaps a more self-condemnatory statement was never presented,
for it clearly recognized, as a basis for intolerance, at least
a possible difference between "the interpretation of the Bible
by the Presbyterian Church" and the teachings of "the Bible in
its highest and absolute sense."
This hostile movement became so strong that, in spite of the
favourable action of the directors of the seminary, and agains
the efforts of a broad-minded minority in the representative
bodies having ultimate charge of the institution, the delegates
from the various synods raised a storm of orthodoxy and drove
Dr. Woodrow from his post. Happily, he was at the same time
professor in the University of South Carolina in the same city
of Columbia, and from his chair in that institution he continued
to teach natural science with the approval of the great majority
of thinking men in that region; hence, the only effect of the
attempt to crush him was, that his position was made higher,
respect for him deeper, and his reputation wider.
In spite of attempts by the more orthodox to prevent students of
the theological seminary from attending his lectures at the
university, they persisted in hearing him; indeed, the
reputation of heresy seemed to enhance his influence.
It should be borne in mind that the professor thus treated had
been one of the most respected and beloved university
instructors in the South during more than a quarter of a
century, and that he was turned out of his position with no
opportunity for careful defence, and, indeed, without even th
formality of a trial. Well did an eminent but thoughtful divine
of the Southern Presbyterian Church declare that "the method of
procedure to destroy evolution by the majority in the Church is
vicious and suicidal," and that "logical dynamite has been used
to put out a supposed fire in the upper stories of our house,
and all the family in the house at that." Wisely, too, did h
refer to the majority as "sowing in the fields of the Church
the thorns of its errors, and cumbering its path with the
_debris_ and ruin of its own folly."
To these recent cases may be added the expulsion of Prof. To
from teaching under ecclesiastical control at Louisville, and
his election to a far more influential chair at Harvar
University; the driving out from the American College at Beyrout
of the young professors who accepted evolution as probable, and
the rise of one of them, Mr. Nimr, to a far more commanding
position than that which he left--the control of three leading
journals at Cairo; the driving out of Robertson Smith from his
position at Edinburgh, and his reception into the far more
important and influential professorship at the English
University of Cambridge; and multitudes of similar cases. From
the days when Henry Dunster, the first President of Harvard
College, was driven from his presidency, as Cotton Mather said,
for "falling into the briers of Antipedobaptism" until now,
the same spirit is shown in all such attempts. In each we hav
generally, on one side, a body of older theologians, who since
their youth have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, sundry
professors who do not wish to rewrite their lectures, and a mass
of unthinking ecclesiastical persons of little or no importance
save in making up a retrograde majority in an ecclesiastical
tribunal; on the other side we have as generally the thinking,
open-minded, devoted men who have listened to the revelation of
their own time as well as of times past, and who are evidently
thinking the future thought of the world.
Here we have survivals of that same oppression of thought by
theology which has cost the modern world so dear; the system
which forced great numbers of professors, under penalty o
deprivation, to teach that the sun and planets revolve about th
earth; that comets are fire-balls flung by an angry God at a
wicked world; that insanity is diabolic possession; that
anatomical investigation of the human frame is sin against the
Holy Ghost; that chemistry leads to sorcery; that taking
interest for money is forbidden by Scripture; that geology must
conform to ancient Hebrew poetry. From the same source came i
Austria the rule of the "Immaculate Oath," under which
university professors, long before the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception was defined by the Church, were obliged to swear to
their belief in that dogma before they were permitted to teach
even arithmetic or geometry; in England, the denunciation o
inoculation against smallpox; in Scotland, the protests against
using chloroform in childbirth as "vitiating the primal curs
against woman"; in France, the use in clerical schools of
historical text-book from which Napoleon was left out; and, in
America, the use of Catholic manuals in which the Inquisition is
declared to have been a purely civil tribunal, or Protestant
manuals in which the Puritans are shown to have been all that w
could now wish they had been.
So, too, among multitudes of similar efforts abroad, we have
during centuries the fettering of professors at English and
Scotch universities by test oaths, subscriptions to articles,
and catechisms without number. In our own country we have had in
a vast multitude of denominational colleges, as the firs
qualification for a professorship, not ability in the subject to
be taught, but fidelity to the particular shibboleth of the
denomination controlling the college or university
Happily, in these days such attempts generally defea
themselves. The supposed victim is generally made a man of mar
by persecution, and advanced to a higher and wider sphere o
usefulness. In withstanding the march of scientific truth, any
Conference, Synod, Board of Commissioners, Board of Trustees, o
Faculty, is but as a nest of field-mice in the path of a steam plough
The harm done to religion in these attempts is far greater than
that done to science; for thereby suspicions are widely spread,
especially among open-minded young men, that the accepte
Christian system demands a concealment of truth, with the
persecution of honest investigators, and therefore must be
false. Well was it said in substance by President McCosh, of
Princeton, that no more sure way of making unbelievers in
Christianity among young men could be devised than preaching to
them that the doctrines arrived at by the great scientific
thinkers of this period are opposed to religion.
Yet it is but justice here to say that more and more there is
evolving out of this past history of oppression a better spirit,
which is making itself manifest with power in the leadin
religious bodies of the world. In the Church of Rome we have
to-day such utterances as those of St. George Mivart, declaring
that the Church must not attempt to interfere with science; tha
the Almighty in the Galileo case gave her a distinct warning
that the priesthood of science must remain with the men of
science. In the Anglican Church and its American daughter we
have the acts and utterances of such men as Archbishop Tait
Bishop Temple, Dean Stanley, Dean Farrar, and many others,
proving that the deepest religious thought is more and more
tending to peace rather than warfare with science; and in the
other churches, especially in America, while there is yet much
to be desired, the welcome extended in many of them to Alexander
Winchell, and the freedom given to views like his, augur well
for a better state of things in the future.
From the science of Anthropology, when rightly viewed as
whole, has come the greatest aid to those who work to advance
religion rather than to promote any particular system of
theology; for Anthropology and its subsidiary sciences show more
and more that man, since coming upon the earth, has risen, from
the period when he had little, if any, idea of a great power
above him, through successive stages of fetichism, shamanism,
and idolatry, toward better forms of belief, making him more and
more accessible to nobler forms of religion. The same sciences
show, too, within the historic period, the same tendency, and
especially within the events covered by our sacred books, a
progress from fetichism, of which so many evidences crop out in
the early Jewish worship as shown in the Old Testament
Scriptures, through polytheism, when Jehovah was but "a god
above all gods," through the period when he was "a jealous
God," capricious and cruel, until he is revealed in such
inspired utterances as those of the nobler Psalms, the great
passages in Isaiah, the sublime preaching of Micah, and, above
all, through the ideal given to the world by Jesus of Nazareth.
Well indeed has an eminent divine of the Church of England in
our own time called on Christians to rejoice over this
evolution, "between the God of Samuel, who ordered infants to
be slaughtered, and the God of the Psalmist, whose tender
mercies are over all his works; between the God of the
Patriarchs, who was always repenting, and the God of th
Apostles, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, with
whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning, between the
God of the Old Testament, who walked in the garden in the cool
of the day, and the God of the New Testament, whom no man hath
seen nor can see; between the God of Leviticus, who was s
particular about the sacrificial furniture and utensils, and the
God of the Acts, who dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
between the God who hardened Pharaoh's heart, and the God who
will have all men to be saved; between the God of Exodus, who is
merciful only to those who love him, and the God of Christ--th
heavenly Father--who is kind unto the unthankful and the evil."
However overwhelming, then, the facts may be which Anthropology,
History, and their kindred sciences may, in the interest of
simple truth, establish against the theological doctrine of
"the Fall"; however completely they may fossilize various
dogmas, catechisms, creeds, confessions, "plans of salvation"
and "schemes of redemption," which have been evolved from the
great minds of the theological period: science, so far from
making inroads on religion, or even upon our Christian
development of it, will strengthen all that is essential in it,
giving new and nobler paths to man's highest aspirations. For
the one great, legitimate, scientific conclusion of anthropology
is, that, more and more, a better civilization of the world,
despite all its survivals of savagery and barbarism, is
developing men and women on whom the declarations of the noble
Psalms, of Isaiah, of Micah, the Sermon on the Mount, the first
great commandment, and the second, which is like unto it, St
Paul's praise of charity and St. James's definition of "pur
religion and undefiled," can take stronger hold for the more
effective and more rapid uplifting of our race.[322]
CHAPTER XI.
FROM "THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR" TO METEOROLOGY
I. GROWTH OF A THEOLOGICAL THEORY.
THE popular beliefs of classic antiquity regarding storms,
thunder, and lightning, took shape in myths representing Vulcan
as forging thunderbolts, Jupiter as flinging them at his
enemies, AEolus intrusting the winds in a bag to AEneas, and the
like. An attempt at their further theological development is seen
in the Pythagorean statement that lightnings are intended to
terrify the damned in Tartarus.
But at a very early period we see the beginning of a scientific
view. In Greece, the Ionic philosophers held that such phenomena
are obedient to law. Plato, Aristotle, and many lesser lights,
attempted to account for them on natural grounds; and their
explanations, though crude, were based upon observation and
thought. In Rome, Lucretius, Seneca, Pliny, and others
inadequate as their statements were, implanted at least the
germs of a science. But, as the Christian Church rose to power
this evolution was checked; the new leaders of thought found, in
the Scriptures recognized by them as sacred, the basis for a ne
view, or rather for a modification of the old view.
This ending of a scientific evolution based upon observation and
reason, and this beginning of a sacred science based upon the
letter of Scripture and on theology, are seen in the utterances
of various fathers in the early Church. As to the general
features of this new development, Tertullian held that sundry
passages of Scripture prove lightning identical with hell-fire;
and this idea was transmitted from generation to generation o
later churchmen, who found an especial support of Tertullian's
view in the sulphurous smell experienced during thunderstorms.
St. Hilary thought the firmament very much lower than the
heavens, and that it was created not only for the support of the
upper waters, but also for the tempering of our atmosphere.[324
St. Ambrose held that thunder is caused by the winds breaking
through the solid firmament, and cited from the prophet Amos the
sublime passage regarding "Him that establisheth the
thunders."[324b] He shows, indeed, some conception of the true
source of rain; but his whole reasoning is limited by variou
scriptural texts. He lays great stress upon the firmament as a
solid outer shell of the universe: the heavens he holds to be
not far outside this outer shell, and argues regarding their
character from St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians and from
the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm. As to "the waters whic
are above the firmament," he takes up the objection of those who
hold that, this outside of the universe being spherical, the
waters must slide off it, especially if the firmament revolves;
and he points out that it is by no means certain that the
_outside_ of the firmament _is_ spherical, and insists that, if it
does revolve, the water is just what is needed to lubricate and
cool its axis.
St. Jerome held that God at the Creation, having spread out the
firmament between heaven and earth, and having separated the
upper waters from the lower, caused the upper waters to be
frozen into ice, in order to keep all in place. A proof of this
view Jerome found in the words of Ezekiel regarding "the
crystal stretched above the cherubim."[324c]
The germinal principle in accordance with which all these
theories were evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world
by St. Augustine in his famous utterance: "Nothing is to be
accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is
that authority than all the powers of the human mind."[325] No
treatise was safe thereafter which did not breathe the spirit
and conform to the letter of this maxim. Unfortunately, what wa
generally understood by the "authority of Scripture" was th
tyranny of sacred books imperfectly transcribed, viewed through
distorting superstitions, and frequently interpreted by party spirit.
Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, i
every field, theological views of science which have never le
to a single truth--which, without exception, have forced mankind
away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for
centuries into abysses of error and sorrow. In meteorology, as
in every other science with which he dealt, Augustine based
everything upon the letter of the sacred text; and it is
characteristic of the result that this man, so great when
untrammelled, thought it his duty to guard especially the whol
theory of the "waters above the heavens."
In the sixth century this theological reasoning was still
further developed, as we have seen, by Cosmas Indicopleustes.
Finding a sanction for the old Egyptian theory of the universe
in the ninth chapter of Hebrews, he insisted that the earth is
a flat parallelogram, and that from its outer edges rise immens
walls supporting the firmament; then, throwing together the
reference to the firmament in Genesis and the outburst of poetry
in the Psalms regarding the "waters that be above the heavens,"
he insisted that over the terrestrial universe are solid arches
bearing a vault supporting a vast cistern "containing the
waters"; finally, taking from Genesis the expression regarding
the "windows of heaven," he insisted that these windows are
opened and closed by the angels whenever the Almighty wishes to
send rain upon the earth or to withhold it.
This was accepted by the universal Church as a vast contribution
to thought; for several centuries it was the orthodox doctrine,
and various leaders in theology devoted themselves to developing
and supplementing it.
About the beginning of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of
Seville, was the ablest prelate in Christendom, and was showing
those great qualities which led to his enrolment among the
saints of the Church. His theological view of science marks an
epoch. As to the "waters above the firmament," Isidore contends
that they must be lower than, the uppermost heaven, though
higher than the lower heaven, because in the one hundred and
forty-eighth Psalm they are mentioned _after_ the heavenly bodie
and the "heaven of heavens," but _before_ the terrestria
elements. As to their purpose, he hesitates between those who
held that they were stored up there by the prescience of Go
for the destruction of the world at the Flood, as the words of
Scripture that "the windows of heaven were opened" seemed t
indicate, and those who held that they were kept there to
moderate the heat of the heavenly bodies. As to the firmament,
he is in doubt whether it envelops the earth "like an eggshell,"
or is merely spread over it "like a curtain"; for he holds that
the passage in the one hundred and fourth Psalm may be used to
support either view
Having laid these scriptural foundations, Isidore shows
considerable power of thought; indeed, at times, when h
discusses the rainbow, rain, hail, snow, and frost, his theorie
are rational, and give evidence that, if he could have broken
away from his adhesion to the letter of Scripture, he might have
given a strong impulse to the evolution of a true science.[326]
About a century later appeared, at the other extremity of
Europe, the second in the trio of theological men of science in
the early Middle Ages--Bede the Venerable. The nucleus of his
theory also is to be found in the accepted view of the "firmament"
and of the "waters above the heavens," derived from Genesis.
The firmament he holds to be spherical, and of a natur
subtile and fiery; the upper heavens, he says, which
contain the angels, God has tempered with ice, lest they inflame
the lower elements. As to the waters placed above the firmament,
lower than the spiritual heavens, but higher than all corporeal
creatures, he says, "Some declare that they were stored ther
for the Deluge, but others, more correctly, that they are
intended to temper the fire of the stars." He goes on with long
discussions as to various elements and forces in Nature, an
dwells at length upon the air, of which he says that the upper,
serene air is over the heavens; while the lower, which is
coarse, with humid exhalations, is sent off from the earth, and
that in this are lightning, hail, Snow, ice, and tempests,
finding proof of this in the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm,
where these are commanded to "praise the Lord from the earth."[327]
So great was Bede's authority, that nearly all the anonymous
speculations of the next following centuries upon these subjects
were eventually ascribed to him. In one of these spurious
treatises an attempt is made to get new light upon the sources
of the waters above the heavens, the main reliance being the
sheet containing the animals let down from heaven, in the visio
of St. Peter. Another of these treatises is still more curious,
for it endeavours to account for earthquakes and tides by means
of the leviathan mentioned in Scripture. This characteristic
passage runs as follows: "Some say that the earth contains the
animal leviathan, and that he holds his tail after a fashion of
his own, so that it is sometimes scorched by the sun, whereupo
he strives to get hold of the sun, and so the earth is shaken by
the motion of his indignation; he drinks in also, at times, such
huge masses of the waves that when he belches them forth all th
seas feel their effect." And this theological theory of the
tides, as caused by the alternate suction and belching of
leviathan, went far and wide.[327]
In the writings thus covered with the name of Bede there is much
showing a scientific spirit, which might have come to somethin
of permanent value had it not been hampered by the supposed
necessity of conforming to the letter of Scripture. It is as
startling as it is refreshing to hear one of these medieval
theorists burst out as follows against those who are content to
explain everything by the power of God: "What is more pitiable
than to say that a thing _is_, because God is able to do it, and
not to show any reason why it is so, nor any purpose for which
it is so; just as if God did everything that he is able to do
You talk like one who says that God is able to make a calf ou
of a log. But _did_ he ever do it? Either, then, show a reason
why a thing is so, or a purpose wherefore it is so, or else
cease to declare it so."[328]
The most permanent contribution of Bede to scientific thought in
this field was his revival of the view that the firmament is
made of ice; and he supported this from the words in the
twenty-sixth chapter of Job, "He bindeth up the waters in his
thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them."
About the beginning of the ninth century appeared the third in
that triumvirate of churchmen who were the oracles of sacred
science throughout the early Middle Ages--Rabanus Maurus, Abbot
of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence. Starting, like all his
predecessors, from the first chapter of Genesis, borrowing here
and there from the ancient philosophers, and excluding
everything that could conflict with the letter of Scripture, he
follows, in his work upon the universe, his two predecessors,
Isidore and Bede, developing especially St. Jerome's theory,
drawn from Ezekiel, that the firmament is strong enough to hold
up the "waters above the heavens," because it is made of ice.
For centuries the authority of these three great teachers was
unquestioned, and in countless manuals and catechisms their
doctrine was translated and diluted for the common mind. But
about the second quarter of the twelfth century a priest,
Honorius of Autun, produced several treatises which show that
thought on this subject had made some little progress. H
explained the rain rationally, and mainly in the modern manner;
with the thunder he is less successful, but insists that the
thunderbolt "is not stone, as some assert." His thinking is
vigorous and independent. Had theorists such as he been many, a
new science could have been rapidly evolved, but the theological
current was too strong.[329]
The strength of this current which overwhelmed the thought o
Honorius is seen again in the work of the Dominican monk, John
of San Geminiano, who in the thirteenth century gave forth his
_Summa de Exemplis_ for the use of preachers in his order. Of its
thousand pages, over two hundred are devoted to illustrations
drawn from the heavens and the elements. A characteristic
specimen is his explanation of the Psalmist's phrase, "The
arrows of the thunder." These, he tells us, are forged out of a
dry vapour rising from the earth and kindled by the heat of the
upper air, which then, coming into contact with a cloud just
turning into rain, "is conglutinated like flour into dough,"
but, being too hot to be extinguished, its particles become
merely sharpened at the lower end, and so blazing arrows,
cleaving and burning everything they touch.[329b]
But far more important, in the thirteenth century, was the fac
that the most eminent scientific authority of that age, Albert
the Great, Bishop of Ratisbon, attempted to reconcile the
speculations of Aristotle with theological views derived from
the fathers. In one very important respect he improved upon the
meteorological views of his great master. The thunderbolt, he
says, is no mere fire, but the product of black clouds
containing much mud, which, when it is baked by the intens
heat, forms a fiery black or red stone that falls from the sky,
tearing beams and crushing walls in its course: such he has seen
with his own eyes.[330
The monkish encyclopedists of the later Middle Ages added little
to these theories. As we glance over the pages of Vincent of
Beauvais, the monk Bartholomew, and William of Conches, we note
only a growing deference to the authority of Aristotle a
supplementing that of Isidore and Bede and explaining sacred
Scripture. Aristotle is treated like a Church father, but
extreme care is taken not to go beyond the great maxim of St.
Augustine; then, little by little, Bede and Isidore fall into
the background, Aristotle fills the whole horizon, and his
utterances are second in sacredness only to the text of Holy Writ.
A curious illustration of the difficulties these medieval
scholars had to meet in reconciling the scientific theories of
Aristotle with the letter of the Bible is seen in the case of
the rainbow. It is to the honour of Aristotle that his
conclusions regarding the rainbow, though slightly erroneous,
were based upon careful observation and evolved by reasoning
alone; but his Christian commentators, while anxious to follo
him, had to bear in mind the scriptural statement that God ha
created the rainbow as a sign to Noah that there should never
again be a Flood on the earth. Even so bold a thinker as
Cardinal d'Ailly, whose speculations as to the geography of the
earth did so much afterward in stimulating Columbus, faltered
before this statement, acknowledging that God alone could
explain it; but suggested that possibly never before the Delug
had a cloud been suffered to take such a position toward the sun
as to cause a rainbow
The learned cardinal was also constrained to believe tha
certain stars and constellations have something to do in causing
the rain, since these would best explain Noah's foreknowledge
of the Deluge. In connection with this scriptural doctrine of
winds came a scriptural doctrine of earthquakes: they wer
believed to be caused by winds issuing from the earth, and this
view was based upon the passage in the one hundred and
thirty-fifth Psalm, "He bringeth the wind out of his treasuries."[331]
Such were the main typical attempts during nearly fourteen
centuries to build up under theological guidance and within
scriptural limitations a sacred science of meteorology. But
these theories were mainly evolved in the effort to establish a
basis and general theory of phenomena: it still remained to
account for special manifestations, and here came a twofol
development of theological thought.
On one hand, these phenomena were attributed to the Almighty,
and, on the other, to Satan. As to the first of these theories,
we constantly find the Divine wrath mentioned by the earlier
fathers as the cause of lightning, hailstorms, hurricanes, an
the like.
In the early days of Christianity we see a curious struggle
between pagan and Christian belief upon this point. Near the
close of the second century the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his
effort to save the empire, fought a hotly contested battle with
the Quadi, in what is now Hungary. While the issue of this great
battle was yet doubtful there came suddenly a blinding storm
beating into the faces of the Quadi, and this gave the Roman
troops the advantage, enabling Marcus Aurelius to win
decisive victory. Votaries of each of the great religions
claimed that this storm was caused by the object of their own
adoration. The pagans insisted that Jupiter had sent the storm
in obedience to their prayers, and on the Antonine Column at
Rome we may still see the figure of Olympian Jove casting his
thunderbolts and pouring a storm of rain from the open heavens
against the Quadi. On the other hand, the Christians insisted
that the storm had been sent by Jehovah in obedience to _their_
prayers; and Tertullian, Eusebius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St.
Jerome were among those who insisted upon this meteorological
miracle; the first two, indeed, in the fervour of thei
arguments for its reality, allowing themselves to be carried
considerably beyond exact historical truth.[332]
As time went on, the fathers developed this view more and mor
from various texts in the Jewish and Christian sacred books,
substituting for Jupiter flinging his thunderbolts the Almight
wrapped in thunder and sending forth his lightnings. Through the
Middle Ages this was fostered until it came to be accepted as a
mere truism, entering into all medieval thinking, and was still
further developed by an attempt to specify the particular sin
which were thus punished. Thus even the rational Florentin
historian Villani ascribed floods and fires to the "too grea
pride of the city of Florence and the ingratitude of th
citizens toward God," which, "of course," says a recent
historian, "meant their insufficient attention to the
ceremonies of religion."[332b]
In the thirteenth century the Cistercian monk, Cesarius of
Heisterbach, popularized the doctrine in central Europe. His
rich collection of anecdotes for the illustration of religiou
truths was the favourite recreative reading in the convents fo
three centuries, and exercised great influence over the thought
of the later Middle Ages. In this work he relates several
instances of the Divine use of lightning, both for rescue and
for punishment. Thus he tells us how the steward (_cellerarius_)
of his own monastery was saved from the clutch of a robber by a
clap of thunder which, in answer to his prayer, burst suddenly
from the sky and frightened the bandit from his purpose: how, in
a Saxon theatre, twenty men were struck down, while a priest
escaped, not because he was not a greater sinner than the rest,
but because the thunderbolt had respect for his profession! It
is Cesarius, too, who tells us the story of the priest of
Treves, struck by lightning in his own church, whither he had
gone to ring the bell against the storm, and whose sins were
revealed by the course of the lightning, for it tore his clothes
from him and consumed certain parts of his body, showing that
the sins for which he was punished were vanity and unchastity.[333]
This mode of explaining the Divine interference more minutely i
developed century after century, and we find both Catholics and
Protestants assigning as causes of unpleasant meteorological
phenomena whatever appears to them wicked or even unorthodox.
Among the English Reformers, Tyndale quotes in this kind of
argument the thirteenth chapter of I. Samuel, showing that, when
God gave Israel a king, it thundered and rained. Archbishop
Whitgift, Bishop Bale, and Bishop Pilkington insisted on the
same view. In Protestant Germany, about the same period,
Plieninger took a dislike to the new Gregorian calendar and
published a volume of _Brief Reflections_, in which he insisted
that the elements had given utterance to God's anger against it,
calling attention to the fact that violent storms raged over
almost all Germany during the very ten days which the Pope had
taken out for the correction of the year, and that great flood
began with the first days of the corrected year.[333b]
Early in the seventeenth century, Majoli, Bishop of Voltoraria,
in southern Italy, produced his huge work _Dies Canicularii_, or
Dog Days, which remained a favourite encyclopedia in Catholi
lands for over a hundred years. Treating of thunder and
lightning, he compares them to bombs against the wicked, and
says that the thunderbolt is "an exhalation condensed and
cooked into stone," and that "it is not to be doubted that, of
all instruments of God's vengeance, the thunderbolt is the
chief"; that by means of it Sennacherib and his army were
consumed; that Luther was struck by lightning in his youth as a
caution against departing from the Catholic faith; that
blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking are the sins to which this
punishment is especially assigned, and he cites the case of
Dathan and Abiram. Fifty years later the Jesuit Stengel
developed this line of thought still further in four thick
quarto volumes on the judgments of God, adding an elaborate
schedule for the use of preachers in the sermons of an entire
year. Three chapters were devoted to thunder, lightning, and
storms. That the author teaches the agency in these of
diabolical powers goes without saying; but this can only act,
he declares, by Divine permission, and the thunderbolt is always
the finger of God, which rarely strikes a man save for his sins,
and the nature of the special sin thus punished may be inferred
from the bodily organs smitten. A few years later, in Protestant
Swabia, Pastor Georg Nuber issued a volume of "weather-sermons,"
in which he discusses nearly every sort of elemental
disturbances--storms, floods, droughts, lightning, and
hail. These, he says, come direct from God for human sins, yet
no doubt with discrimination, for there are five sins which God
especially punishes with lightning and hail--namely,
impenitence, incredulity, neglect of the repair of churches,
fraud in the payment of tithes to the clergy, and oppression of
subordinates, each of which points he supports with a mass of
scriptural texts.[334]
This doctrine having become especially precious both to
Catholics and to Protestants, there were issued handbooks of
prayers against bad weather: among these was the _Spiritual
Thunder and Storm Booklet_, produced in 1731 by a Protestan
scholar, Stoltzlin, whose three or four hundred pages of praye
and song, "sighs for use when it lightens fearfully," an
"cries of anguish when the hailstorm is drawing on," show a
wonderful adaptability to all possible meteorological
emergencies. The preface of this volume is contributed by Prof
Dilherr, pastor of the great church of St. Sebald at Nuremberg,
who, in discussing the Divine purposes of storms, adds to the
three usually assigned--namely, God's wish to manifest his
power, to display his anger, and to drive sinners to
repentance--a fourth, which, he says, is that God may show us "with
what sort of a stormbell he will one day ring in the last judgment."
About the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century we
find, in Switzerland, even the eminent and rational Professor of
Mathematics, Scheuchzer, publishing his _Physica Sacra_, with the
Bible as a basis, and forced to admit that the elements, in the
most literal sense, utter the voice of God. The same pressur
was felt in New England. Typical are the sermons of Increase
Mather on _The Voice of God in Stormy Winds_. He especially lays
stress on the voice of God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind,
and upon the text, "Stormy wind fulfilling his word." He
declares, "When there are great tempests, the angels oftentimes
have a hand therein,... yea, and sometimes evil angels." He
gives several cases of blasphemers struck by lightning, and
says, "Nothing can be more dangerous for mortals than to
contemn dreadful providences, and, in particular, dreadful tempests."
His distinguished son, Cotton Mather, disentangled himself
somewhat from the old view, as he had done in the interpretation
of comets. In his _Christian Philosopher_, his _Thoughts for the
Day of Rain_, and his _Sermon preached at the Time of the Late
Storm_ (in 1723), he is evidently tending toward the modern view.
Yet, from time to time, the older view has reasserted itself,
and in France, as recently as the year 1870, we find the Bishop
of Verdun ascribing the drought afflicting his diocese to the
sin of Sabbath-breaking.[335]
This theory, which attributed injurious meteorological
phenomnena mainly to the purposes of God, was a natural
development, and comparatively harmless; but at a very earl
period there was evolved another theory, which, having been
ripened into a doctrine, cost the earth dear indeed. Never,
perhaps, in the modern world has there been a dogma more
prolific of physical, mental, and moral agony throughout whole
nations and during whole centuries. This theory, its development
by theology, its fearful results to mankind, and its destruction
by scientific observation and thought, will next be considered
II. DIABOLIC AGENCY IN STORMS
While the fathers and schoolmen were labouring to deduce a
science of meteorology from our sacred books, there oozed up in
European society a mass of traditions and observances which had
been lurking since the days of paganism; and, although here and
there appeared a churchman to oppose them, the theologians and
ecclesiastics ere long began to adopt them and to clothe them
with the authority of religion.
Both among the pagans of the Roman Empire and among the
barbarians of the North the Christian missionaries had found it
easier to prove the new God supreme than to prove the old gods
powerless. Faith in the miracles of the new religion seemed to
increase rather than to diminish faith in the miracles of the
old; and the Church at last began admitting the latter as facts,
but ascribing them to the devil. Jupiter and Odin sank into the
category of ministers of Satan, and transferred to that master
all their former powers. A renewed study of Scripture by
theologians elicited overwhelming proofs of the truth of this
doctrine. Stress was especially laid on the declaration o
Scripture, "The gods of the heathen are devils."[336] Supported
by this and other texts, it soon became a dogma. So strong was
the hold it took, under the influence of the Church, that not
until late in the seventeenth century did its substantial truth
begin to be questioned.
With no field of action had the sway of the ancient deities bee
more identified than with that of atmospheric phenomena. The
Roman heard Jupiter, and the Teuton heard Thor, in the thunder.
Could it be doubted that these powerful beings would now take
occasion, unless hindered by the command of the Almighty, to
vent their spite against those who had deserted their altars
Might not the Almighty himself be willing to employ the malice
of these powers of the air against those who had offended him?
It was, indeed, no great step, for those whose simple fait
accepted rain or sunshine as an answer to their prayers, to
suspect that the untimely storms or droughts, which baffled
their most earnest petitions, were the work of the archenemy,
"the prince of the power of the air."
The great fathers of the Church had easily found warrant for
this doctrine in Scripture. St. Jerome declared the air to be
full of devils, basing this belief upon various statements in
the prophecies of Isaiah and in the Epistle to the Ephesians.
St. Augustine held the same view as beyond controversy.[337]
During the Middle Ages this doctrine of the diabolical origin of
storms went on gathering strength. Bede had full faith in it,
and narrates various anecdotes in support of it. St. Thomas
Aquinas gave it his sanction, saying in his all authoritativ
_Summa_, "Rains and winds, and whatsoever occurs by local impulse
alone, can be caused by demons." "It is," he says, "a dogma of
faith that the demons can produce wind, storms, and rain of fire
from heaven."
Albert the Great taught the same doctrine, and showed how a
certain salve thrown into a spring produced whirlwinds. The
great Franciscan--the "seraphic doctor"--St. Bonaventura,
whose services to theology earned him one of the highest place
in the Church, and to whom Dante gave special honour in
paradise, set upon this belief his high authority. The lives o
the saints, and the chronicles of the Middle Ages, were filled
with it. Poetry and painting accepted the idea and developed it.
Dante wedded it to verse, and at Venice this thought may still
be seen embodied in one of the grand pictures of Bordone: a
shipload of demons is seen approaching Venice in a storm,
threatening destruction to the city, but St. Mark, St. George, and
St. Nicholas attack the vessel, and disperse the hellish crew.[338]
The popes again and again sanctioned this doctrine, and it was
amalgamated with various local superstitions, pious
imaginations, and interesting arguments, to strike the fancy of
the people at large. A strong argument in favour of a diabolical
origin of the thunderbolt was afforded by the eccentricities of
its operation. These attracted especial attention in the Middle
Ages, and the popular love of marvel generalized isolated
phenomena into rules. Thus it was said that the lightnin
strikes the sword in the sheath, gold in the purse, the foot i
the shoe, leaving sheath and purse and shoe unharmed; that it
consumes a human being internally without injuring the skin;
that it destroys nets in the water, but not on the land; that it
kills one man, and leaves untouched another standing beside him;
that it can tear through a house and enter the earth without
moving a stone from its place; that it injures the heart of
tree, but not the bark; that wine is poisoned by it, while
poisons struck by it lose their venom; that a man's hair may be
consumed by it and the man be unhurt.[338b]
These peculiar phenomena, made much of by the allegorizing
sermonizers of the day, were used in moral lessons from every
pulpit. Thus the Carmelite, Matthias Farinator, of Vienna, who
at the Pope's own instance compiled early in the fifteent
century that curious handbook of illustrative examples for
preachers, the _Lumen Animae_, finds a spiritual analogue fo
each of these anomalies.[338c]
This doctrine grew, robust and noxious, until, in the fifteenth
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, we find its bloom in a
multitude of treatises by the most learned of the Catholic an
Protestant divines, and its fruitage in the torture chambers and
on the scaffolds throughout Christendom. At the Reformation
period, and for nearly two hundred years afterward, Catholics
and Protestants vied with each other in promoting this growth.
John Eck, the great opponent of Luther, gave to the world an
annotated edition of Aristotle's _Physics_, which was lon
authoritative in the German universities; and, though the tex
is free from this doctrine, the woodcut illustrating the earth's
atmosphere shows most vividly, among the clouds of mid-air, th
devils who there reign supreme.[339]
Luther, in the other religious camp, supported the superstition
even more zealously, asserting at times his belief that the
winds themselves are only good or evil spirits, and declaring
that a stone thrown into a certain pond in his native region
would cause a dreadful storm because of the devils, kept
prisoners there.[339b]
Just at the close of the same century, Catholics and Protestants
welcomed alike the great work of Delrio. In this, the power of
devils over the elements is proved first from the Holy
Scriptures, since, he declares, "they show that Satan brought
fire down from heaven to consume the servants and flocks of Job
and that he stirred up a violent wind, which overwhelmed in ruin
the sons and daughters of Job at their feasting." Next, Delrio
insists on the agreement of all the orthodox fathers, that i
was the devil himself who did this, and attention is called to
the fact that the hail with which the Egyptians were punished is
expressly declared in Holy Scripture to have been brought by the
evil angels. Citing from the Apocalypse, he points to the four
angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back
the winds and preventing their doing great damage to mortals;
and he dwells especially upon the fact that the devil is called
by the apostle a "prince of the power of the air." He then goes
on to cite the great fathers of the Church--Clement, Jerome,
Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.[340]
This doctrine was spread not only in ponderous treatises, but in
light literature and by popular illustrations. In the _Compendium
Maleficarum_ of the Italian monk Guacci, perhaps the most amusing
book in the whole literature of witchcraft, we may see the
witch, _in propria persona_, riding the diabolic goat through the
clouds while the storm rages around and beneath her; and we may
read a rich collection of anecdotes, largely contemporary, which
establish the required doctrine beyond question.
The first and most natural means taken against this work of
Satan in the air was prayer; and various petitions are to be
found scattered through the Christian liturgies--some very
beautiful and touching. This means of escape has been relied
upon, with greater or less faith, from those days to these.
Various medieval saints and reformers, and devoted men in al
centuries, from St. Giles to John Wesley, have used it with
results claimed to be miraculous. Whatever theory any thinking
man may hold in the matter, he will certainly not venture a
reproachful word: such prayers have been in all ages a natural
outcome of the mind of man in trouble.[340b]
But against the "power of the air" were used other means of a
very different character and tendency, and foremost among thes
was exorcism. In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope
Gregory XIII, the formula is given: "I, a priest of Christ,...
do command ye, most foul spirits, who do stir up these
clouds,... that ye depart from them, and disperse yourselves
into wild and untilled places, that ye may be no longer able to
harm men or animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever is
designed for human use." But this is mild, indeed, compared to
some later exorcisms, as when the ritual runs: "All the people
shall rise, and the priest, turning toward the clouds, shall
pronounce these words: `I exorcise ye, accursed demons, who have
dared to use, for the accomplishment of your iniquity, those
powers of Nature by which God in divers ways worketh good to
mortals; who stir up winds, gather vapours, form clouds, an
condense them into hail.... I exorcise ye,... that ye relinquish
the work ye have begun, dissolve the hail, scatter the clouds,
disperse the vapours, and restrain the winds.'" The rubric goes
on to order that then there shall be a great fire kindled in an
open place, and that over it the sign of the cross shall be
made, and the one hundred and fourteenth Psalm chanted, while
malodorous substances, among them sulphur and asafoetida, shall
be cast into the flames. The purpose seems to have been
literally to "smoke out" Satan.[341]
Manuals of exorcisms became important--some bulky quartos,
others handbooks. Noteworthy among the latter is one by the
Italian priest Locatelli, entitled _Exorcisms most Powerful an
Efficacious for the Dispelling of Aerial Tempests, whether
raised by Demons at their own Instance or at the Beck of some
Servant of the Devil_.[341b]
The Jesuit Gretser, in his famous book on _Benedictions and
Maledictions_, devotes a chapter to this subject, dismissing
summarily the scepticism that questions the power of devils over
the elements, and adducing the story of Job as conclusive.[341c]
Nor was this theory of exorcism by any means confined to the
elder Church. Luther vehemently upheld it, and prescribe
especially the first chapter of St. John's gospel as o
unfailing efficacy against thunder and lightning, declaring that
he had often found the mere sign of the cross, with the text,
"The word was made flesh," sufficient to put storms to flight.[342]
From the beginning of the Middle Ages until long after th
Reformation the chronicles give ample illustration of th
successful use of such exorcisms. So strong was the belief in
them that it forced itself into minds comparatively rational,
and found utterance in treatises of much importance.
But, since exorcisms were found at times ineffectual, other
means were sought, and especially fetiches of various sorts. One
of the earliest of these appeared when Pope Alexander I,
according to tradition, ordained that holy water should be kept
in churches and bedchambers to drive away devils.[342b] Another
safeguard was found in relics, and of similar efficacy were the
so-called "conception billets" sold by the Carmelite monks. They
contained a formula upon consecrated paper, at which the devil
might well turn pale. Buried in the corner of a field, one of
these was thought to give protection against bad weather and
destructive insects.[342c]
But highest in repute during centuries was the _Agnus Dei_--a
piece of wax blessed by the Pope's own hand, and stamped with
the well-known device representing the "Lamb of God." Its
powers were so marvellous that Pope Urban V thought three of
these cakes a fitting gift from himself to the Greek Emperor. In
the Latin doggerel recounting their virtues, thei
meteorological efficacy stands first, for especial stress is
laid on their power of dispelling the thunder. The stress thus
laid by Pope Urban, as the infallible guide of Christendom, on
the efficacy of this fetich, gave it great value throughout
Europe, and the doggerel verses reciting its virtues sank deep
into the popular mind. It was considered a most potent means o
dispelling hail, pestilence, storms, conflagrations, and
enchantments; and this feeling was deepened by the rules and
rites for its consecration. So solemn was the matter, that the
manufacture and sale of this particular fetich was, by a papal
bull of 1471, reserved for the Pope himself, and he only
performed the required ceremony in the first and seventh years
of his pontificate. Standing unmitred, he prayed: "O God,... we
humbly beseech thee that thou wilt bless these waxen forms,
figured with the image of an innocent lamb,... that, at the
touch and sight of them, the faithful may break forth into
praises, and that the crash of hailstorms, the blast of
hurricanes, the violence of tempests, the fury of winds, and the
malice of thunderbolts may be tempered, and evil spirits flee
and tremble before the standard of thy holy cross, which is
graven upon them."[343]
Another favourite means with the clergy of the older Church for
bringing to naught the "power of the air," was found in great
processions bearing statues, relics, and holy emblems through
the streets. Yet even these were not always immediately
effective. One at Liege, in the thirteenth century, thrice
proved unsuccessful in bringing rain, when at last it was found
that the image of the Virgin had been forgotten! A new procession
was at once formed, the _Salve Regina_ sung, and the rain came
down in such torrents as to drive the devotees to shelter.[344]
In Catholic lands this custom remains to this day, and ver
important features in these processions are the statues and the
reliquaries of patron saints. Some of these excel in bringing
sunshine, others in bringing rain. The Cathedral of Chartres is
so fortunate as to possess sundry relics of St. Taurin
especially potent against dry weather, and some of St. Piat,
very nearly as infallible against wet weather. In certain
regions a single saint gives protection alternately against wet
and dry weather--as, for example, St. Godeberte at Noyon.
Against storms St. Barbara is very generally considered the most
powerful protectress; but, in the French diocese of Limoges,
Notre Dame de Crocq has proved a most powerful rival, for when,
a few years since, all the neighbouring parishes were ravaged by
storms, not a hailstone fell in the canton which she protected.
In the diocese of Tarbes, St. Exupere is especially invoked
against hail, peasants flocking from all the surrounding countr
to his shrine.[344b]
But the means of baffling the powers of the air which came to be
most widely used was the ringing of consecrated church bells.
This usage had begun in the time of Charlemagne, and there is
extant a prohibition of his against the custom of baptizing
bells and of hanging certain tags[344c] on their tongues as a
protection against hailstorms; but even Charlemagne was
powerless against this current of medieval superstition.
Theological reasons were soon poured into it, and in the year
968 Pope John XIII gave it the highest ecclesiastical sanction
by himself baptizing the great bell of his cathedral church, th
Lateran, and christening it with his own name.[345]
This idea was rapidly developed, and we soon find it supporte
in ponderous treatises, spread widely in sermons, an
popularized in multitudes of inscriptions cast upon the bells
themselves. This branch of theological literature may still be
studied in multitudes of church towers throughout Europe. A bell
at Basel bears the inscription, "Ad fugandos demones." Another,
in Lugano, declares "The sound of this bell vanquishes
tempests, repels demons, and summons men." Another, at the
Cathedral of Erfurt, declares that it can "ward off lightning
and malignant demons." A peal in the Jesuit church at the
university town of Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, "They praise
God, put to flight the clouds, affright the demons, and call the
people." This is dated 1634. Another bell in that part of France
declares, "It is I who dissipate the thunders"(_Ego sum qui
dissipo tonitrua_).[345b]
Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a
doggerel couplet, which may be thus translated:
"On the devil my spite I'll vent,
And, God helping, bad weather prevent."[345c
Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous Latin
Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of
bells. Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler
Sleidan, gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle
of the sixteenth century:
"In lyke sorte [as churches] are the belles used. And first,
forsouth, they must hange so, as the Byshop may goe round about
them. Whiche after he hath sayde certen Psalmes, he
consecrateth water and salte, and mingleth them together,
wherwith he washeth the belle diligently both within and
without, after wypeth it drie, and with holy oyle draweth in it
the signe of the crosse, and prayeth God, that whan they shall
rynge or sounde that bell, all the disceiptes of the devyll ma
vanyshe away, hayle, thondryng, lightening, wyndes, and
tempestes, and all untemperate weathers may be aswaged. Whan he
hath wipte out the crosse of oyle wyth a linen cloth, he maket
seven other crosses in the same, and within one only. After
saying certen Psalmes, he taketh a payre of sensours and senseth
the bel within, and prayeth God to sende it good lucke. In many
places they make a great dyner, and kepe a feast as it were at
a solemne wedding."[346]
These bell baptisms became matters of great importance. Popes
kings, and prelates were proud to stand as sponsors. Four of the
bells at the Cathedral of Versailles having been destroye
during the French Revolution, four new ones were baptized, on
the 6th of January, 1824, the Voltairean King, Louis XVIII, and
the pious Duchess d'Angouleme standing as sponsors.
In some of these ceremonies zeal appears to have outrun
knowledge, and one of Luther's stories, at the expense of the
older Church, was that certain authorities thus christened a
bell "Hosanna," supposing that to be the name of a woman.
To add to the efficacy of such baptisms, water was sometimes
brought from the river Jordan.[346b]
The prayers used at bell baptisms fully recognise this doctrine
The ritual of Paris embraces the petition that, "whensoever
this bell shall sound, it shall drive away the malign influences
of the assailing spirits, the horror of their apparitions, the
rush of whirlwinds, the stroke of lightning, the harm of
thunder, the disasters of storms, and all the spirits of the
tempest." Another prayer begs that "the sound of this bell may
put to flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men"; and others
vary the form but not the substance of this petition. The grea
Jesuit theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the realit
of this baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of
casuistry suited to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy
in the warfare against heretics.[347]
Forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned
directly by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was
everywhere taken for granted.[347b] The development of this ide
in the older Church was too strong to be resisted;[347c] but, a
a rule, the Protestant theologians of the Reformation, while
admitting that storms were caused by Satan and his legions
opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of their
influence in dispersing storms. Luther, while never doubting
that troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils,
regarded with contempt the idea that the demons were so childis
as to be scared by the clang of bells; his theory made the
altogether too powerful to be affected by means so trivial. The
great English Reformers, while also accepting very generally the
theory of diabolic interference in storms, reproved strongly th
baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a sacrament and
involving blasphemy. Bishop Hooper declared reliance upon bells
to drive away tempests, futile. Bishop Pilkington, while arguing
that tempests are direct instruments of God's wrath, is very
severe against using "unlawful means," and among these he names
"the hallowed bell"; and these opinions were very generally
shared by the leading English clergy.[348]
Toward the end of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony
strictly forbade the ringing of bells against storms, urging
penance and prayer instead; but the custom was not so easily
driven out of the Protestant Church, and in some quarters wa
developed a Protestant theory of a rationalistic sort, ascribing
the good effects of bell-ringing in storms to the calling
together of the devout for prayer or to the suggestion of
prayers during storms at night. As late as the end of the
seventeenth century we find the bells of Protestant churches in
northern Germany rung for the dispelling of tempests. In
Catholic Austria this bell-ringing seems to have become a
nuisance in the last century, for the Emperor Joseph II found it
necessary to issue an edict against it; but this doctrine had
gained too large headway to be arrested by argument or edict,
and the bells may be heard ringing during storms to this day i
various remote districts in Europe.[348b] For this was no mer
superficial view. It was really part of a deep theological
current steadily developed through the Middle Ages, the
fundamental idea of the whole being the direct influence of the
bells upon the "Power of the Air"; and it is perhaps worth our
while to go back a little and glance over the coming of this
current into the modern world. Having grown steadily through the
Middle Ages, it appeared in full strength at the Reformation
period; and in the sixteenth century Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of
Upsala and Primate of Sweden, in his great work on the northern
nations, declares it a well-established fact that cities and
harvests may be saved from lightning by the ringing of bells and
the burning of consecrated incense, accompanied by prayers; and
he cautions his readers that the workings of the thunderbolt are
rather to be marvelled at than inquired into. Even as late as
1673 the Franciscan professor Lealus, in Italy, in a schoolbook
which was received with great applause in his region, taught
unhesitatingly the agency of demons in storms, and the power of
bells over them, as well as the portentousness of comets and the
movement of the heavens by angels. He dwells especially, too,
upon the perfect protection afforded by the waxen _Agnus Dei_. How
strong this current was, and how difficult even fo
philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that bot
Descartes and Francis Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting
the fact, and suggesting very mildly that the bells may
accomplish this purpose by the concussion of the air.[349]
But no such moderate doctrine sufficed, and the renowned Bishop
Binsfeld, of Treves, in his noted treatise on the credibility of
the confessions of witches, gave an entire chapter to the effec
of bells in calming atmospheric disturbances. Basing his general
doctrine upon the first chapter of Job and the second chapter of
Ephesians, he insisted on the reality of diabolic agency in
storms; and then, by theological reasoning, corroborated by the
statements extorted in the torture chamber, he showed the
efficacy of bells in putting the hellish legions to flight.[350]
This continued, therefore, an accepted tenet, developed in every
nation, and coming to its climax near the end of the seventeenth
century. At that period--the period of Isaac Newton--Father
Augustine de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome,
published under the highest Church authority his lectures upo
meteorology. Coming from the centre of Catholic Christendom, at
so late a period, they are very important as indicating what had
been developed under the influence of theology during nearl
seventeen hundred years. This learned head of a great college at
the heart of Christendom taught that "the surest remedy against
thunder is that which our Holy Mother the Church practises,
namely, the ringing of bells when a thunderbolt impends: thence
follows a twofold effect, physical and moral--a physical,
because the sound variously disturbs and agitates the air, and
by agitation disperses the hot exhalations and dispels the
thunder; but the moral effect is the more certain, because by
the sound the faithful are stirred to pour forth their prayers,
by which they win from God the turning away of the thunderbolt."
Here we see in this branch of thought, as in so many others, at
the close of the seventeenth century, the dawn of rationalism.
Father De Angelis now keeps demoniacal influence in the
background. Little, indeed, is said of the efficiency of bell
in putting to flight the legions of Satan: the wise professor is
evidently preparing for that inevitable compromise which we see
in the history of every science when it is clear that it can no
longer be suppressed by ecclesiastical fulminations.[350b]
III. THE AGENCY OF WITCHES
But, while this comparatively harmless doctrine of thwarting the
powers of the air by fetiches and bell-ringing was developed,
there were evolved another theory, and a series of practices
sanctioned by the Church, which must forever be considered as
among the most fearful calamities in human history. Indeed, fe
errors have ever cost so much shedding of innocent blood over
such wide territory and during so many generations. Out of the
old doctrine--pagan and Christian--of evil agency in
atmospheric phenomena was evolved the belief that certain men,
women, and children may secure infernal aid to produc
whirlwinds, hail, frosts, floods, and the like.
As early as the ninth century one great churchman, Agobard,
Archbishop of Lyons, struck a heavy blow at this superstition.
His work, _Against the Absurd Opinion of the Vulgar touching
Hail and Thunder_, shows him to have been one of the most devoted
apostles of right reason whom human history has known. By
argument and ridicule, and at times by a lofty eloquence, he
attempted to breast this tide. One passage is of historical
significance. He declares: "The wretched world lies now under
the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians o
such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen
to believe."[351]
All in vain; the tide of superstition continued to roll on;
great theologians developed it and ecclesiastics favoured it;
until as we near the end of the medieval period the infallible
voice of Rome is heard accepting it, and clinching this belief
into the mind of Christianity. For, in 1437, Pope Eugene IV, b
virtue of the teaching power conferred on him by the Almighty,
and under the divine guarantee against any possible error in the
exercise of it, issued a bull exhorting the inquisitors of
heresy and witchcraft to use greater diligence against the human
agents of the Prince of Darkness, and especially against those
who have the power to produce bad weather. In 1445 Pope Eugene
returned again to the charge, and again issued instructions and
commands infallibly committing the Church to the doctrine. Bu
a greater than Eugene followed, and stamped the idea yet mor
deeply into the mind of the Church. On the 7th of December,
1484, Pope Innocent VIII sent forth his bull _Summis
Desiderantes_. Of all documents ever issued from Rome, imperial
or papal, this has doubtless, first and last, cost the greatest
shedding of innocent blood. Yet no document was ever more
clearly dictated by conscience. Inspired by the scriptural
command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," Pope Innocent
exhorted the clergy of Germany to leave no means untried to
detect sorcerers, and especially those who by evil weather
destroy vineyards, gardens, meadows, and growing crops. These
precepts were based upon various texts of Scripture, especially
upon the famous statement in the book of Job; and, to carry them
out, witch-finding inquisitors were authorized by the Pope to
scour Europe, especially Germany, and a manual was prepared for
their use--the Witch-Hammer, _Malleus Maleficarum_. In this
manual, which was revered for centuries, both in Catholic and
Protestant countries, as almost divinely inspired, the doctrine
of Satanic agency in atmospheric phenomena was further
developed, and various means of detecting and punishing it were
dwelt upon.[352
With the application of torture to thousands of women, i
accordance with the precepts laid down in the _Malleus_, it was
not difficult to extract masses of proof for this sacred theory
of meteorology. The poor creatures, writhing on the rack, held
in horror by those who had been nearest and dearest to them,
anxious only for death to relieve their sufferings, confessed to
anything and everything that would satisfy the inquisitors and
judges. All that was needed was that the inquisitors should as
leading questions[352b] and suggest satisfactory answers: the
prisoners, to shorten the torture, were sure sooner or later t
give the answer required, even though they knew that this would
send them to the stake or scaffold. Under the doctrine o
"excepted cases," there was no limit to torture for persons
accused of heresy or witchcraft; even the safeguards which the
old pagan world had imposed upon torture were thus thrown down,
and the prisoner _must_ confess
The theological literature of the Middle Ages was thus enriched
with numberless statements regarding modes of Satanic influence
on the weather. Pathetic, indeed, are the records; and none more
so than the confessions of these poor creatures, chiefly women
and children, during hundreds of years, as to their manner of
raising hailstorms and tempests. Such confessions, by tens of
thousands, are still to be found in the judicial records of
Germany, and indeed of all Europe. Typical among these is one on
which great stress was laid during ages, and for which the world
was first indebted to one of these poor women. Crazed by th
agony of torture, she declared that, returning with a demon
through the air from the witches' sabbath, she was dropped upon
the earth in the confusion which resulted among the hellish
legions when they heard the bells sounding the _Ave Maria_. It is
sad to note that, after a contribution so valuable to sacre
science, the poor woman was condemned to the flames. This
revelation speedily ripened the belief that, whatever might b
going on at the witches' sabbath--no matter how triumphant Satan
might be--at the moment of sounding the consecrated bells the
Satanic power was paralyzed. This theory once started, proofs
came in to support it, during a hundred years, from the tortur
chambers in all parts of Europe
Throughout the later Middle Ages the Dominicans had been the
main agents in extorting and promulgating these revelations, but
in the centuries following the Reformation the Jesuits devoted
themselves with even more keenness and vigour to the same task.
Some curious questions incidentally arose. It was mooted among
the orthodox authorities whether the damage done by storms
should or should not be assessed upon the property of convicte
witches. The theologians inclined decidedly to the affirmative
the jurists, on the whole, to the negative.[354]
In spite of these tortures, lightning and tempests continued
and great men arose in the Church throughout Europe in ever
generation to point out new cruelties for the discovery of
"weather-makers," and new methods for bringing their
machinations to naught.
But here and there, as early as the sixteenth century, we begin
to see thinkers endeavouring to modify or oppose these methods.
At that time Paracelsus called attention to the reverberation of
cannon as explaining the rolling of thunder, but he was
confronted by one of his greatest contemporaries. Jean Bodin, as
superstitious in natural as he was rational in political
science, made sport of the scientific theory, and declare
thunder to be "a flaming exhalation set in motion by evil
spirits, and hurled downward with a great crash and a horribl
smell of sulphur." In support of this view, he dwelt upon the
confessions of tortured witches, upon the acknowledged agency o
demons in the Will-o'-the-wisp, and specially upon the passage in
the one hundred and fourth Psalm, "Who maketh his angels
spirits, his ministers a flaming fire."
To resist such powerful arguments by such powerful men was
dangerous indeed. In 1513, Pomponatius, professor at Padua,
published a volume of _Doubts as to the Fourth Book o
Aristotle's Meteorologica_, and also dared to question this power
of devils; but he soon found it advisable to explain that, while
as a _philosopher_ he might doubt, yet as a _Christian_ he of course
believed everything taught by Mother Church--devils and all--and
so escaped the fate of several others who dared to question the
agency of witches in atmospheric and other disturbances.
A few years later Agrippa of Nettesheim made a somewhat similar
effort to breast this theological tide in northern Europe. He
had won a great reputation in various fields, but especially in
natural science, as science was then understood. Seeing the
folly and cruelty of the prevailing theory, he attempted to
modify it, and in 1518, as Syndic of Metz, endeavoured to save
a poor woman on trial for witchcraft. But the chief inquisitor,
backed by the sacred Scriptures, the papal bulls, the
theological faculties, and the monks, was too strong for him; he
was not only forced to give up his office, but for this an
other offences of a similar sort was imprisoned, driven from
city to city and from country to country, and after his death
his clerical enemies, especially the Dominicans, pursued his
memory with calumny, and placed over his grave probably the most
malignant epitaph ever written.
As to argument, these efforts were met especially by Jean Bodin
in his famous book, the _Demonomanie des Sorciers_, published in
1580. It was a work of great power by a man justly considered
the leading thinker in France, and perhaps in Europe. All the
learning of the time, divine and human, he marshalled in support
of the prevailing theory. With inexorable logic he showed that
both the veracity of sacred Scripture and the infallibility o
a long line of popes and councils of the Church were pledged to
it, and in an eloquent passage this great publicist warne
rulers and judges against any mercy to witches--citing the
example of King Ahab condemned by the prophet to die for havin
pardoned a man worthy of death, and pointing significantly to
King Charles IX of France, who, having pardoned a sorcerer, die
soon afterward.[355]
In the last years of the sixteenth century the persecutions for
witchcraft and magic were therefore especially cruel; and in the
western districts of Germany the main instrument in them was
Binsfeld, Suffragan Bishop of Treves.
At that time Cornelius Loos was a professor at the university o
that city. He was a devoted churchman, and one of the most
brilliant opponents of Protestantism, but he finally saw through
the prevailing belief regarding occult powers, and in an evi
hour for himself embodied his idea in a book entitled _True and
False Magic_. The book, though earnest, was temperate, but this
helped him and his cause not at all. The texts of Scripture
clearly sanctioning belief in sorcery and magic stood against
him, and these had been confirmed by the infallible teachings o
the Church and the popes from time immemorial; the book was
stopped in the press, the manuscript confiscated, and Loos
thrown into a dungeon.
The inquisitors having wrought their will upon him, in the
spring of 1593 he was brought out of prison, forced to recant on
his knees before the assembled dignitaries of the Church, and
thenceforward kept constantly under surveillance and at times in
prison. Even this was considered too light a punishment, and his
arch-enemy, the Jesuit Delrio, declared that, but for his death
by the plague, he would have been finally sent to the stake.[356]
That this threat was not unmeaning had been seen a few years
earlier in a case even more noted, and in the same city. During
the last decades of the sixteenth century, Dietrich Flade, an
eminent jurist, was rector of the University of Treves, and
chief judge of the Electoral Court, and in the latter capacity
he had to pass judgment upon persons tried on the capital charge
of magic and witchcraft. For a time he yielded to the long line
of authorities, ecclesiastical and judicial, supporting the
reality of this crime; but he at last seems to have realized
that it was unreal, and that the confessions in his tortur
chamber, of compacts with Satan, riding on broomsticks to the
witch-sabbath, raising tempests, producing diseases, and the
like, were either the results of madness or of willingness to
confess anything and everything, and even to die, in order to
shorten the fearful tortures to which the accused were in all
cases subjected until a satisfactory confession was obtained.
On this conviction of the unreality of many at least of the
charges Flade seems to have acted, and he at once received hi
reward. He was arrested by the authority of the archbishop and
charged with having sold himself to Satan--the fact of his
hesitation in the persecution being perhaps what suggested his
guilt. He was now, in his turn, brought into the torture chamber
over which he had once presided, was racked until he confessed
everything which his torturers suggested, and finally, in 1589,
was strangled and burnt.
Of that trial a record exists in the library of Cornell
University in the shape of the original minutes of the case, and
among them the depositions of Flade when under torture, taken
down from his own lips in the torture chamber. In thes
depositions this revered and venerable scholar and jurist
acknowledged the truth of every absurd charge brought against
him--anything, everything, which would end the fearful torture:
compared with that, death was nothing.[357]
Nor was even a priest secure who ventured to reveal the
unreality of magic. When Friedrich Spee, the Jesuit poet of
western Germany, found, in taking the confessions of those about
to be executed for magic, that without exception, just when
about to enter eternity and utterly beyond hope of pardon, they
all retracted their confessions made under torture, his
sympathies as a man rose above his loyalty to his order, and he
published his _Cautio Criminalis_ as a warning, stating with
entire moderation the facts he had observed and the necessity of
care. But he did not dare publish it under his own name, nor did
he even dare publish it in a Catholic town; he gave it to the
world anonymously, and, in order to prevent any tracing of the
work to him through the confessional, he secretly caused it to
be published in the Protestant town of Rinteln.
Nor was this all. Nothing shows so thoroughly the hold that thi
belief in magic had obtained as the conduct of Spee's powerful
friend and contemporary, John Philip von Schonborn, later th
Elector and Prince Archbishop of Mayence.
As a youth, Schonborn had loved and admired Spee, and had
especially noted his persistent melancholy and his hair whitened
even in his young manhood. On Schonborn's pressing him for the
cause, Spee at last confessed that his sadness, whitened hair,
and premature old age were due to his recollections of the
scores of men and women and children whom he had been obliged t
see tortured and sent to the scaffold and stake for magic and
witchcraft, when he as their father confessor positively knew
them to be innocent. The result was that, when Schonborn became
Elector and Archbishop of Mayence, he stopped the witch
persecutions in that province, and prevented them as long as he
lived. But here was shown the strength of theological and
ecclesiastical traditions and precedents. Even a man so strong
by family connections, and enjoying such great temporal and
spiritual power as Schonhorn, dared not openly give his reasons
for this change of policy. So far as is known, he never uttered
a word publicly against the reality of magic, and under his
successor in the electorate witch trials were resumed.
The great upholders of the orthodox view retained full
possession of the field. The victorious Bishop Binsfeld, of
Treves, wrote a book to prove that everything confessed by the
witches under torture, especially the raising of storms and the
general controlling of the weather, was worthy of belief; and
this book became throughout Europe a standard authority, both
among Catholics and Protestants. Even more inflexible was
Remigius, criminal judge in Lorraine. On the title-page of his
manual he boasts that within fifteen years he had sent nine
hundred persons to death for this imaginary crime.[358]
Protestantism fell into the superstition as fully as
Catholicism. In the same century John Wier, a disciple of
Agrippa, tried to frame a pious theory which, while satisfying
orthodoxy, should do something to check the frightful cruelties
around him. In his book _De Praestigiis Daemnonum_, published in
1563, he proclaimed his belief in witchcraft, but suggested that
the compacts with Satan, journeys through the air on
broomsticks, bearing children to Satan, raising storms and
producing diseases--to which so many women and childre
confessed under torture--were delusions suggested and propagated
by Satan himself, and that the persons charged with witchcraft
were therefore to be considered "as possessed"--that is,
rather as sinned against than sinning.[359]
But neither Catholics nor Protestants would listen for a moment
to any such suggestion. Wier was bitterly denounced an
persecuted. Nor did Bekker, a Protestant divine in Holland, fare
any better in the following century. For his _World Bewitched_
in which he ventured not only to question the devil's power ove
the weather, but to deny his bodily existence altogether, he was
solemnly tried by the synod of his Church and expelled from his
pulpit, while his views were condemned as heresy, and
overwhelmed with a flood of refutations whose mere catalogue
would fill pages; and these cases were typical of many.
The Reformation had, indeed, at first deepened the superstition;
the new Church being anxious to show itself equally orthodox and
zealous with the old. During the century following the first
great movement, the eminent Lutheran jurist and theologian
Benedict Carpzov, whose boast was that he had read the Bible
fifty-three times, especially distinguished himself by his skill
in demonstrating the reality of witchcraft, and by his cruelty
in detecting and punishing it. The torture chambers were set at
work more vigorously than ever, and a long line of theological
jurists followed to maintain the system and to extend it.
To argue against it, or even doubt it, was exceedingly
dangerous. Even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth
century, when Christian Thomasius, the greatest and bravest
German between Luther and Lessing, began the efforts which put
an end to it in Protestant Germany, he did not dare at first,
bold as he was, to attack it in his own name, but presented his
views as the university thesis of an irresponsible student.[360]
The same stubborn resistance to the gradual encroachment of the
scientific spirit upon the orthodox doctrine of witchcraft was
seen in Great Britain. Typical as to the attitude both of Scotc
and English Protestants were the theory and practice of King
James I, himself the author of a book on _Demonology_, and nothing
if not a theologian. As to theory, his treatise on _Demonology_
supported the worst features of the superstition; as to
practice, he ordered the learned and acute work of Reginald
Scot, _The Discoverie of Witchcraft_, one of the best treatises
ever written on the subject, to be burned by the hangman, and he
applied his own knowledge to investigating the causes of the
tempests which beset his bride on her voyage from Denmark.
Skilful use of unlimited torture soon brought these causes to
light. A Dr. Fian, while his legs were crushed in the "boots"
and wedges were driven under his finger nails, confessed that
several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve from the port of
Leith, and had raised storms and tempests to drive back the princess.
With the coming in of the Puritans the persecution was even more
largely, systematically, and cruelly developed. The grea
witch-finder, Matthew Hopkins, having gone through the county of
Suffolk and tested multitudes of poor old women by piercing the
with pins and needles, declared that county to be infested wit
witches. Thereupon Parliament issued a commission, and sent two
eminent Presbyterian divines to accompany it, with the result
that in that county alone sixty persons were hanged for
witchcraft in a single year. In Scotland matters were even
worse. The _auto da fe_ of Spain was celebrated in Scotland under
another name, and with Presbyterian ministers instead of Roman
Catholic priests as the main attendants. At Leith, in 1664, nine
women were burned together. Condemnations and punishments of
women in batches were not uncommon. Torture was used far more
freely than in England, both in detecting witches and i
punishing them. The natural argument developed in hundreds of
pulpits was this: If the Allwise God punishes his creatures with
tortures infinite in cruelty and duration, why should not his
ministers, as far as they can, imitate him?
The strongest minds in both branches of the Protestant Church
in Great Britain devoted themselves to maintaining the
superstition. The newer scientific modes of thought, an
especially the new ideas regarding the heavens, revealed first
by Copernicus and Galileo and later by Newton, Huygens, and
Halley, were gradually dissipating the whole domain of th
Prince of the Power of the Air; but from first to last a long
line of eminent divines, Anglican and Calvinistic, strove to
resist the new thought. On the Anglican side, in the seventeenth
century, Meric Casaubon, Doctor of Divinity and a high dignitary
of Canterbury,--Henry More, in many respects the most eminent
scholar in the Church,--Cudworth, by far the most eminent
philosopher, and Dr. Joseph Glanvil, the most cogent of all
writers in favour of witchcraft, supported the orthodox
superstition in treatises of great power; and Sir Matthew Hale,
the greatest jurist of the period, condemning two women to be
burned for witchcraft, declared that he based his judgment on
the direct testimony of Holy Scripture. On the Calvinistic side
were the great names of Richard Baxter, who applauded some of
the worst cruelties in England, and of Increase and Cotton
Mather, who stimulated the worst in America; and these marshalle
in behalf of this cruel superstition a long line of eminen
divines, the most earnest of all, perhaps, being John Wesley.
Nor was the Lutheran Church in Sweden and the other Scandinavian
countries behind its sister churches, either in persecuting
witchcraft or in repressing doubts regarding the doctrine which
supported it
But in spite of all these great authorities in every land, in
spite of such summary punishments as those of Flade, Loos, and
Bekker, and in spite of the virtual exclusion from church
preferment of all who doubted the old doctrine, the new
scientific view of the heavens was developed more and more; th
physical sciences were more and more cultivated; the new
scientific atmosphere in general more and more prevailed; and a
the end of the seventeenth century this vast growth of
superstition began to wither and droop. Montaigne, Bayle, and
Voltaire in France, Thomasius in Germany, Calef in New England,
and Beccaria in Italy, did much also to create an intellectua
and moral atmosphere fatal to it.
And here it should be stated, to the honour of the Church of
England, that several of her divines showed great courage in
opposing the dominant doctrine. Such men as Harsnet, Archbishop
of York, and Morton, Bishop of Lichfield, who threw all their
influence against witch-finding cruelties even early in the
seventeenth century, deserve lasting gratitude. But especially
should honour be paid to the younger men in the Church, who
wrote at length against the whole system: such men as Wagstaff
and Webster and Hutchinson, who in the humbler ranks of the
clergy stood manfully for truth, with the certainty that by so
doing they were making their own promotion impossible.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century the doctrine was
evidently dying out. Where torture had been abolished, or even
made milder, "weather-makers" no longer confessed, and the
fundamental proofs in which the system was rooted were evidently
slipping away. Even the great theologian Fromundus, at the
University of Louvain, the oracle of his age, who had
demonstrated the futility of the Copernican theory, had foreseen
this and made the inevitable attempt at compromise, declaring
that devils, though _often_, are not _always_ or even for the most
part the causes of thunder. The learned Jesuit Caspar Schott,
whose _Physica Curiosa_ was one of the most popular books of the
seventeenth century, also ventured to make the same mil
statement. But even such concessions by such great champions of
orthodoxy did not prevent frantic efforts in various quarters to
bring the world back under the old dogma: as late as 1743 there
was published in Catholic Germany a manual by Father Vincent of
Berg, in which the superstition was taught to its fulles
extent, with the declaration that it was issued for the use of
priests under the express sanction of the theological professors
of the University of Cologne; and twenty-five years later, in
1768, we find in Protestant England John Wesley standing firmly
for witchcraft, and uttering his famous declaration, "Th
giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the
Bible." The latest notable demonstration in Scotland was made as
late as 1773, when "the divines of the Associated Presbytery"
passed a resolution declaring their belief in witchcraft, an
deploring the general scepticism regarding it.[363]
IV. FRANKLIN'S LIGHTNING-ROD.
But in the midst of these efforts by Catholics like Father
Vincent and by Protestants like John Wesley to save the ol
sacred theory, it received its death-blow. In 1752 Franklin mad
his experiments with the kite on the banks of the Schuylkill
and, at the moment when he drew the electric spark from the
cloud, the whole tremendous fabric of theological meteorology
reared by the fathers, the popes, the medieval doctors, and the
long line of great theologians, Catholic and Protestant,
collapsed; the "Prince of the Power of the Air" tumbled from
his seat; the great doctrine which had so long afflicted th
earth was prostrated forever.
The experiment of Franklin was repeated in various parts o
Europe, but, at first, the Church seemed careful to take no
notice of it. The old church formulas against the Prince of the
Power of the Air were still used, but the theological theory,
especially in the Protestant Church, began to grow milder. Four
years after Franklin's discovery Pastor Karl Koken, member of
the Consistory and official preacher to the City Council o
Hildesheim, was moved by a great hailstorm to preach and publish
a sermon on _The Revelation of God in Weather_. Of "the Prince o
the Power of the Air" he says nothing; the theory of diabolical
agency he throws overboard altogether; his whole attempt is to
save the older and more harmless theory, that the storm is the
voice of God. He insists that, since Christ told Nicodemus that
men "know not whence the wind cometh," it can not be of mere
natural origin, but is sent directly by God himself, as David
intimates in the Psalm, "out of His secret places." As to the
hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of hail sent by
the Almighty upon Egypt, and clinches all by insisting that Go
showed at Mount Sinai his purpose to startle the body befor
impressing the conscience.
While the theory of diabolical agency in storms was thus
drooping and dying, very shrewd efforts were made at compromise.
The first of these attempts we have already noted, in the effort
to explain the efficacy of bells in storms by their simple use
in stirring the faithful to prayer, and in the concession made
by sundry theologians, and even by the great Lord Bacon himself,
that church bells might, under the sanction of Providence,
disperse storms by agitating the air. This gained groun
somewhat, though it was resisted by one eminent Church
authority, who answered shrewdly that, in that case, cannon
would be even more pious instruments. Still another argument
used in trying to save this part of the theological theory was
that the bells were consecrated instruments for this purpose
"like the horns at whose blowing the walls of Jericho fell."[365]
But these compromises were of little avail. In 1766 Father
Sterzinger attacked the very groundwork of the whole diabolic
theory. He was, of course, bitterly assailed, insulted, and
hated; but the Church thought it best not to condemn him. More
and more the "Prince of the Power of the Air" retreated befor
the lightning-rod of Franklin. The older Church, while clinging
to the old theory, was finally obliged to confess the supremac
of Franklin's theory practically; for his lightning-rod did
what exorcisms, and holy water, and processions, and the _Agnu
Dei_, and the ringing of church bells, and the rack, and th
burning of witches, had failed to do. This was clearly seen,
even by the poorest peasants in eastern France, when they
observed that the grand spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which
neither the sacredness of the place, nor the bells within it,
nor the holy water and relics beneath it, could protect from
frequent injuries by lightning, was once and for all protected
by Franklin's rod. Then came into the minds of multitudes the
answer to the question which had so long exercised the leading
theologians of Europe and America, namely, "Why should the
Almighty strike his own consecrated temples, or suffer Satan to
strike them?"
Yet even this practical solution of the question was not
received without opposition.
In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed,
especially in Massachusetts, to Franklin's rod. The Rev. Thomas
Prince, pastor of the Old South Church, published a sermon on
the subject, and in the appendix expressed the opinion that the
frequency of earthquakes may be due to the erection of "iro
points invented by the sagacious Mr. Franklin." He goes on t
argue that "in Boston are more erected than anywhere else in
New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh!
there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God."
Three years later, John Adams, speaking of a conversation with
Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says: "He began to prate upon
the presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the
lightning from the clouds. He railed and foamed against the
points and the presumption that erected them. He talked of
presuming upon God, as Peter attempted to walk upon the water,
and of attempting to control the artillery of heaven."
As late as 1770 religious scruples regarding lightning-rods wer
still felt, the theory being that, as thunder and lightning were
tokens of the Divine displeasure, it was impiety to prevent
their doing their full work. Fortunately, Prof. John Winthrop,
of Harvard, showed himself wise in this, as in so many other
things: in a lecture on earthquakes he opposed the dominant
theology; and as to arguments against Franklin's rods, h
declared, "It is as much our duty to secure ourselves against
the effects of lightning as against those of rain, snow, and
wind by the means God has put into our hands."
Still, for some years theological sentiment had to be regarded
carefully. In Philadelphia, a popular lecturer on science fo
some time after Franklin's discovery thought it best in
advertising his lectures to explain that "the erection of
lightning-rods is not chargeable with presumption nor
inconsistent with any of the principles either of natural or
revealed religion."[366]
In England, the first lightning conductor upon a church was not
put up until 1762, ten years after Franklin's discovery. The
spire of St. Bride's Church in London was greatly injured by
lightning in 1750, and in 1764 a storm so wrecked its masonry
that it had to be mainly rebuilt; yet for years after this the
authorities refused to attach a lightning-rod. The Protestant
Cathedral of St. Paul's, in London, was not protected until
sixteen years after Franklin's discovery, and the tower of th
great Protestant church at Hamburg not until a year later still.
As late as 1783 it was declared in Germany, on excellent
authority, that within a space of thirty-three years nearly four
hundred towers had been damaged and one hundred and twenty
bell-ringers killed.
In Roman Catholic countries a similar prejudice was shown, and
its cost at times was heavy. In Austria, the church of
Rosenberg, in the mountains of Carinthia, was struck so
frequently and with such loss of life that the peasants feared
at last to attend service. Three times was the spire rebuilt,
and it was not until 1778--twenty-six years after Franklin's
discovery--that the authorities permitted a rod to be attached.
Then all trouble ceased.
A typical case in Italy was that of the tower of St. Mark's, at
Venice. In spite of the angel at its summit and the bells
consecrated to ward off the powers of the air, and the relics i
the cathedral hard by, and the processions in the adjacent
square, the tower was frequently injured and even ruined b
lightning. In 1388 it was badly shattered; in 1417, and again i
1489, the wooden spire surmounting it was utterly consumed; it
was again greatly injured in 1548, 1565, 1653, and in 1745 was
struck so powerfully that the whole tower, which had been
rebuilt of stone and brick, was shattered in thirty-seve
places. Although the invention of Franklin had been introduced
into Italy by the physicist Beccaria, the tower of St. Mark's
still went unprotected, and was again badly struck in 1761 and
1762; and not until 1766--fourteen years after Franklin's
discovery--was a lightning-rod placed upon it; and it has never
been struck since.[368]
So, too, though the beautiful tower of the Cathedral of Siena,
protected by all possible theological means, had been struck
again and again, much opposition was shown to placing upon it
what was generally known as "the heretical rod" "but the tower
was at last protected by Franklin's invention, and in 1777,
though a very heavy bolt passed down the rod, the churc
received not the slightest injury. This served to reconcil
theology and science, so far as that city was concerned; but th
case which did most to convert the Italian theologians to th
scientific view was that of the church of San Nazaro, at
Brescia. The Republic of Venice had stored in the vaults of thi
church over two hundred thousand pounds of powder. In 1767,
seventeen years after Franklin's discovery, no rod having been
placed upon it, it was struck by lightning, the powder in the
vaults was exploded, one sixth of the entire city destroyed, and
over three thousand lives were lost.[368b]
Such examples as these, in all parts of Europe, had thei
effect. The formulas for conjuring off storms, for consecrating
bells to ward off lightning and tempests, and for putting to
flight the powers of the air, were still allowed to stand in the
liturgies; but the lightning-rod, the barometer, and the
thermometer, carried the day. A vigorous line of investigator
succeeding Franklin completed his victory, The traveller in
remote districts of Europe still hears the church bells ringing
during tempests; the Polish or Italian peasant is still
persuaded to pay fees for sounding bells to keep off hailstorms
but the universal tendency favours more and more the use of the
lightning-rod, and of the insurance offices where men can be
relieved of the ruinous results of meteorological disturbance
in accordance with the scientific laws of average, based upon
the ascertained recurrence of storms. So, too, though many
poor seaman trusts to his charm that has been bathed in holy
water, or that has touched some relic, the tendency among
mariners is to value more and more those warnings which are sent
far and wide each day over the earth and under the sea by the
electric wires in accordance with laws ascertained by observation.
Yet, even in our own time, attempts to revive the old
theological doctrine of meteorology have not been wanting. Two
of these, one in a Roman Catholic and another in a Protestant
country, will serve as types of many, to show how completely
scientific truth has saturated and permeated minds supposed t
be entirely surrendered to the theological view.
The Island of St. Honorat, just off the southern coast o
France, is deservedly one of the places most venerated i
Christendom. The monastery of Lerins, founded there in the
fourth century, became a mother of similar institutions in
western Europe, and a centre of religious teaching for the
Christian world. In its atmosphere, legends and myths grew in
beauty and luxuriance. Here, as the chroniclers tell us, at the
touch of St. Honorat, burst forth a stream of living water,
which a recent historian of the monastery declares a greater
miracle than that of Moses; here he destroyed, with a touch o
his staff, the reptiles which infested the island, and then
forced the sea to wash away their foul remains. Here, to please
his sister, Sainte-Marguerite, a cherry tree burst into full
bloom every month; here he threw his cloak upon the waters and
it became a raft, which bore him safely to visit the
neighbouring island; here St. Patrick received from St. Just th
staff with which he imitated St. Honorat by driving all reptiles
from Ireland.
Pillaged by Saracens and pirates, the island was made all the
more precious by the blood of Christian martyrs. Popes and kings
made pilgrimages to it; saints, confessors, and bishops went
forth from it into all Europe; in one of its cells St. Vincent
of Lerins wrote that famous definition of pure religion which,
for nearly fifteen hundred years, has virtually superseded tha
of St. James. Naturally the monastery became most illustrious,
and its seat "the Mediterranean Isle of Saints.
But toward the close of the last century, its inmates having
become slothful and corrupt, it was dismantled, all save a small
portion torn down, and the island became the property first o
impiety, embodied in a French actress, and finally of heresy,
embodied in an English clergyman.
Bought back for the Church by the Bishop of Frejus in 1859,
there was little revival of life for twelve years. Then came the
reaction, religious and political, after the humiliation of
France and the Vatican by Germany; and of this reaction the
monastery of St. Honorat was made one of the most striking
outward and visible signs. Pius IX interested himself directl
in it, called into it a body of Cistercian monks, and it became
the chief seat of their order in France. To restore its
sacredness the strict system of La Trappe wa
established--labour, silence, meditation on death. The word thus
given from Rome was seconded in France by cardinals,
archbishops, and all churchmen especially anxious for promotion
in this world or salvation in the next. Worn-out dukes and
duchesses of the Faubourg Saint-Germain united in this
enterprise of pious reaction with the frivolous youngsters, the
_petits creves_, who haunt the purlieus of Notre Dame de Lorette
The great church of the monastery was handsomely rebuilt and a
multitude of altars erected; and beautiful frescoes and staine
windows came from the leaders of the reaction. The whole effect
was, perhaps, somewhat theatrical and thin, but it showed none
the less earnestness in making the old "Isle of Saints" a
protest against the hated modern world.
As if to bid defiance still further to modern liberalism, grea
store of relics was sent in; among these, pieces of the true
cross, of the white and purple robes, of the crown of thorns
sponge, lance, and winding-sheet of Christ,--the hair, robe,
veil, and girdle of the Blessed Virgin; relics of St. John th
Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Paul, St. Barnabas,
the four evangelists, and a multitude of other saints: so many
that the bare mention of these treasures requires twenty-four
distinct heads in the official catalogue recently published at
the monastery. Besides all this--what was considered even more
powerful in warding off harm from the revived monastery--th
bones of Christian martyrs were brought from the Roman catacombs
and laid beneath the altars.[371]
All was thus conformed to the medieval view; nothing was to be
left which could remind one of the nineteenth century; the
"ages of faith" were to be restored in their simplicity. Pope
Leo XIII commended to the brethren the writings of St. Thomas
Aquinas as their one great object of study, and works published
at the monastery dwelt upon the miracles of St. Honorat as the
most precious refutation of modern science.
High in the cupola, above the altars and relics, were placed the
bells. Sent by pious donors, they were solemnly baptized and
consecrated in 1871, four bishops officiating, a multitude o
the faithful being present from all parts of Europe, and the
sponsors of the great tenor bell being the Bourbon claimant to
the ducal throne of Parma and his duchess. The good bishop who
baptized the bells consecrated them with a formula announcin
their efficacy in driving away the "Prince of the Power of the
Air" and the lightning and tempests he provokes.
And then, above all, at the summit of the central spire, hig
above relics, altars, and bells, was placed--_a lightning-rod_![371b]
The account of the monastery, published under the direction of
the present worthy abbot, more than hints at the saving, by it
bells, of a ship which was wrecked a few years since on that
coast; and yet, to protect the bells and church and monks and
relics from the very foe whom, in the medieval faith, all these
were thought most powerful to drive away, recourse was had to the
scientific discovery of that "arch-infidel," Benjamin Franklin!
Perhaps the most striking recent example in Protestant lands of
this change from the old to the new occurred not long since in
one of the great Pacific dependencies of the British crown. At
a time of severe drought an appeal was made to the bishop, Dr.
Moorhouse, to order public prayers for rain. The bishop refused,
advising the petitioners for the future to take better care of
their water supply, virtually telling them, "Heaven helps those
who help themselves." But most noteworthy in this matter was it
that the English Government, not long after, scanning the
horizon to find some man to take up the good work laid down by
the lamented Bishop Fraser, of Manchester, chose Dr. Moorhouse;
and his utterance upon meteorology, which a few generations
since would have been regarded by the whole Church as blasphemy,
was universally alluded to as an example of strong good sense,
proving him especially fit for one of the most important
bishoprics in England.
Throughout Christendom, the prevalence of the conviction that
meteorology is obedient to laws is more and more evident. In
cities especially, where men are accustomed each day to see
posted in public places charts which show the storms moving ove
various parts of the country, and to read in the morning papers
scientific prophecies as to the weather, the old view can hardl
be very influential.
Significant of this was the feeling of the American people
during the fearful droughts a few years since in the States west
of the Missouri. No days were appointed for fasting and prayer
to bring rain; there was no attribution of the calamity to th
wrath of God or the malice of Satan; but much was said regarding
the folly of our people in allowing the upper regions of their
vast rivers to be denuded of forests, thus subjecting the States
below to alternations of drought and deluge. Partly as a result
of this, a beginning has been made of teaching forest culture in
many schools, tree-planting societies have been formed, and
"Arbor Day" is recognised in several of the States. A true and
noble theology can hardly fail to recognise, in the love of
Nature and care for our fellow-men thus promoted, something far
better, both from a religious and a moral point of view, than
any efforts to win the Divine favour by flattery, or to avert
Satanic malice by fetichism.
CHAPTER XII.
FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.
I.
IN all the earliest developments of human thought we find
strong tendency to ascribe mysterious powers over Nature to men
and women especially gifted or skilled. Survivals of this view
are found to this day among savages and barbarians left behind
in the evolution of civilization, and especially is this the
case among the tribes of Australia, Africa, and the Pacific
coast of America. Even in the most enlightened nations still
appear popular beliefs, observances, or sayings, drawn from this
earlier phase of thought.
Between the prehistoric savage developing this theory, and
therefore endeavouring to deal with the powers of Nature by
magic, and the modern man who has outgrown it, appears a long
line of nations struggling upward through it. As the
hieroglyphs, cuneiform inscriptions, and various other record
of antiquity are read, the development of this belief can be
studied in Egypt, India, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, and
Phoenicia. From these civilizations it came into the early
thought of Greece and Rome, but especially into the Jewish and
Christian sacred books. Both in the Old Testament and in the New
we find magic, witchcraft, and soothsaying constantly referred
to as realities.[373]
The first distinct impulse toward a higher view of research into
natural laws was given by the philosophers of Greece. It is true
that philosophical opposition to physical research was at times
strong, and that even a great thinker like Socrates considered
certain physical investigations as an impious intrusion into the
work of the gods. It is also true that Plato and Aristotle,
while bringing their thoughts to bear upon the world with great
beauty and force, did much to draw mankind away from those
methods which in modern times have produced the best results.
Plato developed a world in which the physical sciences ha
little if any real reason for existing; Aristotle, a world in
which the same sciences were developed largely indeed by
observation of what is, but still more by speculation on what
ought to be. From the former of these two great men came into
Christian theology many germs of medieval magic, and from the
latter sundry modes of reasoning which aided in the evolution of
these; yet the impulse to human thought given by these great
masters was of inestimable value to our race, and one legac
from them was especially precious--the idea that a science of
Nature is possible, and that the highest occupation of man i
the discovery of its laws. Still another gift from them wa
greatest of all, for they gave scientific freedom. They laid no
interdict upon new paths; they interposed no barriers to the
extension of knowledge; they threatened no doom in this life or
in the next against investigators on new lines; they left the
world free to seek any new methods and to follow any new paths
which thinking men could find.
This legacy of belief in science, of respect for scientific
pursuits, and of freedom in scientific research, was especially
received by the school of Alexandria, and above all by
Archimedes, who began, just before the Christian era, to open
new paths through the great field of the inductive sciences by
observation, comparison, and experiment.[375]
The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of
theology, arrested the normal development of the physical
sciences for over fifteen hundred years. The cause of this
arrest was twofold: First, there was created an atmosphere in
which the germs of physical science could hardly grow--an
atmosphere in which all seeking in Nature for truth as truth was
regarded as futile. The general belief derived from the New
Testament Scriptures was, that the end of the world was at hand;
that the last judgment was approaching; that all existin
physical nature was soon to be destroyed: hence, the greates
thinkers in the Church generally poured contempt upon all
investigators into a science of Nature, and insisted tha
everything except the saving of souls was folly
This belief appears frequently through the entire period of the
Middle Ages; but during the first thousand years it is clearly
dominant. From Lactantius and Eusebius, in the third century,
pouring contempt, as we have seen, over studies in astronomy, to
Peter Damian, the noted chancellor of Pope Gregory VII, in the
eleventh century, declaring all worldly sciences to be
"absurdities" and "fooleries," it becomes a very important
element in the atmosphere of thought.[376]
Then, too, there was established a standard to which all science
which did struggle up through this atmosphere must be made to
conform--a standard which favoured magic rather than science,
for it was a standard of rigid dogmatism obtained from literal
readings in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The most
careful inductions from ascertained facts were regarded as
wretchedly fallible when compared with any view of nature
whatever given or even hinted at in any poem, chronicle, code,
apologue, myth, legend, allegory, letter, or discourse of any
sort which had happened to be preserved in the literature which
had come to be held as sacred.
For twelve centuries, then, the physical sciences were thus
discouraged or perverted by the dominant orthodoxy. Whoever
studied nature studied it either openly to find illustrations of
the sacred text, useful in the "saving of souls," or secretly
to gain the aid of occult powers, useful in securing personal
advantage. Great men like Bede, Isidore of Seville, and Rabanus
Maurus, accepted the scriptural standard of science and used it
as a means of Christian edification. The views of Bede and
Isidore on kindred subjects have been shown in former chapters
and typical of the view taken by Rabanus is the fact that in his
great work on the _Universe_ there are only two chapters which
seem directly or indirectly to recognise even the beginnings of
a real philosophy of nature. A multitude of less-known men found
warrant in Scripture for magic applied to less worthy purposes.[376b]
But after the thousand years had passed to which various
thinkers in the Church, upon supposed scriptural warrant, had
lengthened out the term of the earth's existence, "the end of
all things" seemed further off than ever; and in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, owing to causes which need not b
dwelt upon here, came a great revival of thought, so that the
forces of theology and of science seemed arrayed for a contest.
On one side came a revival of religious fervour, and to this
day the works of the cathedral builders mark its depth and
strength; on the other side came a new spirit of inquiry
incarnate in a line of powerful thinkers.
First among these was Albert of Bollstadt, better known as
Albert the Great, the most renowned scholar of his time.
Fettered though he was by the methods sanctioned in the Church,
dark as was all about him, he had conceived better methods an
aims; his eye pierced the mists of scholasticism. he saw the
light, and sought to draw the world toward it. He stands among
the great pioneers of physical and natural science; he aided in
giving foundations to botany and chemistry; he rose above his
time, and struck a heavy blow at those who opposed the
possibility of human life on opposite sides of the earth; he
noted the influence of mountains, seas, and forests upon races
and products, so that Humboldt justly finds in his works the
germs of physical geography as a comprehensive science.
But the old system of deducing scientific truth from scriptural
texts was renewed in the development of scholastic theology, and
ecclesiastical power, acting through thousands of subtle
channels, was made to aid this development. The old idea of the
futility of physical science and of the vast superiority of
theology was revived. Though Albert's main effort was to
Christianize science, he was dealt with by the authorities o
the Dominican order, subjected to suspicion and indignity, and
only escaped persecution for sorcery by yielding to the
ecclesiastical spirit of the time, and working finally in
theological channels by, scholastic methods
It was a vast loss to the earth; and certainly, of all
organizations that have reason to lament the pressure of
ecclesiasticism which turned Albert the Great from natura
philosophy to theology, foremost of all in regret should be the
Christian Church, and especially the Roman branch of it. Had
there been evolved in the Church during the thirteenth century
a faith strong enough to accept the truths in natural science
which Albert and his compeers could have given, 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
among 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.[378]
The next great man of that age whom the theological and
ecclesiastical forces of the time turned from the right path was
Vincent of Beauvais. During the first half of the twelft
century he devoted himself to the study of Nature in several of
her most interesting fields. To astronomy, botany, and zoology
he gave special attention, but in a larger way he made a
general study of the universe, and in a series of treatises
undertook to reveal the whole field of science. But his work
simply became a vast commentary on the account of creation give
in the book of Genesis. Beginning with the work of the Trinity
at the creation, he goes on to detail the work of angels in all
their fields, and makes excursions into every part of creation,
visible and invisible, but always with the most complete
subordination of his thought to the literal statements of
Scripture. Could he have taken the path of experimental
research, the world would have been enriched with most precious
discoveries; but the force which had given wrong direction to
Albert of Bollstadt, backed as it was by the whole
ecclesiastical power of his time, was too strong, and in all the
life labour of Vincent nothing appears of any permanent value.
He reared a structure which the adaptation of facts to literal
interpretations of Scripture and the application of theological
subtleties to nature combine to make one of the most striking
monuments of human error.[379]
But the theological spirit of the thirteenth century gained its
greatest victory in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. In him was
the theological spirit of his age incarnate. Although he yielde
somewhat at one period to love of natural science, it was he who
finally made that great treaty or compromise which for ages
subjected science entirely to theology. He it was who reared the
most enduring barrier against those who in that age and in
succeeding ages laboured to open for science the path by its own
methods toward its own ends.
He had been the pupil of Albert the Great, and had gained muc
from him. Through the earlier systems of philosophy, as they
were then known, and through the earlier theologic thought, he
had gone with great labour and vigour; and all his mighty
powers, thus disciplined and cultured, he brought to bear in
making a truce which was to give theology permanent 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 gave all his
thoughts to bringing science again under the sway of theological
methods and ecclesiastical control. In his commentary on
Aristotle's treatise upon _Heaven and Earth_ he gave to the world
a striking example of what his method could produce
illustrating all the evils which arise in combining theological
reasoning and literal interpretation of Scripture with
scientific facts; and this work remains to this day a monument
of scientific genius perverted by theology.[380]
The ecclesiastical power of the time hailed him as a deliverer,
it was claimed that miracles were vouchsafed, proving that the
blessing of Heaven rested upon his labours, and among the
legends embodying this claim is that given by the Bollandists
and immortalized by a renowned painter. The great philosophe
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 labour?" The myth-making faculty of the people at large
was also brought into play. According to a widespread and
circumstantial legend, Albert, by magical means, created an
android--an artificial man, living, speaking, and answering all
questions with such subtlety that St. Thomas, unable to answer
its reasoning, broke it to pieces with his staff.
Historians of the Roman Church like Rohrbacher, and historian
of science like Pouchet, have found it convenient to propitiate
the Church by dilating upon the glories of St. Thomas Aquinas i
thus making an alliance between religious and scientifi
thought, and laying the foundations for a "sanctified science";
but the unprejudiced historian can not indulge in thi
enthusiastic view: the results both for the Church and for
science have been most unfortunate. It was a wretched delay in
the evolution of fruitful thought, for the first result of this
great man's great compromise was to close for ages that path in
science which above all others leads to discoveries of
value--the experimental method--and to reopen that old path o
mixed theology and science which, as Hallam declares, "afte
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.[380b]
The theological path thus opened by these strong men became the
main path for science during ages, and it led the world ever
further and further from any fruitful fact or useful method.
Roger Bacon's investigations already begun were discredited:
worthless mixtures of scriptural legends with imperfectly
authenticated physical facts took their place. Thus it was that
for twelve hundred years the minds in control of Europe regarded
all real science as _futile_, and diverted the great current of
earnest thought into theology
The next stage in this evolution was the development of an idea
which acted with great force throughout the Middle Ages--the
idea that science is _dangerous_. This belief was also of very
ancient origin. From the time when the Egyptian magicians made
their tremendous threat that unless their demands were granted
they would reach out to the four corners of the earth, pull dow
the pillars of heaven, wreck the abodes of the gods above and
crush those of men below, fear of these representatives of
science is evident in the ancient world
But differences in the character of magic were recognised, some
sorts being considered useful and some baleful. Of the former
was magic used in curing diseases, in determining times
auspicious for enterprises, and even in contributing to
amusement; of the latter was magic used to bring disease and
death on men and animals or tempests upon the growing crops.
Hence gradually arose a general distinction between white magic,
which dealt openly with the more beneficent means of nature, and
black magic, which dealt secretly with occult, malignant powers.
Down to the Christian era the fear of magic rarely led to an
persecution very systematic or very cruel. While in Greece and
Rome laws were at times enacted against magicians, they were
only occasionally enforced with rigour, and finally, toward the
end of the pagan empire, the feeling against them seemed dying
out altogether. As to its more kindly phases, men like Marcus
Aurelius and Julian did not hesitate to consult those wh
claimed to foretell the future. As to black magic, it seemed
hardly worth while to enact severe laws, when charms, amulets,
and even gestures could thwart its worst machinations.
Moreover, under the old empire a real science was coming in, and
thought was progressing. Both the theory and practice of magi
were more and more held up to ridicule. Even as early a write
as Ennius ridiculed the idea that magicians, who were generall
poor and hungry themselves, could bestow wealth on others
Pliny, in his _Natural Philosophy_, showed at great length their
absurdities and cheatery; others followed in the same line of
thought, and the whole theory, except among the very lowest
classes, seemed dying out.
But with the development of Christian theology came a change
The idea of the active interference of Satan in magic, which had
come into the Hebrew mind with especial force from Persia during
the captivity of Israel, had passed from the Hebrew Scripture
into Christianity, and had been made still stronger by variou
statements in the New Testament. Theologians laid stress
especially upon the famous utterances of the Psalmist that "all
the gods of the heathen are devils," and of St. Paul that "the
things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils";
and it was widely held that these devils were naturally
indignant at their dethronement and anxious to wreak vengeance
upon Christianity. Magicians were held to be active agents of
these dethroned gods, and this persuasion was strengthened by
sundry old practitioners in the art of magic--impostors who
pretended to supernatural powers, and who made use of old rites
and phrases inherited from paganism
Hence it was that as soon as Christianity came into power it
more than renewed the old severities against the forbidden art
and one of the first acts of the Emperor Constantine after his
conversion was to enact a most severe law against magic an
magicians, under which the main offender might be burned alive.
But here, too, it should be noted that a distinction between the
two sorts of magic was recognised, for Constantine shortly
afterward found it necessary to issue a proclamation stating
that his intention was only to prohibit deadly and malignant
magic; that he had no intention of prohibiting magic used to
cure diseases and to protect the crops from hail and tempests.
But as new emperors came to the throne who had not in them that
old leaven of paganism which to the last influenced Constantine,
and as theology obtained a firmer hold, severity against magi
increased. Toleration of it, even in its milder forms, was more
and more denied. Black magic and white were classed together.
This severity went on increasing and threatened the simples
efforts in physics and chemistry; even the science of
mathematics was looked upon with dread. By the twelfth an
thirteenth centuries, the older theology having arrived at the
climax of its development in Europe, terror of magic and
witchcraft took complete possession of the popular mind. In
sculpture, painting, and literature it appeared in forms ever
more and more striking. The lives of saints were filled with it.
The cathedral sculpture embodied it in every part. The storied
windows made it all the more impressive. The missal painter
wrought it not only into prayer books, but, despite the fact
that hardly a trace of the belief appears in the Psalms, they
illustrated it in the great illuminated psalters from which th
noblest part of the service was sung before the high altar. The
service books showed every form of agonizing petition for
delivery from this dire influence, and every form of exorcism
for thwarting it.
All the great theologians of the Church entered into this belief
and aided to develop it. The fathers of the early Church were
full and explicit, and the medieval doctors became more and more
minute in describing the operations of the black art and in
denouncing them. It was argued that, as the devil afflicted Job,
so he and his minions continue to cause diseases; that, as Sata
is the Prince of the power of the air, he and his minions cause
tempests; that the cases of Nebuchadnezzar and Lot's wife prove
that sorcerers can transform human beings into animals or even
lifeless matter; that, as the devils of Gadara were cast into
swine, all animals could be afflicted in the same manner; and
that, as Christ himself had been transported through the air by
the power of Satan, so any human being might be thus transported
to "an exceeding high mountain."
Thus the horror of magic and witchcraft increased on every hand,
and in 1317 Pope John XXII issued his bull _Spondent pariter_
levelled at the alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow
at the beginnings of chemical science. That many alchemists were
knavish is no doubt true, but no infallibility in separating the
evil from the good was shown by the papacy in this matter. In
this and in sundry other bulls and briefs we find Pope John, by
virtue of his infallibility as the world's instructor in all
that pertains to faith and morals, condemning real science and
pseudo-science alike. In two of these documents, supposed to be
inspired by wisdom from on high, he complains that both he and
his flock are in danger of their lives by the arts of the
sorcerers; he declares that such sorcerers can send devils into
mirrors and finger rings, and kill men and women by a magi
word; that they had tried to kill him by piercing a waxen imag
of him with needles in the name of the devil. He therefore
called on all rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, to hunt down
the miscreants who thus afflicted the faithful, and he
especially increased the powers of inquisitors in various parts
of Europe for this purpose
The impulse thus given to childish fear and hatred against the
investigation of nature was felt for centuries; more and more
chemistry came to be known as one of the "seven devilish arts."
Thus began a long series of demonstrations against magic fro
the centre of Christendom. In 1437, and again in 1445, Pope
Eugene IV issued bulls exhorting inquisitors to be more diligent
in searching out and delivering over to punishment magicians and
witches who produced bad weather, the result being that
persecution received a fearful impulse. But the worst came forty
years later still, when, in 1484, there came the yet more
terrible bull of Pope Innocent VIII, known as _Summis
Desiderantes_, which let inquisitors loose upon Germany, with
Sprenger at their head, armed with the _Witch-Hammer_, the fearful
manual _Malleus Maleficarum_, to torture and destroy men and women
by tens of thousands for sorcery and magic. Similar bulls were
issued in 1504 by Julius II, and in 1523 by Adrian VI.
The system of repression thus begun lasted for hundreds of
years. The Reformation did little to change it, and in Germany,
where Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in proving
their orthodoxy, it was at its worst. On German soil more than
one hundred thousand victims are believed to have been
sacrificed to it between the middle of the fifteenth and the
middle of the sixteenth centuries.
Thus it was that from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas, from
Aquinas to Luther, and from Luther to Wesley, theologians of
both branches of the Church, with hardly an exception, enforced
the belief in magic and witchcraft, and, as far as they ha
power, carried out the injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live."
How this was ended by the progress of scientific modes of
thought I shall endeavour to show elsewhere: here we are onl
concerned with the effect of this widespread terrorism on the
germs and early growth of the physical sciences.
Of course, the atmosphere created by this persecution of
magicians was deadly to any open beginnings of experimental
science. The conscience of the time, acting in obedience to the
highest authorities of the Church, and, as was supposed, in
defence of religion, now brought out a missile which it hurled
against scientific investigators with deadly effect. The
medieval battlefields of thought were strewn with various forms
of it. This missile was the charge of unlawful compact with
Satan, and it was most effective. We find it used against every
great investigator of nature in those times and for ages after
The list of great men in those centuries charged with magic, a
given by Naude, is astounding; it includes every man of real
mark, and in the midst of them stands one of the most thoughtful
popes, Sylvester II (Gerbert), and the foremost of mediaeval
thinkers on natural science, Albert the Great. It came to be the
accepted 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.
It was entirely natural, then, that in 1163 Pope Alexander III,
in connection with the Council of Tours, forbade the study of
physics to all ecclesiastics, which, of course, in that age
meant prohibition of all such scientific studies to the onl
persons likely to make them. What the Pope then expressl
forbade was, in the words of the papal bull, "the study o
physics or the laws of the world," and it was added that any
person violating this rule "shall be avoided by all and
excommunicated."[386]
The first great thinker who, in spite of some stumbling into
theologic pitfalls, persevered in a truly scientific path, was
Roger Bacon. His life and works seem until recently to have been
generally misunderstood: he was formerly ranked as a
superstitious alchemist who happened upon some inventions, but
more recent investigation has shown him to be one of the great
masters in the evolution of human thought. The advance of soun
historical judgment seems likely to bring the fame of the two
who bear the name of Bacon nearly to equality. Bacon of the
chancellorship and of the _Novum Organum_ may not wane, but Bacon
of the prison cell and the _Opus Majus_ steadily approaches him in
brightness.
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 many
sciences, and his knowledge was sound and exact. By him, more
than by any other man of the Middle Ages, was the world brought
into the more fruitful paths of scientific thought--the paths
which have led to the most precious inventions; and among these
are clocks, lenses, and burning specula, which were given by hi
to the world, directly or indirectly. In his writings are found
formulae for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bismuth. It
is even claimed, with much appearance of justice, that h
investigated the power of steam, and he seems to have very
nearly reached some of the principal doctrines of modern
chemistry. But it should be borne in mind that his _method_ of
investigation was even greater than its _results_. In an age when
theological 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 experimenting, and braved all its risks. Few
greater men have lived. As we follow Bacon's process of
reasoning regarding the refraction of light, we see that he was
divinely inspired.
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
fought him steadily and bitterly. His sin was not disbelief in
Christianity, not want of fidelity to the Church, not even
dissent from the main lines of orthodoxy; on the contrary, he
showed in all his writings a desire to strengthen Christianity,
to build up the Church, and to develop orthodoxy. He was
attacked and condemned mainly because he did not believe that
philosophy had become complete, and that nothing more was to be
learned; he was condemned, as his opponents expressly declared,
"on account of certain suspicious novelties"--"_propter
quasdam novitates suspectas_."
Upon his return to Oxford, about 1250, the forces of unreason
beset him on all sides. Greatest of all his enemies was
Bonaventura. This enemy was the theologic idol of the period
the learned world knew him as the "seraphic Doctor"; Dante gave
him an honoured place in the great poem of the Middle Ages; the
Church finally enrolled him among the saints. By force of great
ability in theology he had become, in the middle of the
thirteenth century, general of the Franciscan order: thus, as
Bacon's master, his hands were laid heavily on the new teaching,
so that in 1257 the troublesome monk was forbidden to lecture;
all men were solemnly warned not to listen to his teaching, and
he was ordered to Paris, to be kept under surveillance by the
monastic authorities. Herein was exhibited another of the myriad
examples showing the care exercised over scientific teaching by
the Church. The reasons for thus dealing with Bacon were
evident: First, he had dared attempt scientific explanations of
natural phenomena, which under the mystic theology of the Middle
Ages had been referred simply to supernatural causes. Typica
was his explanation of the causes and character of the rainbow.
It was clear, cogent, a great step in the right direction as
regards physical science: but there, in the book of Genesis,
stood the legend regarding the origin of the rainbow, suppose
to have been dictated immediately by the Holy Spirit; and,
according to that, the "bow in the cloud" was not the result
of natural laws, but a "sign" arbitrarily placed in the heavens
for the simple purpose of assuring mankind that there was not to
be another universal deluge.
But this was not the worst: another theological idea was arrayed
against him--the idea of Satanic intervention in science; hence
he was attacked with that goodly missile which with the epithet
"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.
The most powerful protectors availed him little. His friend Guy
of Foulques, having in 1265 been made Pope under the name of
Clement IV, shielded him for a time; but the fury of the enemy
was too strong, and when he made ready to perform a fe
experiments before a small audience, we are told that all Oxford
was in an uproar. It was believed that Satan was about to be let
loose. Everywhere priests, monks, fellows, and students rushed
about, their garments streaming in the wind, and everywhere rose
the cry, "Down with the magician!" and this cry, "Down wit
the magician!" resounded from cell to cell and from hall to hall.
Another weapon was also used upon the battlefields of science in
that time with much effect. The Arabs had made many noble
discoveries in science, and Averroes had, in the opinion o
many, divided the honours with St. Thomas Aquinas; these facts
gave the new missile--it was the epithet "Mohammedan"; this,
too, was flung with effect at Bacon.
The attack now began to take its final shape. The two great
religious orders, Franciscan and Dominican, then in all the
vigour of their youth, vied with each other in fighting the new
thought in chemistry and physics. St. Dominic solemnly condemned
research by experiment and observation; the general of the
Franciscan order took similar ground. In 1243 the Dominicans
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.
In 1278 the authorities of the Franciscan order assembled at
Paris, solemnly condemned Bacon's teaching, and the general of
the Franciscans, Jerome of Ascoli, afterward Pope, threw him
into prison, where he remained for fourteen years, Though Pope
Clement IV had protected him, Popes Nicholas III and IV, by
virtue of their infallibility, decided that he was too dangerous
to be at large, and he was only released at the age of
eighty--but a year or two before death placed him beyond the
reach of his enemies. How deeply the struggle had racked hi
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!"
The attempt has been made by sundry champions of the Church to
show that some of Bacon's utterances against ecclesiastical and
other corruptions in his time were the main cause of the
severity which the Church authorities exercised against him.
This helps the Church but little, even if it be well based; bu
it is not well based. That some of his utterances of this sort
made him enemies is doubtless true, but the charges on which St.
Bonaventura silenced him, and Jerome of Ascoli imprisoned him,
and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen years, wer
"dangerous novelties" and suspected sorcery.
Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to
the world had ecclesiasticism allowed 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 a
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 be enjoying discoveries which will no
be reached before the twentieth century, and even later.
Thousands of precious lives shall be lost, tens of thousands
shall suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty,
ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for
this mistaken dealing with Roger Bacon and his compeers, would
now be blessing the earth.
In two recent years sixty thousand children died in England and
in Wales of scarlet fever; probably quite as many died in the
United States. 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, cholera,
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.
But despite the persecution of Bacon and the defection of those
who ought to have followed him, champions of the experimenta
method rose from time to time during the succeeding centuries.
We know little of them personally; our main knowledge of their
efforts is derived from the endeavours of their persecutors.
Under such guidance the secular rulers were naturally vigorous.
In France Charles V forbade, in 1380, the possession of furnaces
and apparatus necessary for chemical processes; under this law
the chemist John Barrillon was thrown into prison, and it was
only by the greatest effort that his life was saved. In England
Henry IV, in 1404, issued a similar decree. In Italy the
Republic of Venice, in 1418, followed these examples. The
judicial torture and murder of Antonio de Dominis were not
simply for heresy his investigations in the phenomena of light
were an additional crime. In Spain everything like scientific
research was crushed out among Christians. Some earnest efforts
were afterward made by Jews and Moors, but these were finally
ended by persecution; and to this hour the Spanish race, in some
respects the most gifted in Europe, which began its career with
everything in its favour and with every form of noble
achievement, remains in intellectual development behind every
other in Christendom
To question the theological view of physical science was, even
long after the close of the Middle Ages, exceedingly perilous.
We have seen how one of Roger Bacon's unpardonable offences was
his argument against the efficacy of magic, and how, centuries
afterward, Cornelius Agrippa, Weyer, Flade, Loos, Bekker, and a
multitude of other investigators and thinkers, suffered
confiscation of property, loss of position, and even torture and
death, for similar views.[391
The theological atmosphere, which in consequence settled down
about the great universities and colleges, seemed likely to
stifle all scientific effort in every part of Europe, and it is
one of the great wonders in human history that in spite of thi
deadly atmosphere a considerable body of thinking men, under
such protection as they could secure, still persisted in
devoting themselves to the physical sciences.
In Italy, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, came a
striking example of the difficulties which science still
encountered even after the Renaissance had undermined the old
beliefs. At that time John Baptist Porta was conducting his
investigations, and, despite a considerable mixture of
pseudo-science, they were fruitful. His was not "black magic,
claiming the aid of Satan, but "white magic," bringing into
service the laws of nature--the precursor of applied science
His book on meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were
broached on this subject; 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
several important industries. He did much to change natura
philosophy from a black art to a vigorous open science. H
encountered the old ecclesiastical policy. The society founded
by him for physical research, "I Secreti," was broken up, and
he was summoned to Rome by Pope Paul III and forbidden to
continue his investigations.
So, too, in France. In 1624, some young chemists at Paris having
taught the experimental method and cut loose from Aristotle, the
faculty of theology beset the Parliament of Paris, and the
Parliament prohibited these new chemical researches under the
severest penalties.
The same war continued in Italy. Even after the belief in magic
had been seriously weakened, the old theological fear an
dislike of physical science continued. In 1657 occurred the
first sitting of the Accademia del Cimento at Florence, under
the presidency of Prince Leopold de' Medici This academy
promised great things for science; it was open to all talent;
its only fundamental law was "the repudiation of any favourite
system or sect of philosophy, and the obligation to investigate
Nature by the pure light of experiment"; it entered into
scientific investigations with energy. Borelli in mathematics,
Redi in natural history, and many others, enlarged the
boundaries of knowledge. Heat, light, magnetism, electricity,
projectiles, digestion, and 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.
So, too, the noted Academy of the Lincei at times incurred th
ill will of the papacy by the very fact that it included
thoughtful investigators. It was "patronized" by Pope Urban VIII
in such manner as to paralyze it, and it was afterward
vexed by Pope Gregory XVI. Even in our own time sessions of
scientific associations were discouraged and thwarted by as
kindly a pontiff as Pius IX.[394]
A hostility similar in kind, though less in degree, was shown in
Protestant countries
Even after Thomasius in Germany and Voltaire in France and
Beccaria in Italy had given final blows to the belief in magic
and witchcraft throughout Christendom, the traditional orthodox
distrust of the physical sciences continued for a long time.
In England a marked dislike was shown among various leading
ecclesiastics and theologians towards the Royal Society, and
later toward the Association for the Advancement of Science; and
this dislike, as will hereafter be seen, sometimes took shape in
serious opposition.
As a rule, both in Protestant and Catholic countries instructio
in chemistry and physics was for a long time discouraged by
Church authorities; and, when its suppression was no longe
possible, great pains were taken to subordinate it to
instruction supposed to be more fully in accordance with th
older methods of theological reasoning
I have now presented in outline the more direct and open
struggle of the physical sciences with theology, mainly as an
exterior foe. We will next consider their warfare with the same
foe in its more subtle form, mainly as a vitiating and
sterilizing principle in science itself
We have seen thus far, first, how such men as Eusebius,
Lactantius, and their compeers, opposed scientific investigation
as futile; next, how such men as Albert the Great, St. Thoma
Aquinas, and the multitude who followed them, turned the main
current of medieval thought from science to theology; and,
finally, how a long line of Church authorities from Popes John XXII
and Innocent VIII, and the heads of the great religious orders,
down to various theologians and ecclesiastics, Catholic an
Protestant, of a very recent period, endeavoured first to crush
and afterward to discourage scientific research as dangerous.
Yet, injurious as all this was to the evolution of science,
there was developed something in many respects more destructive;
and this was the influence of mystic theology, penetrating
permeating, vitiating, sterilizing nearly every branch of
science for hundreds of years. Among the forms taken by this
development in the earlier Middle Ages we find a mixture of
physical science with a pseudo-science obtained from texts of
Scripture. In compounding this mixture, Jews and Christians vied
with each other. In this process the sacred books were used as
a fetich; every word, every letter, being considered to have a
divine and hidden meaning. By combining various scriptura
letters in various abstruse ways, new words of prodigious
significance in magic were obtained, and among them the great
word embracing the seventy-two mystical names of God--the mighty
word "_Schemhamphoras._" Why should men seek knowledge by
observation and experiment in the book of Nature, when the book
of Revelation, interpreted by the Kabbalah, opened suc
treasures to the ingenious believer
So, too, we have ancient mystical theories of number which the
theological spirit had made Christian, usurping an enormous
place in medieval science. The sacred power of the number three
was seen in the Trinity; in the three main divisions of the
universe--the empyrean, the heavens, and the earth; in the three
angelic hierarchies; in the three choirs of seraphim, cherubim,
and thrones; in the three of dominions, virtues, and powers; in
the three of principalities, archangels, and angels; in the
three orders in the Church--bishops, priests, and deacons; in the
three classes--the baptized, the communicants, and the monks; in
the three degrees of attainment--light, purity, and knowledge;
in the three theological virtues--faith, hope, and charity--and
in much else. All this was brought into a theologico-scientific
relation, then and afterward, with the three dimensions o
space; with the three divisions of time--past, present, and
future; with the three realms of the visible world--sky, earth
and sea; with the three constituents of man--body, soul, and
spirit; with the threefold enemies of man--the world, the flesh
and the devil; with the three kingdoms in nature--mineral,
vegetable, and animal; with "the three colours"--red, yellow,
and blue; with "the three eyes of the honey-bee"--and with a
multitude of other analogues equally precious. The sacred power
of the number seven was seen in the seven golden candlesticks
and the seven churches in the Apocalypse; in the seven cardina
virtues and the seven deadly sins; in the seven liberal arts and
the seven devilish arts, and, above all, in the seven
sacraments. And as this proved in astrology that there could be
only seven planets, so it proved in alchemy that there must be
exactly seven metals. The twelve apostles were connected with
the twelve signs in the zodiac, and with much in physical
science. The seventy-two disciples, the seventy-two interpreters
of the Old Testament, the seventy-two mystical names of God,
were connected with the alleged fact in anatomy that there were
seventy-two joints in the human frame.
Then, also, there were revived such theologic and metaphysica
substitutes for scientific thought as the declaration that th
perfect line is a circle, and hence that the planets must move
in absolute circles--a statement which led astronomy astray eve
when the great truths of the Copernican theory were well in
sight; also, the declaration that nature abhors a vacuum--a
statement which led physics astray until Torricelli made his
experiments; also, the declaration that we see the lightning
before we hear the thunder because "sight is nobler than hearing."
In chemistry we have the same theologic tendency to magic, and,
as a result, a muddle of science and theology, which from one
point of view seems blasphemous and from another idiotic, but
which none the less sterilized physical investigation for ages.
That debased Platonism which had been such an important factor
in the evolution of Christian theology from the earliest days o
the Church continued its work. As everything in inorganic nature
was supposed to have spiritual significance, the doctrines of
the Trinity and Incarnation were turned into an argument in
behalf of the philosopher's stone; arguments for the scheme of
redemption and for transubstantiation suggested others of
similar construction to prove the transmutation of metals; the
doctrine of the resurrection of the human body was by similar
mystic jugglery connected with the processes of distillation and
sublimation. Even after the Middle Ages were past, strong men
seemed unable to break away from such reasoning as this--among
them such leaders as Basil Valentine in the fifteenth century,
Agricola in the sixteenth, and Van Helmont in the seventeenth.
The greatest theologians contributed to the welter of unreason
from which this pseudo-science was developed. One question
largely discussed was, whether at the Redemption it was
necessary for God to take the human form. Thomas Aquinas
answered that it was necessary, but William Occam and Duns
Scotus answered that it was not; that God might have taken th
form of a stone, or of a log, or of a beast. The possibilitie
opened to wild substitutes for science by this sort of reasoning
were infinite. Men have often asked how it was that the
Arabians accomplished so much in scientific discovery a
compared with Christian investigators; but the answer is easy:
the Arabians were comparatively free from these theologic
allurements which in Christian Europe flickered in the air o
all sides, luring men into paths which led no-whither.
Strong investigators, like Arnold of Villanova, Raymond Lully,
Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and their compeers, were thus drawn
far out of the only paths which led to fruitful truths. In a
work generally ascribed to the first of these, the student i
told that in mixing his chemicals he must repeat the psalm
_Exsurge Domine_, and that on certain chemical vessels must b
placed the last words of Jesus on the cross. Vincent of Beauvais
insisted that, as the Bible declares that Noah, when five
hundred years old, had children born to him, he must have
possessed alchemical means of preserving life; and much late
Dickinson insisted that the patriarchs generally must have owed
their long lives to such means. It was loudly declared that the
reality of the philosopher's stone was proved by the words of
St. John in the Revelation. "To him that overcometh I will give
a white stone." The reasonableness of seeking to develop gold
out of the baser metals was for many generations based upon th
doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body, which, though
explicitly denied by St. Paul, had become a part of the creed of
the Church. Martin Luther was especially drawn to believe in the
alchemistic doctrine of transmutation by this analogy. The Bibl
was everywhere used, both among Protestants and Catholics, in
support of these mystic adulterations of science, and one
writer, as late as 1751, based his alchemistic arguments on more
than a hundred passages of Scripture. As an example of this sort
of reasoning, we have a proof that the elect will preserve the
philosopher's stone until the last judgment, drawn from a
passage in St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, "We have this
treasure in earthen vessels."
The greatest thinkers devoted themselves to adding new
ingredients to this strange mixture of scientific and theologic
thought. The Catholic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the
Protestant mysticism of Jacob Boehme, and the alchemistic
reveries of Basil Valentine were all cast into this seething mass.
And when alchemy in its old form had been discredited, we find
scriptural arguments no less perverse, and even comical, used on
the other side. As an example of this, just before the great
discoveries by Stahl, we find the valuable scientific efforts of
Becher opposed with the following syllogism: "King Solomon,
according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of
heaven and earth; but King Solomon knew nothing about alchemy
[or chemistry in the form it then took], and sent his vessels to
Ophir to seek gold, and levied taxes upon his subjects; _ergo_
alchemy [or chemistry] has no reality or truth." And we find
that Becher is absolutely turned away from his labours, an
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.[399]
Of the general reasoning enforced by theology regarding physical
science, every age has shown examples; yet out of them all I
will select but two, and these are given because they show how
this mixture of theological with scientific ideas took hold upon
the strongest supporters of better reasoning even after th
power of medieval theology seemed broken.
The first of these examples is Melanchthon. He was the schola
of the Reformation, and justly won the title "Preceptor of
Germany." His mind was singularly open, his sympathies broad,
and his usual freedom from bigotry drew down upon him that wrath
of Protestant heresy-hunters which embittered the last years of
his life and tortured him upon his deathbed. During his career
at the University of Wittenberg he gave a course of lectures on
physics, and in these he dwelt upon scriptural texts as
affording scientific proofs, accepted the interference of the
devil in physical phenomena as in other things, and applied the
medieval method throughout his whole work.[400]
Yet far more remarkable was the example, a century later, of the
man who more than any other led the world out of the path opened
by Aquinas, and into that through which modern thought has
advanced to its greatest conquests. Strange as it may at firs
seem, Francis Bacon, whose keenness of sight revealed the
delusions of the old path and the promises of the new, and whose
boldness did so much to turn the world from the old path into
the new, presents in his own writings one of the most strikin
examples of the evil he did so much to destroy.
The _Novum Organon_, considering the time when it came from his
pen, is doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in
the history of human thought. It showed the modern world the way
out of the scholastic method and reverence for dogma into the
experimental method and reverence for fact. In 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. He declares that the "corruption of philosophy from
superstition and theology introduced the greatest amount of evil
both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." He
denounces those who "have endeavoured to found a natura
philosophy on the books of Genesis and Job and other sacred
Scriptures, so `seeking the dead among the living.'" He speaks
of the result as "an unwholesome mixture of things human and
divine; not merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical
religion." He refers to the opposition of the fathers to the
doctrine of the rotundity of the earth, and says that, "thanks
to some of them, you may find the approach to any kind of
philosophy, however improved, entirely closed up." He charges
that some of these divines are "afraid lest perhaps a deeper
inquiry into nature should, penetrate beyond the allowed limits
of sobriety"; and finally speaks of theologians as sometime
craftily conjecturing that, if science be little understood,
"each single thing can be referred more easily to the hand an
rod of God," and says, "_This is nothing more or less tha
wishing to please God by a lie_."
No man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race can,
without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such
clearness of insight and boldness of utterance, and the first
thought of the reader is that, of all men, Francis Bacon is the
most free from the unfortunate bias he condemns; that he,
certainly, can not be deluded into the old path. But as we go on
through his main work we are surprised to find that the strong
arm of Aquinas has been stretched over the intervening ages, and
has laid hold upon this master-thinker of the seventeenth
century; for only a few chapters beyond those containing th
citations already made we find Bacon alluding to the recent
voyage of Columbus, and 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... the
circumnavigation of the world and the increase of science should
happen in the same age."[401]
In his great work on the _Advancement of Learning_ the firm grasp
which the methods he condemned held upon him is shown yet more
clearly. In the first book of it he asserts that "that
excellent book of Job, if it be revolved with diligence, will be
found pregnant and swelling with natural philosophy," and he
endeavours to show that in it the "roundness of the earth," th
"fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distances," th
"depression of the southern pole," the "matter of generation,
and "matter of minerals" are "with great elegancy noted."
But, curiously enough, he uses to support some of these truth
the very texts which the fathers of the Church used to destroy
them, and those for which he finds Scripture warrant most
clearly are such as science has since disproved. So, too, h
says that Solomon was enabled in his Proverbs, "by donation of
God, to compile a natural history of all verdure."[402]
Such was the struggle of the physical sciences in general. Let
us now look briefly at one special example out of many, which
reveals, as well as any, one of the main theories which prompted
theological interference with them.
It will doubtless seem amazing to many that for ages the weight
of theological thought in Christendom was thrown against the
idea of the suffocating properties of certain gases, and
especially of carbonic acid. Although in antiquity we see men
forming a right theory of gases in mines, we find that, early in
the history of the Church, St. Clement of Alexandria put forth
the theory that these gases are manifestations of diabolic
action, and that, throughout Christendom, suffocation in
caverns, wells, and cellars was attributed to the direct action
of evil spirits. Evidences of this view abound through the
medieval period, and during the Reformation period a great
authority, Agricola, one of the most earnest and truthful of
investigators, still adhered to the belief that these gases in
mines were manifestations of devils, and he specified two
classes--one of malignant imps, who blow out the miners' lamps,
and the other of friendly imps, who simply tease the workmen in
various ways. He went so far as to say that one of these spirits
in the Saxon mine of Annaberg destroyed twelve workmen at once
by the power of his breath.
At the end of the sixteenth century we find a writer on
mineralogy complaining that the mines in France and Germany ha
been in large part abandoned on account of the "evil spirits of
metals which had taken possession of them."
Even as late as the seventeenth century, Van Helmont, after he
had broken away from alchemy and opened one of the great paths
to chemistry--even after he had announced to the world the
existence of various gases and the mode of their generation--wa
not strong enough to free himself from theologic bias; he still
inclined to believe that the gases he had discovered, were i
some sense living spirits, beneficent or diabolical.
But at various. periods glimpses of the truth had been gained.
The ancient view had not been entirely forgotten; and as far
back as the first part of the thirteenth century Albert the
Great suggested a natural cause in the possibility of
exhalations from minerals causing a "corruption of the air";
but he, as we have seen, was driven or dragged off into,
theological studies, and the world relapsed into th
theological view.
Toward the end of the fifteenth century there had come a grea
genius laden with important truths in chemistry, but for whom
the world was not ready--Basil Valentine. His discoveries
anticipated much that has brought fame and fortune to chemists
since, yet so fearful of danger was he that his work was
carefully concealed. Not until after his death was his treatise
on alchemy found, and even then it was for a long time not known
where and when he lived. The papal bull, _Spondent pariter_, and
the various prohibitions it bred, forcing other alchemists to
conceal their laboratories, led him to let himself be known
during his life at Erfurt simply as an apothecary, and to wait
until after his death to make a revelation of truth which during
his lifetime might have cost him dear. Among the legacies of
this greatest of the alchemists was the doctrine that the air
which asphyxiates workers in mines is similar to that which i
produced by fermentation of malt, and a recommendation that, in
order to drive away the evil and to prevent serious accidents,
fires be lighted and jets of steam used to ventilate the
mines--stress being especially laid upon the idea that the danger
in the mines is produced by "exhalations of metals.
Thanks to men like Valentine, this idea of the interference of
Satan and his minions with the mining industry was graduall
weakened, and the working of the deserted mines was resumed; yet
even at a comparatively recent period we find it stil
lingering, and among leading divines in the very heart of
Protestant Germany. In 1715 a cellar-digger having been stifled
at Jena, the medical faculty of the university decided that the
cause was not the direct action of the devil, but a deadly gas
Thereupon Prof. Loescher, of the University of Wittenberg,
entered a solemn protest, declaring that the decision of th
medical faculty was "only a proof of the lamentable license
which has so taken possession of us, and which, if we are not
earnestly on our guard, will finally turn away from us th
blessing of God."[404] But denunciations of this kind could not
hold back the little army of science; in spite of adverse
influences, the evolution of physics and chemistry went on. Mor
and more there rose men bold enough to break away fro
theological methods and strong enough to resist ecclesiastical
bribes and threats. As alchemy in its first form, seeking for
the philosopher's stone and the transmutation of metals, had
given way to alchemy in its second form, seeking for the elixir
of life and remedies more or less magical for disease, so now
the latter yielded to the search for truth as truth. More and
more the "solemnly constituted impostors" were resisted in
every field. A great line of physicists and chemists began to
appear.[404b]
II.
Just at the middle of the seventeenth century, and at the very
centre of opposition to physical science, Robert Boyle began the
new epoch in chemistry. Strongly influenced by the writings of
Bacon and the discoveries of Galileo, he devoted himself to
scientific research, establishing at Oxford a laboratory and
putting into it a chemist from Strasburg. For this he was at
once bitterly attacked. In spite of his high position, his
blameless life, his liberal gifts to charity and learning, the
Oxford pulpit was especially severe against him, declaring that
his researches were destroying religion and his experiments
undermining the university. Public orators denounced him, the
wits ridiculed him, and his associates in the peerage were
indignant that he should condescend to pursuits so unworthy. But
Boyle pressed on. His discoveries opened new paths in variou
directions and gave an impulse to a succession of vigorous
investigators. Thus began the long series of discoveries
culminating those of Black, Bergmann, Cavendish, Priestley, an
Lavoisier, who ushered in the chemical science of the
nineteenth century.
Yet not even then without a sore struggle against unreason. And
it must here be noticed that this unreason was not all
theological. The unreasoning heterodox when intrusted with
irresponsible power can be as short-sighted and cruel as the
unreasoning orthodox. Lavoisier, one of the best of our race,
not only a great chemist but a true man, was sent to the
scaffold by the Parisian mob, led by bigoted "liberals" and
atheists, with the sneer that the republic had no need of
_savants_. As to Priestley, who had devoted his life to science
and to every good work among his fellow-men, the Birmingham mob,
favoured by the Anglican clergymen who harangued them as
"fellow-churchmen," wrecked his house, destroyed his library,
philosophical instruments, and papers containing the results o
long years of scientific research, drove him into exile, and
would have murdered him if they could have laid their hands upon
him. Nor was it entirely his devotion to rational liberty, nor
even his disbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity, which brough
on this catastrophe. That there was a deep distrust of his
scientific pursuits, was evident when the leaders of the mob took
pains to use his electrical apparatus to set fire to his papers.
Still, though theological modes of thought continued to
sterilize much effort in chemistry, the old influence was mor
and more thrown off, and truth sought more and more for truth's
sake. "Black magic" with its Satanic machinery vanished, only
reappearing occasionally among marvel-mongers and belated
theologians. "White magic" became legerdemain.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, physical research,
though it went on with ever-increasing vigour, felt in various
ways the reaction which followed the French Revolution. It was
not merely under the Bourbons and Hapsburgs that resistance was
offered; even in England the old spirit lingered long. As late
as 1832, when the British Association for the Advancement of
Science first visited Oxford, no less amiable a man than John
Keble--at that time a power in the university--condemned
indignantly the conferring of honorary degrees upon the leading
men thus brought together. In a letter of that date to Dr. Pusey
he complained bitterly, to use his own words, that "the Oxford
doctors have truckled sadly to the spirit of the times i
receiving the hotchpotch of philosophers as they did." It is
interesting to know that among the men thus contemptuousl
characterized were Brewster, Faraday, and Dalton.
Nor was this a mere isolated exhibition of feeling; it lasted
many years, and was especially shown on both sides of th
Atlantic in all higher institutions of learning where theology
was dominant. Down to a period within the memory of men still in
active life, students in the sciences, not only at Oxford and
Cambridge but at Harvard and Yale, were considered a doubtful i
not a distinctly inferior class, intellectually and socially--to
be relegated to different instructors and buildings, and to
receive their degrees on a different occasion and with different
ceremonies from those appointed for students in literature. To
the State University of Michigan, among the greater American
institutions of learning which have never possessed or been
possessed by a theological seminary, belongs the honour of
first breaking down this wall of separation.
But from the middle years of the century chemical science
progressed with ever-accelerating force, and the work of Bunsen,
Kirchhoff, Dalton, and Faraday has, in the last years of the
century, led up to the establishment of Mendeleef's law, b
which chemistry has become predictive, as astronomy had become
predictive by the calculations of Newton, and biology by the
discoveries of Darwin.
While one succession of strong men were thus developing
chemistry out of one form of magic, another succession were
developing physics out of another form.
First in this latter succession may be mentioned that line of
thinkers who divined and reasoned out great physical laws--a
line extending from Galileo and Kepler and Newton to Ohm and
Faraday and Joule and Helmholtz. These, by revealing more an
more clearly the reign of law, steadily undermined the olde
theological view of arbitrary influence in nature. Next should
be mentioned the line of profound observers, from Galileo and
Torricelli to Kelvin. These have as thoroughly undermined the
old theologic substitution of phrases for facts. When Galileo
dropped the differing weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he
began the end of Aristotelian authority in physics. When
Torricelli balanced a column of mercury against a column of
water and each of these against a column of air, he ended the
theologic phrase that "nature abhors a vacuum." When Newton
approximately determined the velocity of sound, he ended the
theologic argument that we see the flash before we hear the roar
because "sight is nobler than hearing." When Franklin showed
that lightning is caused by electricity, and Ohm and Faraday
proved that electricity obeys ascertained laws, they ended the
theological idea of a divinity seated above the clouds and
casting thunderbolts.
Resulting from the labour of both these branches of physical
science, we have the establishment of the great laws of th
indestructibility of matter, the correlation of forces, and
chemical affinity. Thereby is ended, with various other sacred
traditions, the theological theory of a visible universe created
out of nothing, so firmly imbedded in the theological thought of
the Middle Ages and in the Westminster Catechism.[408]
In our own time some attempt has been made to renew this war
against the physical sciences. Joseph de Maistre, uttering his
hatred of them, declaring that mankind has paid too dearly for
them, asserting that they must be subjected to theology,
likening them to fire--good when confined and dangerous when
scattered about--has been one of the main leaders among those
who can not relinquish the idea that our body of sacred
literature should be kept a controlling text-book of science.
The only effect of such teachings has been to weaken the
legitimate hold of religion upon men.
In Catholic countries exertion has of late years been mainly
confined to excluding science or diluting it in universit
teachings. Early in the present century a great effort was made
by Ferdinand VII of Spain. He simply dismissed the scientific
professors from the University of Salamanca, and until a recent
period there has been general exclusion from Spanis
universities of professors holding to the Newtonian physics. So,
too, the contemporary Emperor of Austria attempted indirectly
something of the same sort; and at a still later period Pope
Gregory XVI and Pius IX discouraged, if they did not forbid, th
meetings of scientific associations in Italy. In France, war
between theology and science, which had long been smouldering,
came in the years 1867 and 1868 to an outbreak. Toward the end
of the last century, after the Church had held possession of
advanced instruction for more than a thousand years, and had, so
far as it was able, kept experimental science in
servitude--after it had humiliated Buffon in natural science,
thrown its weight against Newton in the physical sciences, and
wrecked Turgot's noble plans for a system of public
instruction--the French nation decreed the establishment of the
most thorough and complete system of higher instruction i
science ever known. It was kept under lay control and became one
of the glories of France; but, emboldened by the restoration o
the Bourbons in 1815, the Church began to undermine this hate
system, and in 1868 had made such progress that all was read
for the final assault.
Foremost among the leaders of the besieging party was the Bishop
of Orleans, Dupanloup, a man of many winning characteristics an
of great oratorical power. In various ways, and especially in an
open letter, he had fought the "materialism" of science at
Paris, and especially were his attacks levelled at Profs
Vulpian and See and the Minister of Public instruction, Duruy,
a man of great merit, whose only crime was devotion to th
improvement of education and to the promotion of the highest
research in science.[409]
The main attack was made rather upon biological science than
upon physics and chemistry, yet it was clear that all were
involved together.
The first onslaught was made in the French Senate, and the
storming party in that body was led by a venerable and
conscientious prelate, Cardinal de Bonnechose, Archbishop o
Rouen. It was charged by him and his party that the tendencies
of the higher scientific teaching at Paris were fatal to
religion and morality. Heavy missiles were hurled--such phrases
as "sapping the foundations," "breaking down the bulwarks,
and the like; and, withal, a new missile was used with much
effect--the epithet "materialist."
The results can be easily guessed: crowds came to the
lecture-rooms of the attacked 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 t
overwhelm See, Vulpian, Duruy, and the whole hated system o
public instruction in France--the statement that See had denied
the existence of the human soul.
Cardinal Bonnechose seized the tremendous weapon at once. 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 honour 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 certain
ideas regarding medicine as an _art_. The inflamed imagination of
the cardinal's heresy-hunting emissary had, as the
lecture-notes proved, led him to mistake the word "_art_" for
"ame," and to exhibit Prof. See as treating a theological when
he was discussing a purely scientific question. 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, dean of the faculty, completed their discomfiture.
Thus a well-meant attempt to check science simply ended in
bringing ridicule on religion, and in 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.[410
But justice forbids raising an outcry against Roman Catholicism
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 all: 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.[411]
And in yet another Protestant country this same mistake was
made. In 1868 several excellent churchmen in Prussia thought it
their duty to meet for the denunciation of "science falsely s
called." Two results followed: upon the great majority of these
really self-sacrificing men--whose first utterances showed
complete 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 th
German nation.[411b
But in all the greater modern nations warfare of this kind,
after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, became more
and more futile. While conscientious Roman bishops, and no less
conscientious Protestant clergymen in Europe and Americ
continued to insist that advanced education, not only in
literature but in science, should be kept under careful contro
in their own sectarian universities and colleges, wretchedly
one-sided in organization and inadequate in equipment; while
Catholic clerical authorities in Spain were rejecting all
professors holding the Newtonian theory, and in Austria and
Italy all holding unsafe views regarding the Immaculate
Conception, and while Protestant clerical authorities in Great
Britain and America were keeping out of professorships men
holding unsatisfactory views regarding the Incarnation, or
Infant Baptism, or the Apostolic Succession, or Ordination by
Elders, or the Perseverance of the Saints; and while both
Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastics were openly or secretly
weeding out of university faculties all who showed willingness
to consider fairly the ideas of Darwin, a movement was quietly
in progress destined to take instruction, and especiall
instruction in the physical and natural sciences, out of its
old subordination to theology and ecclesiasticism.[412]
The most striking beginnings of this movement had been seen
when, in the darkest period of the French Revolution, there was
founded at Paris the great Conservatory of Arts and Trades, and
when, in the early years of the nineteenth century, scientific
and technical education spread quietly upon the Continent. By
the middle of the century France and Germany were dotted with
well-equipped technical and scientific schools, each having
chemical and physical laboratories
The English-speaking lands lagged behind. In England, Oxford and
Cambridge showed few if any signs of this movement, and in the
United States, down to 1850, evidences of it were few an
feeble. Very significant is it that, at that period, while Yale
College had in its faculty Silliman and Olmsted--the professor
of chemistry and the professor of physics most widely known in
the United States--it had no physical or chemical laboratory in
the modern sense, and confined its instruction in these subjects
to examinations upon a text-book and the presentation of a few
lectures. At the State University of Michigan, which had eve
then taken a foremost place in the higher education west of the
Great Lakes, there was very meagre instruction in chemistry and
virtually none in physics. This being the state of things in the
middle of the century in institutions remarkably free from
clerical control, it can be imagined what was the position of
scientific instruction in smaller colleges and universities
where theological considerations were entirely dominant.
But in 1851, with the International Exhibition at London, began
in Great Britain and America a movement in favour of scientific
education; men of wealth and public spirit began making
contributions to them, and thus came the growth of a new system
of instruction in which Chemistry and Physics took just rank
By far the most marked feature in this movement was seen in
America, when, in 1857, Justin S. Morrill, a young member of
Congress from Vermont, presented the project of a law endowing
from the public lands a broad national system of colleges in
which scientific and technical studies should be placed on an
equality with studies in classical literature, one such college
to be established in every State of the Union. The bill, though
opposed mainly by representatives from the Southern States
where doctrinaire politics and orthodox theology were in strong
alliance with negro slavery, was passed by both Houses of
Congress, but vetoed by President Buchanan, in whom the
doctrinaire and orthodox spirit was incarnate. But Morrill
persisted and again presented his bill, which was again carried
in spite of the opposition of the Southern members, and again
vetoed in 1859 by President Buchanan. Then came the civil war;
but Morrill and his associates did not despair of the republic
In the midst of all the measures for putting vast armies into
the field and for saving the Union from foreign interference as
well as from domestic anarchy, they again passed the bill, and
in 1862, in the darkest hour of the struggle for national
existence, it became a law by the signature of President Lincoln.
And here it should not be unrecorded, that, while the vast
majority of the supporters of the measure were laymen, most
efficient service was rendered by a clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Amos
Brown, born in New Hampshire, but at that time an instructor in
a little village of New York. His ideas were embodied in the
bill, and his efforts did much for its passage.
Thus was established, in every State of the American Union, at
least one institution in which scientific and technical studie
were given equal rank with classical, and promoted by
laboratories for research in physical and natural science. Of
these institutions there are now nearly fifty: all have proved
valuable, and some of them, by the addition of splendid gift
from individuals and from the States in which they are situated,
have been developed into great universities.
Nor was this all. Many of the older universities and colleges
thus received a powerful stimulus in the new direction. The
great physical and chemical laboratories founded by gifts from
public-spirited individuals, as at Harvard, Yale, and Chicago,
or by enlightened State legislators, as in Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, California, Kansas, and Nebraska, have also becom
centres from which radiate influences favouring the unfettered
search for truth as truth.
This system has been long enough in operation to enable us to
note in some degree its effects on religion, and these are
certainly such as to relieve those who have feared that religion
was necessarily bound up with the older instruction controlled
by theology. While in Europe, by a natural reaction, th
colleges under strict ecclesiastical control have sent forth the
most powerful foes the Christian Church has ever known, of whom
Voltaire and Diderot and Volney and Sainte-Beuve and Renan
are types, no such effects have been noted in these newer
institutions. While the theological way of looking at the
universe has steadily yielded, there has been no sign of any
tendency toward irreligion. On the contrary, it is the testimony
of those best acquainted with the American colleges an
universities during the last forty-five years that there has bee
in them a great gain, not only as regards morals, but as regards
religion in its highest and best sense. The reason is not far to
seek. Under the old American system the whole body of students
at a university were confined to a single course, for which the
majority cared little and very many cared nothing, and, as a
result, widespread idleness and dissipation were inevitable.
Under the new system, presenting various courses, and especially
courses in various sciences, appealing to different tastes and
aims, the great majority of students are interested, and
consequently indolence and dissipation have steadily diminished.
Moreover, in the majority of American institutions of learning
down to the middle of the century, the main reliance for the
religious culture of students was in the perfunctory
presentation of sectarian theology, and the occasional stirring
up of what were called "revivals," which, after a period of
unhealthy stimulus, inevitably left the main body of students in
a state of religious and moral reaction and collapse. This
method is now discredited, and in the more important American
universities it has become impossible. Religious truth, to
secure the attention of the modern race of students in the
better American institutions, is presented, not by "sensation
preachers," but by thoughtful, sober-minded scholars. Less and
less avail sectarian arguments; more and more impressive becomes
the presentation of fundamental religious truths. The result is,
that while young men care less and less for the great mass of
petty, cut-and-dried sectarian formulas, they approach the
deeper questions of religion with increasing reverence.
While striking differences exist between the Europea
universities and those of the United States, this at least may
be said, that on both sides of the Atlantic the great majority
of the leading institutions of learning are under the sway of
enlightened public opinion as voiced mainly by laymen, and that,
this being the case, the physical and natural sciences are
henceforth likely to be developed normally, and without fear of
being sterilized by theology or oppressed by ecclesiasticism.
CHAPTER XIII
FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.
I. THE EARLY AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE.
NOTHING in the evolution of human thought appears more
inevitable than the idea of supernatural intervention i
producing and curing disease. The causes of disease are so
intricate that they are reached only after ages of scientific
labour. In those periods when man sees everywhere miracle and
nowhere law,--when he attributes all things which he can not
understand to a will like his own,--he naturally ascribes his
diseases either to the wrath of a good being or to the malice o
an evil being.
This idea underlies the connection of the priestly clas
with the healing art: a connection of which we have survivals
among rude tribes in all parts of the world, and which is seen in
nearly every ancient civilization--especially in the powers over
disease claimed in Egypt by the priests of Osiris and Isis, in
Assyria by the priests of Gibil, in Greece by the priests of
AEsculapius, and in Judea by the priests and prophets of Jahveh.
In Egypt there is evidence, reaching back to a very early
period, that the sick were often regarded as afflicted or
possessed by demons; the same belief comes constantly before us
in the great religions of India and China; and, as regards
Chaldea, the Assyrian tablets recovered in recent years, while
revealing the source of so many myths and legends transmitted to
the modern world through the book of Genesis, show especially
this idea of the healing of diseases by the casting out of
devils. A similar theory was elaborated in Persia. Naturally,
then, the Old Testament, so precious in showing the evolution of
religious and moral truth among men, attributes such diseases a
the leprosy of Miriam and Uzziah, the boils of Job, the
dysentery of Jehoram, the withered hand of Jeroboam, the fatal
illness of Asa, and many other ills, to the wrath of God or the
malice of Satan; while, in the New Testament, such examples a
the woman "bound by Satan," the rebuke of the fever, the castin
out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of the person whom
"the devil ofttimes casteth into the fire"--of which case one of
the greatest modern physicians remarks that never was there a
truer description of epilepsy--and various other episodes, show
this same inevitable mode of thought as a refracting medium
through which the teachings and doings of the Great Physician
were revealed to future generations.
In Greece, though this idea of an occult evil agency in
producing bodily ills appeared at an early period, there also
came the first beginnings, so far as we know, of a really
scientific theory of medicine. Five hundred years before Christ,
in the bloom period of thought--the period of AEschylus, Phidias,
Pericles, Socrates, and Plato--appeared Hippocrates, one of the
greatest names in history. Quietly but thoroughly he broke away
from the old tradition, developed scientific thought, and laid
the foundations of medical science upon experience, observation,
and reason so deeply and broadly that his teaching remains to
this hour among the most precious possessions of our race.
His thought was passed on to the School of Alexandria, and
there medical science was developed yet further, especially b
such men as Herophilus and Erasistratus. Under their lead studies
in human anatomy began by dissection; the old prejudice which had
weighed so long upon science, preventing that method of
anatomical investigation without which there can be no real
results, was cast aside apparently forever.[[2]]
But with the coming in of Christianity a great new chain of
events was set in motion which modified this development most
profoundly. The influence of Christianity on the healing art was
twofold: there was first a blessed impulse--the thought,
aspiration, example, ideals, and spirit of Jesus of Nazareth.
This spirit, then poured into the world, flowed down through the
ages, promoting self-sacrifice for the sick and wretched
Through all those succeeding centuries, even through the rudest,
hospitals and infirmaries sprang up along this blessed stream. Of
these were the Eastern establishments for the cure of the sick at
the earliest Christian periods, the Infirmary of Monte Cassino
and the Hotel-Dieu at Lyons in the sixth century, the Hotel-Dieu
at Paris in the seventh, and the myriad refuges for the sick and
suffering which sprang up in every part of Europe during the
following centuries. Vitalized by this stream, all medieval
growths of mercy bloomed luxuriantly. To say nothing of those at
an earlier period, we have in the time of the Crusades great
charitable organizations like the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and
thenceforward every means of bringing the spirit of Jesus to help
afflicted humanity. So, too, through all those ages we have a
succession of men and women devoting themselves to works of mercy,
culminating during modern times in saints like Vincent de Paul
Francke, Howard, Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, and Muhlenberg.
But while this vast influence, poured forth from the heart
of the Founder of Christianity, streamed through century afte
century, inspiring every development of mercy, there came fro
those who organized the Church which bears his name, and from
those who afterward developed and directed it, another stream of
influence--a theology drawn partly from prehistoric conceptions
of unseen powers, partly from ideas developed in the earliest
historic nations, but especially from the letter of the Hebrew
and Christian sacred books.
The theology deveLoped out of our sacred literature in
relation to the cure of disease was mainly twofold: first, there
was a new and strong evolution of the old idea that physical
disease is produced by the wrath of God or the malice of Satan,
or by a combination of both, which theology was especially called
in to explain; secondly, there were evolved theories of
miraculous methods of cure, based upon modes of appeasing the
Divine anger, or of thwarting Satanic malice.
Along both these streams of influence, one arising in the
life of Jesus, and the other in the reasonings of theologians,
legends of miracles grew luxuriantly. It would be utterly
unphilosophical to attribute these as a whole to conscious fraud
Whatever part priestcraft may have taken afterward in sundry
discreditable developments of them, the mass of miraculous legends,
Century after century, grew up mainly in good faith, and as
naturally as elms along water-courses or flowers upon the prairie.
II. GROWTH OF LEGENDS OF HEALING.-
THE LIFE OF XAVIER AS A TYPICAL EXAMPLE
Legends of miracles have thus grown about the lives of all
great benefactors of humanity in early ages, and about saints and
devotees. Throughout human history the lives of such personages,
almost without exception, have been accompanied or followed by a
literature in which legends of miraculous powers form a very
important part--a part constantly increasing until a different
mode of looking at nature and of weighing testimony cause
miracles to disappear. While modern thought holds the testimony
to the vast mass of such legends in all ages as worthless, it is
very widely acknowledged that great and gifted beings who endo
the earth with higher religious ideas, gaining the deepest hold
upon the hearts and minds of multitudes, may at times exercise
such influence upon those about them that the sick in mind or
body are helped or healed.
We have within the modern period very many examples whic
enable us to study the evolution of legendary miracles. Out of
these I will select but one, which is chosen because it is the
life of one of the most noble and devoted men in the history of
humanity, one whose biography is before the world with its most
minute details--in his own letters, in the letters of his
associates, in contemporary histories, and in a multitude of
biographies: this man is St. Francis Xavier. From these sources I
draw the facts now to be given, but none of them are of Protestan
origin; every source from which I shall draw is Catholic and
Roman, and published under the sanction of the Church.
Born a Spanish noble, Xavier at an early age cast aside all
ordinary aims, devoted himself to study, was rapidly advanced to
a professorship at Paris, and in this position was rapidly
winning a commanding influence, when he came under the sway of
another Spaniard even greater, though less brilliantly endowed,
than himself--Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus.
The result was that the young professor sacrificed the brilliant
career on which he had entered at the French capital, went to the
far East as a simple missionary, and there devoted his remaining
years to redeeming the lowest and most wretched of our race.
Among the various tribes, first in lower India and afterward
in Japan, he wrought untiringly--toiling through village after
village, collecting the natives by the sound of a hand-bell,
trying to teach them the simplest Christian formulas; and thus he
brought myriads of them to a nominal Confession of the Christian
faith. After twelve years of such efforts, seeking new conquests for
religion, he sacrificed his life on the desert island of San Chan.
During his career as a missionary he wrote great numbers of
letters, which were preserved and have since been published; and
these, with the letters of his contemporaries, exhibit clearly
all the features of his life. His own writings are very minute,
and enable us to follow him fully. No account of a miracle
wrought by him appears either in his own letters or in any
contemporary document.[[6]] At the outside, but two or three things
occurred in his whole life, as exhibited so fully by himself and
his contemporaries, for which the most earnest devotee could
claim anything like Divine interposition; and these are such as
may be read in the letters of very many fervent missionaries,
Protestant as well as Catholic. For example, in the beginning o
his career, during a journey in Europe with an ambassador, one of
the servants in fording a stream got into deep water and was in
danger of drowning. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed
very earnestly, and that the man finally struggled out of th
stream. But within sixty years after his death, at hi
canonization, and by various biographers, this had been magnified
into a miracle, and appears in the various histories dressed out
in glowing colours. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed
for the safety of the young man; but his biographers tell us that
it was Xavier who prayed, and finally, by the later writers,
Xavier is represented as lifting horse and rider out of the
stream by a clearly supernatural act.
Still another claim to miracle is based upon his arriving at
Lisbon and finding his great colleague, Simon Rodriguez, ill of
fever. Xavier informs us in a very simple way that Rodriguez was
so overjoyed to see him that the fever did not return. This is
entirely similar to the cure which Martin Luther wrought upon
Melanchthon. Melanchthon had broken down and was supposed to b
dying, when his joy at the long-delayed visit of Luther brought
him to his feet again, after which he lived for many years.
Again, it is related that Xavier, finding a poor native
woman very ill, baptized her, saying over her the prayers of the
Church, and she recovered
Two or three occurrences like these form the whole basis for th
miraculous account, so far as Xavier's own writings are concerned.
Of miracles in the ordinary sense of the word there is in
these letters of his no mention. Though he writes of his doings
with especial detail, taking evident pains to note everythin
which he thought a sign of Divine encouragement, he says nothing
of his performing miracles, and evidently knows nothing of them.
This is clearly not due to his unwillingness to make known any
token of Divine favour. As we have seen, he is very prompt to
report anything which may be considered an answer to prayer or an
evidence of the power of religious means to improve the bodily
or spiritual health of those to whom he was sent.
Nor do the letters of his associates show knowledge of any
miracles wrought by him. His brother missionaries, who were in
constant and loyal fellowship with him, make no allusions to them in
their communications with each other or with their brethren in Europe.
Of this fact we have many striking evidences. Variou
collections of letters from the Jesuit missionaries in India and
the East generally, during the years of Xavier's activity, were
published, and in not one of these letters written during
Xavier's lifetime appears any account of a miracle wrought by
him. As typical of these collections we may take perhaps the most
noted of all, that which was published about twenty years after
Xavier's death by a Jesuit father, Emanuel Acosta.
The letters given in it were written by Xavier and his
associates not only from Goa, which was the focus of all
missionary effort and the centre of all knowledge regarding their
work in the East, but from all other important points in the
great field. The first of them were written during the saint's
lifetime, but, though filled with every sort of detail regarding
missionary life and work, they say nothing regarding any miracles
by Xavier
The same is true of various other similar collection
published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In not
one of them does any mention of a miracle by Xavier appear in a
letter from India or the East contemporary with him.
This silence regarding his miracles was clearly not due to
any "evil heart of unbelief." On the contrary, these good
missionary fathers were prompt to record the slightest occurrence
which they thought evidence of the Divine favour: it is indeed
touching to see how eagerly they grasp at the most trivial things
which could be thus construed
Their ample faith was fully shown. One of them, in Acosta's
collection, sends a report that an illuminated cross had been
recently seen in the heavens; another, that devils had been cast
out of the natives by the use of holy water; another, that
various cases of disease had been helped and even healed b
baptism; and sundry others sent reports that the blind and dumb
had been restored, and that even lepers had been cleansed by the
proper use of the rites of the Church; but to Xavier no miracle
are imputed by his associates during his life or during severa
years after his death.
On the contrary, we find his own statements as to his
personal limitations, and the difficulties arising from them,
fully confirmed by his brother workers. It is interesting, for
example, in view of the claim afterward made that the saint was
divinely endowed for his mission with the "gift of tongues," to
note in these letters confirmation of Xavier's own statement
utterly disproving the existence of any such Divine gift, an
detailing the difficulties which he encountered from his want of
knowing various languages, and the hard labour which he underwent
in learning the elements of the Japanese tongue.
Until about ten years after Xavier's death, then, as Emanuel
Acosta's publication shows, the letters of the missionaries
continued without any indication of miracles performed by the
saint. Though, as we shall see presently, abundant legends had
already begun to grow elsewhere, not one word regarding these
miracles came as yet from the country which, according to later
accounts accepted and sanctioned by the Church, was at this very
period filled with miracles; not the slightest indication of them
from the men who were supposed to be in the very thick of these
miraculous manifestations
But this negative evidence is by no means all. There is also
positive evidence--direct testimony from the Jesuit order
itself--that Xavier wrought no miracles
For not only did neither Xavier nor his co-workers know
anything of the mighty works afterward attributed to him, but the
highest contemporary authority on the whole subject, a man in the
closest correspondence with those who knew most about the saint
a member of the Society of Jesus in the highest standing and one o
its accepted historians, not only expressly tells us that Xavier
wrought no miracles, but gives the reasons why he wrought none.
This man was Joseph Acosta, a provincial of the Jesuit
order, its visitor in Aragon, superior at Valladolid, and finally
rector of the University of Salamanca. In 1571, nineteen year
after Xavier's death, Acosta devoted himself to writing a work
mainly concerning the conversion of the Indies, and in this he
refers especially and with the greatest reverence to Xavier,
holding him up as an ideal and his work as an example.
But on the same page with this tribute to the great
missionary Acosta goes on to discuss the reasons why progress in
the world's conversion is not so rapid as in the early apostoli
times, and says that an especial cause why apostolic preaching
could no longer produce apostolic results "lies in th
missionaries themselves, because there is now no power of
working miracles." He then asks, "Why should our age be so
completely destitute of them?" This question he answers at great
length, and one of his main contentions is that in early
apostolic times illiterate men had to convert the learned of the
world, whereas in modern times the case is reversed, learned me
being sent to convert the illiterate; and hence that "in the
early times miracles were necessary, but in our time they are not."
This statement and argument refer, as we have seen, directly
to Xavier by name, and to the period covered by his activity and
that of the other great missionaries of his time. That the Jesui
order and the Church at large thought this work of Acosta
trustworthy is proved by the fact that it was published at
Salamanca a few years after it was written, and republishe
afterward with ecclesiastical sanction in France.[[10]] Nothing
shows better than the sequel how completely the evolution of
miraculous accounts depends upon the intellectual atmosphere of
any land and time, and how independent it is of fact.
For, shortly after Xavier's heroic and beautiful death in
1552, stories of miracles wrought by him began to appear. At
first they were few and feeble; and two years later Melchior
Nunez, Provincial of the Jesuits in the Portuguese dominions,
with all the means at his command, and a correspondence extending
throughout Eastern Asia, had been able to hear of but three.
These were entirely from hearsay. First, John Deyro said he knew
that Xavier had the gift of prophecy; but, unfortunately, Xavier
himself had reprimanded and cast off Deyro for untruthfulness and
cheatery. Secondly, it was reported vaguely that at Cape Comorin
many persons affirmed that Xavier had raised a man from the dead.
Thirdly, Father Pablo de Santa Fe had heard that in Japan Xavier
had restored sight to a blind man. This seems a feeble beginning,
but little by little the stories grew, and in 1555 De Quadros
Provincial of the Jesuits in Ethiopia, had heard of nin
miracles, and asserted that Xavier had healed the sick and cast
out devils. The next year, being four years after Xavier's death
King John III of Portugal, a very devout man, directed his
viceroy Barreto to draw up and transmit to him an authentic
account of Xavier's miracles, urging him especially to do the
work "with zeal and speedily." We can well imagine what treasures
of grace an obsequious viceroy, only too anxious to please a
devout king, could bring together by means of the hearsay of
ignorant, compliant natives through all the little towns of
Portuguese India.
But the letters of the missionaries who had been co-worker
or immediate successors of Xavier in his Eastern field were still
silent as regards any miracles by him, and they remained silen
for nearly ten years. In the collection of letters published b
Emanuel Acosta and others no hint at any miracles by him is
given, until at last, in 1562, fully ten years after Xavier's
death, the first faint beginnings of these legends appear in them.
At that time the Jesuit Almeida, writing at great length t
the brethren, stated that he had found a pious woman who believed
that a book left behind by Xavier had healed sick folk when it
was laid upon them, and that he had met an old man who preserved
a whip left by the saint which, when properly applied to the sick,
had been found good both for their bodies and their souls. Fro
these and other small beginnings grew, always luxuriant and sometimes
beautiful, the vast mass of legends which we shall see hereafter.
This growth was affectionately garnered by the more zealous
and less critical brethren in Europe until it had become
enormous; but it appears to have been thought of little value by
those best able to judge.
For when, in 1562, Julius Gabriel Eugubinus delivered a
solemn oration on the condition and glory of the Church, before
the papal legates and other fathers assembled at the Council of
Trent, while he alluded to a multitude of things showing the
Divine favour, there was not the remotest allusion to the vast
multitude of miracles which, according to the legends, had bee
so profusely lavished on the faithful during many years, an
which, if they had actually occurred, formed an argument of
prodigious value in behalf of the special claims of the Church.
The same complete absence of knowledge of any such favours
vouchsafed to the Church, or at least of any belief in them
appears in that great Council of Trent among the fathers
themselves. Certainly there, if anywhere, one might on the Roman
theory expect Divine illumination in a matter of this kind. The
presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst of it was especiall
claimed, and yet its members, with all their spiritual as well
as material advantages for knowing what had been going on in the
Church during the previous thirty years, and with Xavier's own
friend and colleague, Laynez, present to inform them, show not
the slightest sign of any suspicion of Xavier's miracles. We have
the letters of Julius Gabriel to the foremost of these fathers
assembled at Trent, from 1557 onward for a considerable time, and
we have also a multitude of letters written from the Council by
bishops, cardinals, and even by the Pope himself, discussing all
sorts of Church affairs, and in not one of these is there
evidence of the remotest suspicion that any of these reports,
which they must have heard, regarding Xavier's miracles, were
worthy of mention.
Here, too, comes additional supplementary testimony of much
significance. With these orations and letters, Eugubinus gives a
Latin translation of a letter, "on religious affairs in the
Indies," written by a Jesuit father twenty years after Xavier's
death. Though the letter came from a field very distant from that
in which Xavier laboured, it was sure, among the general tokens
of Divine favour to the Church and to the order, on which it
dwelt, to have alluded to miracles wrought by Xavier had there
been the slightest ground for believing in them; but no such
allusion appears.[[14]]
So, too, when in 1588, thirty-six years after Xavier's
death, the Jesuit father Maffei, who had been especiall
conversant with Xavier's career in the East, published his
_History of India_, though he gave a biography of Xavier which
shows fervent admiration for his subject, he dwelt very lightly
on the alleged miracles. But the evolution of miraculous legends
still went on. Six years later, in 1594, Father Tursellinus
published his _Life of Xavier_, and in this appears to have made
the first large use of the information collected by the
Portuguese viceroy and the more zealous brethren. This work shows
a vast increase in the number of miracles over those given by all
sources together up to that time. Xavier is represented as not
only curing the sick, but casting out devils, stilling the
tempest, raising the dead, and performing miracles of every sort.
In 1622 came the canonization proceedings at Rome. Among the
speeches made in the presence of Pope Gregory XV, supporting the
claims of Xavier to saintship, the most important was by Cardinal
Monte. In this the orator selects out ten great miracles from
those performed by Xavier during his lifetime and describes the
minutely. He insists that on a certain occasion Xavier, by the
sign of the cross, made sea-water fresh, so that his
fellow-passengers and the crew could drink it; that he healed th
sick and raised the dead in various places; brought back a los
boat to his ship; was on one occasion lifted from the earth
bodily and transfigured before the bystanders; and that, to
punish a blaspheming town, he caused an earthquake and buried the
offenders in cinders from a volcano: this was afterward still
more highly developed, and the saint was represented in engravings
as calling down fire from heaven and thus destroying the town.
The most curious miracle of all is the eighth on th
cardinal's list. Regarding this he states that, Xavier havin
during one of his voyages lost overboard a crucifix, it was
restored to him after he had reached the shore by a crab.
The cardinal also dwelt on miracles performed by Xavier'
relics after his death, the most original being that sundry lamps
placed before the image of the saint and filled with holy water
burned as if filled with oil.
This latter account appears to have deeply impressed the
Pope, for in the Bull of Canonization issued by virtue of his
power of teaching the universal Church infallibly in all matters
pertaining to faith and morals, His Holiness dwells especiall
upon the miracle of the lamp filled with holy water and burning
before Xavier's image.
Xavier having been made a saint, many other _Lives_ of him
appeared, and, as a rule, each surpassed its predecessor in the
multitude of miracles. In 1622 appeared that compiled and
published under the sanction of Father Vitelleschi, and in it not
only are new miracles increased, but some old ones are greatly
improved. One example will suffice to show the process. In hi
edition of 1596, Tursellinus had told how, Xavier one da
needing money, and having asked Vellio, one of his friends, to
let him have some, Vellio gave him the key of a safe containing
thirty thousand gold pieces. Xavier took three hundred an
returned the key to Vellio; whereupon Vellio, finding only thre
hundred pieces gone, reproached Xavier for not taking more,
saying that he had expected to give him half of all that the
strong box contained. Xavier, touched by this generosity, told
Vellio that the time of his death should be made known to him,
that he might have opportunity to repent of his sins and prepare
for eternity. But twenty-six years later the _Life of Xavier_
published under the sanction of Vitelleschi, giving the story
says that Vellio on opening the safe found that _all his money_
remained as he had left it, and that _none at all_ had
disappeared; in fact, that there had been a miraculou
restitution. On his blaming Xavier for not taking the money,
Xavier declares to Vellio that not only shall he be apprised of
the moment of his death, but that the box shall always be full of
money. Still later biographers improved the account further,
declaring that Xavier promised Vellio that the strong box should
always contain money sufficient for all his needs. In that war
and uncritical atmosphere this and other legends grew rapidly,
obedient to much the same laws which govern the evolution of
fairy tales.[[16]
In 1682, one hundred and thirty years after Xavier's death,
appeared his biography by Father Bouhours; and this became a
classic. In it the old miracles of all kinds were enormousl
multiplied, and many new ones given. Miracles few and small in
Tursellinus became many and great in Bouhours. In Tursellinus,
Xavier during his life saves one person from drowning, in
Bouhours he saves during his life three; in Tursellinus, Xavier
during his life raises four persons from the dead, in Bouhour
fourteen; in Tursellinus there is one miraculous supply of water,
in Bouhours three; in Tursellinus there is no miraculous draught
of fishes, in Bouhours there is one; in Tursellinus, Xavier is
transfigured twice, in Bouhours five times: and so through a long
series of miracles which, in the earlier lives appearing either
not at all or in very moderate form, are greatly increased an
enlarged by Tursellinus, and finally enormously amplified and
multiplied by Father Bouhours.
And here it must be borne in mind that Bouhours, writing
ninety years after Tursellinus, could not have had access to any
new sources. Xavier had been dead one hundred and thirty years,
and of course all the natives upon whom he had wrought his
miracles, and their children and grandchildren, were gone. It can
not then be claimed that Bouhours had the advantage of any new
witnesses, nor could he have had anything new in the way of
contemporary writings; for, as we have seen, the missionaries of
Xavier's time wrote nothing regarding his miracles, and certainly
the ignorant natives of India and Japan did not commit an
account of his miracles to writing. Nevertheless, the miracles of
healing given in Bouhours were more numerous and brilliant than
ever. But there was far more than this. Although during the
lifetime of Xavier there is neither in his own writings nor in
any contemporary account any assertion of a resurrection from the
dead wrought by him, we find that shortly after his death stories
of such resurrections began to appear. A simple statement of the
growth of these may throw some light on the evolution of
miraculous accounts generally. At first it was affirmed that some
people at Cape Comorin said that he had raised one person; then
it was said that there were two persons; then in various
authors--Emanuel Acosta, in his commentaries written as an
afterthought nearly twenty years after Xavier's death, De
Quadros, and others--the story wavers between one and two cases;
finally, in the time of Tursellinus, four cases had been
developed. In 1622, at the canonization proceedings, three were
mentioned; but by the time of Father Bouhours there were
fourteen--all raised from the dead by Xavier himself during his
lifetime--and the name, place, and circumstances are given with
much detail in each case.[[17]
It seems to have been felt as somewhat strange at first that
Xavier had never alluded to any of these wonderful miracles; but
ere long a subsidiary legend was developed, to the effect that
one of the brethren asked him one day if he had raised the dead,
whereat he blushed deeply and cried out against the idea,
saying: "And so I am said to have raised the dead! What a
misleading man I am! Some men brought a youth to me just as if
he were dead, who, when I commanded him to arise in the name of
Christ, straightway arose."
Noteworthy is the evolution of other miracles. Tursellinus,
writing in 1594, tells us that on the voyage from Goa to Malacca,
Xavier having left the ship and gone upon an island, was
afterward found by the persons sent in search of him so deeply
absorbed in prayer as to be unmindful of all things about him.
But in the next century Father Bouhours develops the story as
follows: "The servants found the man of God raised from the
ground into the air, his eyes fixed upon heaven, and rays of
light about his countenance.
Instructive, also, is a comparison between the successive
accounts of his noted miracle among the Badages at Travancore, in
1544 Xavier in his letters makes no reference to anything
extraordinary; and Emanuel Acosta, in 1571, declares simply
that "Xavier threw himself into the midst of the Christians, tha
reverencing him they might spare the rest." The inevitable
evolution of the miraculous goes on; and twenty years later
Tursellinus tells us that, at the onslaught of the Badages, "the
could not endure the majesty of his countenance and the splendour
and rays which issued from his eyes, and out of reverence for him
they spared the others." The process of incubation still goes on
during ninety years more, and then comes Father Bouhours's
account. Having given Xavier's prayer on the battlefield,
Bouhours goes on to say that the saint, crucifix in hand, rushed
at the head of the people toward the plain where the enemy wa
marching, and "said to them in a threatening voice, `I forbid you
in the name of the living God to advance farther, and on His part
command you to return in the way you came.' These few words cast
a terror into the minds of those soldiers who were at the head of
the army; they remained confounded and without motion. They who
marched afterward, seeing that the foremost did not advance,
asked the reason of it. The answer was returned from the front
ranks that they had before their eyes an unknown person habited
in black, of more than human stature, of terrible aspect, and
darting fire from his eyes.... They were seized with amazement at
the sight, and all of them fled in precipitate confusion."
Curious, too, is the after-growth of the miracle of the crab
restoring the crucifix. In its first form Xavier lost th
crucifix in the sea, and the earlier biographers dwell on the
sorrow which he showed in consequence; but the later historians
declare that the saint threw the crucifix into the sea in orde
to still a tempest, and that, after his safe getting to land, a
crab brought it to him on the shore. In this form we find i
among illustrations of books of devotion in the next century
But perhaps the best illustration of this evolution of
Xavier's miracles is to be found in the growth of another legend;
and it is especially instructive because it grew luxuriantly
despite the fact that it was utterly contradicted in all parts of
Xavier's writings as well as in the letters of his associates and
in the work of the Jesuit father, Joseph Acosta.
Throughout his letters, from first to last, Xavier
constantly dwells upon his difficulties with the variou
languages of the different tribes among whom he went. He tells us
how he surmounted these difficulties: sometimes by learning just
enough of a language to translate into it some of the main Church
formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch
together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by
employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of variou
dialects, and even by signs. On one occasion he tells us that a
very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was
delayed because, among other things, the interpreter he had
engaged had failed to meet him.
In various _Lives_ which appeared between the time of hi
death and his canonization this difficulty is much dwelt upon;
but during the canonization proceedings at Rome, in the speeches
then made, and finally in the papal bull, great stress was laid
upon the fact that Xavier possessed _the gift of tongues_. It was
declared that he spoke to the various tribes with ease in their
own languages. This legend of Xavier's miraculous gift of tongues
was especially mentioned in the papal bull, and was solemnly
given forth by the pontiff as an infallible statement to be
believed by the universal Church. Gregory XV having been
prevented by death from issuing the _Bull of Canonization_, it was
finally issued by Urban VIII; and there is much food for
reflection in the fact that the same Pope who punished Galileo,
and was determined that the Inquisition should not allow the
world to believe that the earth revolves about the sun, thus
solemnly ordered the world, under pain of damnation, to believe
in Xavier's miracles, including his "gift of tongues," and the
return of the crucifix by the pious crab. But the legend was
developed still further: Father Bouhours tells us, "The holy man
spoke very well the language of those barbarians without having
learned it, and had no need of an interpreter when he instructed."
And, finally, in our own time, the Rev. Father Coleridge, speaking
of the saint among the natives, says, "He could speak the language
excellently, though he had never learned it."
In the early biography, Tursellinus writes. "Nothing was a
greater impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese
tongues; for, ever and anon, when some uncouth expression
offended their fastidious and delicate ears, the awkward speech
of Francis was a cause of laughter." But Father Bouhours, a
century later, writing of Xavier at the same period, says, "H
preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their language, but
so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be taken for
a foreigner.
And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of
Jesus, speaking of Xavier at this time, says, "He spoke freely,
flowingly, elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all his life."
Nor was even this sufficient: to make the legend complete,
it was finally declared that, when Xavier addressed the natives
of various tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in
which he was born.
All this, as we have seen, directly contradicts not only the
plain statements of Xavier himself, and various incidental
testimonies in the letters of his associates, but the explicit
declaration of Father Joseph Acosta. The latter historian dwells
especially on the labour which Xavier was obliged to bestow o
the study of the Japanese and other languages, and says, "Even if
he had been endowed with the apostolic gift of tongues, he could
not have spread more widely the glory of Christ."[[21]]
It is hardly necessary to attribute to the orators and
biographers generally a conscious attempt to deceive. The simpl
fact is, that as a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote in
obedience to the natural laws which govern the luxuriant growth
of myth and legend in the warm atmosphere of love and devotion
which constantly arises about great religious leaders in times
when men have little or no knowledge of natural law, when there
is little care for scientific evidence, and when he who believes
most is thought most meritorious.[[21b]]
These examples will serve to illustrate the process which i
thousands of cases has gone on from the earliest days of the
Church until a very recent period. Everywhere miraculous cure
became the rule rather than the exception throughout Christendom.
III. THE MEDIAEVAL MIRACLES OF HEALING CHECK MEDICAL SCIENCE.
So it was that, throughout antiquity, during the early
history of the Church, throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed
down to a comparatively recent period, testimony to miraculous
interpositions which would now be laughed at by a schoolboy was
accepted by the leaders of thought. St. Augustine was certainly
one of the strongest minds in the early Church, and yet we find
him mentioning, with much seriousness, a story that sundry
innkeepers of his time put a drug into cheese which metamorphosed
travellers into domestic animals, and asserting that the peacock
is so favoured by the Almighty that its flesh will not decay, an
that he has tested it and knows this to be a fact. With such a
disposition regarding the wildest stories, it is not surprising
that the assertion of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, during the second
century, as to the cures wrought by the martyrs Cosmo and Damian,
was echoed from all parts of Europe until every hamlet had it
miracle-working saint or relic.
The literature of these miracles is simply endless. To take
our own ancestors alone, no one can read the _Ecclesiastica
History_ of Bede, or Abbot Samson's _Miracles of St. Edmund_, or
the accounts given by Eadmer and Osbern of the miracles of St.
Dunstan, or the long lists of those wrought by Thomas a Becket,
or by any other in the army of English saints, without seeing th
perfect naturalness of this growth. This evolution of miracle in
all parts of Europe came out of a vast preceding series of
beliefs, extending not merely through the early Church but far
back into paganism. Just as formerly patients were cured in the
temples of AEsculapius, so they were cured in the Middle Ages,
and so they are cured now at the shrines of saints. Just as the
ancient miracles were solemnly attested by votive tablets, giving
names, dates, and details, and these tablets hung before the
images of the gods, so the medieval miracles were attested by
similar tablets hung before the images of the saints; and so they
are attested to-day by similar tablets hung before the images of
Our Lady of La Salette or of Lourdes. Just as faith in such
miracles persisted, in spite of the small percentage of cures at
those ancient places of healing, so faith persists to-day,
despite the fact that in at least ninety per cent of the cases at
Lourdes prayers prove unavailing. As a rule, the miracles of the
sacred books were taken as models, and each of those given by th
sacred chroniclers was repeated during the early ages of the
Church and through the medieval period with endless variations of
circumstance, but still with curious fidelity to the original type.
It should be especially kept in mind that, while the vast
majority of these were doubtless due to the myth-making faculty
and to that development of legends which always goes on in ages
ignorant of the relation between physical causes and effects,
some of the miracles of healing had undoubtedly some basis in
fact. We in modern times have seen too many cures performed
through influences exercised upon the imagination, such as those o
the Jansenists at the Cemetery of St. Medard, of the Ultramontanes
at La Salette and Lourdes, of the Russian Father Ivan at St.
Petersburg, and of various Protestant sects at Old Orchard and
elsewhere, as well as at sundry camp meetings, to doubt that some
cures, more or less permanent, were wrought by sainted personages
in the early Church and throughout the Middle Ages.[[24]]
There are undoubtedly serious lesions which yield to
profound emotion and vigorous exertion born of persuasion,
confidence, or excitement. The wonderful power of the mind over
the body is known to every observant student. Mr. Herbert Spencer
dwells upon the fact that intense feeling or passion may bring
out great muscular force. Dr. Berdoe reminds us that "a gouty man
who has long hobbled about on his crutch, finds his legs and
power to run with them if pursued by a wild bull"; and that "the
feeblest invalid, under the influence of delirium or other strong
excitement, will astonish her nurse by the sudden accession of
strength."[[25]]
But miraculous cures were not ascribed to persons merely.
Another growth, developed by the early Church mainly from germs
in our sacred books, took shape in miracles wrought by streams,
by pools of water, and especially by relics. Here, too, the old
types persisted, and just as we find holy and healing wells,
pools, and streams in all other ancient religions, so we find in
the evolution of our own such examples as Naaman the Syrian cured
of leprosy by bathing in the river Jordan, the blind man restored
to sight by washing in the pool of Siloam, and the healing of
those who touched the bones of Elisha, the shadow of St. Peter,
or the handkerchief of St. Paul.
St. Cyril, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and other grea
fathers of the early Church, sanctioned the belief that similar
efficacy was to be found in the relics of the saints of thei
time; hence, St. Ambrose declared that "the precepts of medicine
are contrary to celestial science, watching, and prayer," and we
find this statement reiterated from time to time throughout the
Middle Ages. From this idea was evolved that fetichism which we
shall see for ages standing in the way of medical science
Theology, developed in accordance with this idea, threw
about all cures, even those which resulted from scientific
effort, an atmosphere of supernaturalism. The vividness with
which the accounts of miracles in the sacred books were realized
in the early Church continued the idea of miraculous intervention
throughout the Middle Ages. The testimony of the great fathers of
the Church to the continuance of miracles is overwhelming; but
everything shows that they so fully expected miracles on the
slightest occasion as to require nothing which in these days
would be regarded as adequate evidence
In this atmosphere of theologic thought medical science was
at once checked. The School of Alexandria, under the influenc
first of Jews and later of Christians, both permeated with
Oriental ideas, and taking into their theory of medicine demon
and miracles, soon enveloped everything in mysticism. In th
Byzantine Empire of the East the same cause produced the same
effect; the evolution of ascertained truth in medicine, begun by
Hippocrates and continued by Herophilus, seemed lost forever.
Medical science, trying to advance, was like a ship becalmed in
the Sargasso Sea: both the atmosphere about it and the mediu
through which it must move resisted all progress. Instead of
reliance upon observation, experience, experiment, and thought,
attention was turned toward supernatural agencies.[[27]]
IV. THE ATTRIBUTION OF DISEASE TO SATANIC INFLUENCE.--
"PASTORAL MEDICINE" CHECKS SCIENTIFIC EFFORT.
Especially prejudicial to a true development of medical
science among the first Christians was their attribution o
disease to diabolic influence. As we have seen, this idea had
come from far, and, having prevailed in Chaldea, Egypt, an
Persia, had naturally entered into the sacred books of the
Hebrews. Moreover, St. Paul had distinctly declared that the gods
of the heathen were devils; and everywhere the early Christians
saw in disease the malignant work of these dethroned powers of
evil. The Gnostic and Manichaean struggles had ripened the
theologic idea that, although at times diseases are punishments
by the Almighty, the main agency in them is Satanic. The great
fathers and renowned leaders of the early Church accepted and
strengthened this idea. Origen said: "It is demons which produce
famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the air, pestilences; the
hover concealed in clouds in the lower atmosphere, and are
attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen offer to
them as gods." St. Augustine said: "All diseases of Christians
are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly do they torment
fresh-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless, newborn
infants." Tertullian insisted that a malevolent angel is in
constant attendance upon every person. Gregory of Nazianzus
declared that bodily pains are provoked by demons, and that
medicines are useless, but that they are often cured by the
laying on of consecrated hands. St. Nilus and St. Gregory of
Tours, echoing St. Ambrose, gave examples to show the sinfulness
of resorting to medicine instead of trusting to the intercession
of saints.
St. Bernard, in a letter to certain monks, warned them tha
to seek relief from disease in medicine was in harmony neither
with their religion nor with the honour and purity of their
order. This view even found its way into the canon law, whic
declared the precepts of medicine contrary to Divine knowledge. As
a rule, the leaders of the Church discouraged the theory that disease
are due to natural causes, and most of them deprecated a resort to
surgeons and physicians rather than to supernatural means.[[28]]
Out of these and similar considerations was developed the
vast system of "pastoral medicine," so powerful not only through
the Middle Ages, but even in modern times, both among Catholics
and Protestants. As to its results, we must bear in mind that,
while there is no need to attribute the mass of stories regardin
miraculous cures to conscious fraud, there was without doubt, at
a later period, no small admixture of belief biased by
self-interest, with much pious invention and suppression of
facts. Enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and
churches in all parts of Europe from relics noted for their
healing powers. Every cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly
every parish church claimed possession of healing relics. While,
undoubtedly, a childlike faith was at the bottom of this belief
there came out of it unquestionably a great development of the
mercantile spirit. The commercial value of sundry relics was
often very high. In the year 1056 a French ruler pledged
securities to the amount of ten thousand solidi for the
production of the relics of St. Just and St. Pastor, pending a
legal decision regarding the ownership between him and the
Archbishop of Narbonne. The Emperor of Germany on one occasion
demanded, as a sufficient pledge for the establishment of a city
market, the arm of St. George. The body of St. Sebastian brought
enormous wealth to the Abbey of Soissons; Rome, Canterbury
Treves, Marburg, every great city, drew large revenues from
similar sources, and the Venetian Republic ventured very
considerable sums in the purchase of relics
Naturally, then, corporations, whether lay or ecclesiastical,
which drew large revenue from relics looked with little favour
on a science which tended to discredit their investments.
Nowhere, perhaps, in Europe can the philosophy of this
development of fetichism be better studied to-day than at
Cologne. At the cathedral, preserved in a magnificent shrine
since about the twelfth century, are the skulls of the Three
Kings, or Wise Men of the East, who, guided by the star of
Bethlehem, brought gifts to the Saviour. These relics were an
enormous source of wealth to the cathedral chapter during many
centuries. But other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both
pious and shrewd, and so we find that not far off, at the church
of St. Gereon, a cemetery has been dug up, and the bones
distributed over the walls as the relics of St. Gereon and his
Theban band of martyrs! Again, at the neighbouring church of St.
Ursula, we have the later spoils of another cemetery, covering
the interior walls of the church as the bones of St. Ursula and
her eleven thousand virgin martyrs: the fact that many of them, as
anatomists now declare, are the bones of _men_ does not appear in
the Middle Ages to have diminished their power of competing with
the relics at the other shrines in healing efficiency.
No error in the choice of these healing means seems to have
diminished their efficacy. When Prof. Buckland, the eminent
osteologist and geologist, discovered that the relics of St.
Rosalia at Palermo, which had for ages cured diseases and warded
off epidemics, were the bones of a goat, this fact caused not the
slightest diminution in their miraculous power.
Other developments of fetich cure were no less discouraging
to the evolution of medical science. Very important among these
was the Agnus Dei, or piece of wax from the Paschal candles,
stamped with the figure of a lamb and Consecrated by the Pope. In
1471 Pope Paul II expatiated to the Church on the efficacy of
this fetich in preserving men from fire, shipwreck, tempest,
lightning, and hail, as well as in assisting women in childbirth;
and he reserved to himself and his successors the manufacture of
it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a consideration,
tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription: "This
cross measured forty times makes the height of Christ in his
humanity. He who kisses it is preserved for seven days from
fallingsickness, apoplexy, and sudden death."
Naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by successive heads of
the Church, infallible in all teaching regarding faith an
morals, created a demand for amulets and charms of all kinds; and
under this influence we find a reversion to old pagan fetiches
Nothing, on the whole, stood more Constantly in the way of an
proper development of medical science than these fetich cures,
whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning and sanctioned
by ecclesiastical policy. It would be expecting too much from
human nature to imagine that pontiffs who derived large revenues
from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or priests who derived bot
wealth and honours from cures wrought at shrines under their
care, or lay dignitaries who had invested heavily in relics,
should favour the development of any science which undermined
their interests.[[30]]
V. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO ANATOMICAL STUDIES.
Yet a more serious stumbling-block, hindering the beginnings
of modern medicine and surgery, was a theory regarding th
unlawfulness of meddling with the bodies of the dead. This
theory, like so many others which the Church cherished as
peculiarly its own, had really been inherited from the old paga
civilizations. So strong was it in Egypt that the embalmer was
regarded as accursed; traces of it appear in Greco-Roman life,
and hence it came into the early Church, where it was greatl
strengthened by the addition of perhaps the most noble of mystic
ideas--the recognition of the human body as the temple of the
Holy Spirit. Hence Tertullian denounced the anatomist Herophilus
as a butcher, and St. Augustine spoke of anatomists generally in
similar terms
But this nobler conception was alloyed with a medieval
superstition even more effective, when the formula known as the
Apostles' Creed had, in its teachings regarding the resurrectio
of the body, supplanted the doctrine laid down by St. Paul.
Thence came a dread of mutilating the body in such a way that
some injury might result to its final resurrection at the Las
Day, and additional reasons for hindering dissections in the
study of anatomy.
To these arguments against dissection was now added
another--one which may well fill us with amazement. It is th
remark of the foremost of recent English philosophical
historians, that of all organizations in human history the Church
of Rome has caused the greatest spilling of innocent blood. No
one conversant with history, even though he admit all possibl
extenuating circumstances, and honour the older Church for the
great services which can undoubtedly be claimed for her, can deny
this statement. Strange is it, then, to note that one of the main
objections developed in the Middle Ages against anatomical studies
was the maxim that "the Church abhors the shedding of blood."
On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade
surgery to monks. Many other councils did the same, and at the
end of the thirteenth century came the most serious blow of all;
for then it was that Pope Boniface VIII, without any of tha
foresight of consequences which might well have been expected in
an infallible teacher, issued a decretal forbidding a practice
which had come into use during the Crusades, namely, the
separation of the flesh from the bones of the dead whose remains
it was desired to carry back to their own country.
The idea lying at the bottom of this interdiction was in all
probability that which had inspired Tertullian to make his bitter
utterance against Herophilus; but, be that as it may, it soon
came to be considered as extending to all dissection, and thereby
surgery and medicine were crippled for more than two centuries;
it was the worst blow they ever received, for it impressed upon
the mind of the Church the belief that all dissection is sacrilege,
and led to ecclesiastical mandates withdrawing from the healing art
the most thoughtful and cultivated men of the Middle Ages and
giving up surgery to the lowest class of nomadic charlatans.
So deeply was this idea rooted in the mind of the universal
Church that for over a thousand years surgery was considered
dishonourable: the greatest monarchs were often unable to secure
an ordinary surgical operation; and it was only in 1406 that a
better beginning was made, when the Emperor Wenzel of Germany
ordered that dishonour should no longer attach to the surgical
profession.[[32]]
VI. NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
In spite of all these opposing forces, the evolution of
medical science continued, though but slowly. In the second
century of the Christian era Galen had made himself a great
authority at Rome, and from Rome had swayed the medical science
of the world: his genius triumphed over the defects of his
method; but, though he gave a powerful impulse to medicine, his
dogmatism stood in its way long afterward.
The places where medicine, such as it thus became, could be
applied, were at first mainly the infirmaries of various
monasteries, especially the larger ones of the Benedictine
order: these were frequently developed into hospitals. Many
monks devoted themselves to such medical studies as were
permitted, and sundry churchmen and laymen did much to secure and
preserve copies of ancient medical treatises. So, too, in th
cathedral schools established by Charlemagne and others,
provision was generally made for medical teaching; but all this
instruction, whether in convents or schools, was wretchedly poor
It consisted not in developing by individual thought and
experiment the gifts of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, but
almost entirely in the parrot-like repetition of their writings
But, while the inherited ideas of Church leaders were thus
unfavourable to any proper development of medical science, there
were two bodies of men outside the Church who, though largely
fettered by superstition, were far less so than the monks and
students of ecclesiastical schools: these were the Jews and
Mohammedans. The first of these especially had inherited many
useful sanitary and hygienic ideas, which had probably been first
evolved by the Egyptians, and from them transmitted to the modern
world mainly through the sacred books attributed to Moses.
The Jewish scholars became especially devoted to medical
science. To them is largely due the building up of the School of
Salerno, which we find flourishing in the tenth century. Judge
by our present standards its work was poor indeed, but compared
with other medical instruction of the time it was vastly
superior: it developed hygienic principles especially, and
brought medicine upon a higher plane
Still more important is the rise of the School of Montpellier;
this was due almost entirely to Jewish physicians, and it
developed medical studies to a yet higher point, doing much to
create a medical profession worthy of the name throughout
southern Europe.
As to the Arabians, we find them from the tenth to the fourteent
century, especially in Spain, giving much thought to
medicine, and to chemistry as subsidiary to it. About the
beginning of the ninth century, when the greater Christian
writers were supporting fetich by theology, Almamon, the Moslem,
declared, "They are the elect of God, his best and most useful
servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of thei
rational faculties." The influence of Avicenna, the translator o
the works of Aristotle, extended throughout all Europe during the
eleventh century. The Arabians were indeed much fettered by
tradition in medical science, but their translations of
Hippocrates and Galen preserved to the world the best thus far
developed in medicine, and still better were their contribution
to pharmacy: these remain of value to the present hour.[[34]]
Various Christian laymen also rose above the prevailing
theologic atmosphere far enough to see the importance of
promoting scientific development. First among these we may name
the Emperor Charlemagne; he and his great minister, Alcuin, not
only promoted medical studies in the schools they founded, but
also made provision for the establishment of botanic gardens in
which those herbs were especially cultivated which were supposed
to have healing virtues. So, too, in the thirteenth century, the
Emperor Frederick II, though under the ban of the Pope, brought
together in his various journeys, and especially in his crusading
expeditions, many Greek and Arabic manuscripts, and took special
pains to have those which concerned medicine preserved and
studied; he also promoted better ideas of medicine and embodied
them in laws
Men of science also rose, in the stricter sense of the word,
even in the centuries under the most complete sway of theological
thought and ecclesiastical power; a science, indeed, alloyed with
theology, but still infolding precious germs. Of these were men
like Arnold of Villanova, Bertrand de Gordon, Albert of
Bollstadt, Basil Valentine, Raymond Lully, and, above all, Roger
Bacon; all of whom cultivated sciences subsidiary to medicine,
and in spite of charges of sorcery, with possibilities of
imprisonment and death, kept the torch of knowledge burning, and
passed it on to future generations.[[35]]
From the Church itself, even when the theological atmosphere
was most dense, rose here and there men who persisted in
something like scientific effort. As early as the ninth century,
Bertharius, a monk of Monte Cassino, prepared two manuscript
volumes of prescriptions selected from ancient writers; other
monks studied them somewhat, and, during succeeding ages,
scholars like Hugo, Abbot of St. Denis,--Notker, monk of St.
Gall,--Hildegard, Abbess of Rupertsberg,--Milo, Archbishop of
Beneventum,--and John of St. Amand, Canon of Tournay, did
something for medicine as they understood it. Unfortunately, they
generally understood its theory as a mixture of deductions from
Scripture with dogmas from Galen, and its practice as a mixture
of incantations with fetiches. Even Pope Honorius III did
something for the establishment of medical schools; but he did
so much more to place ecclesiastical and theological fetters upon
teachers and taught, that the value of his gifts may well be
doubted. All germs of a higher evolution of medicine were for
ages well kept under by the theological spirit. As far back as
the sixth century so great a man as Pope Gregory I showed himself
hostile to the development of this science. In the beginning of
the twelfth century the Council of Rheims interdicted the study
of law and physic to monks, and a multitude of other councils
enforced this decree. About the middle of the same century St.
Bernard still complained that monks had too much to do with
medicine; and a few years later we have decretals like those o
Pope Alexander III forbidding monks to study or practise it. For
many generations there appear evidences of a desire among the
more broad-minded churchmen to allow the cultivation of medical
science among ecclesiastics: Popes like Clement III and Sylvester
II seem to have favoured this, and we even hear of an Archbishop
of Canterbury skilled in medicine; but in the beginning of the
thirteenth century the Fourth Council of the Lateran forbade
surgical operations to be practised by priests, deacons, and
subdeacons; and some years later Honorius III reiterated this
decree and extended it. In 1243 the Dominican order forbade
medical treatises to be brought into their monasteries, and
finally all participation of ecclesiastics in the science and art
of medicine was effectually prevented.[[36]]
VII. THEOLOGICAL DISCOURAGEMENT OF MEDICINE.
While various churchmen, building better than they knew
thus did something to lay foundations for medical study, th
Church authorities, as a rule, did even more to thwart it among
the very men who, had they been allowed liberty, would have
cultivated it to the highest advantage.
Then, too, we find cropping out every where the feeling
that, since supernatural means are so abundant, there is
something irreligious in seeking cure by natural means: ever and
anon we have appeals to Scripture, and especially to the case of
King Asa, who trusted to physicians rather than to the priests of
Jahveh, and so died. Hence it was that St. Bernard declared that
monks who took medicine were guilty of conduct unbecoming to
religion. Even the School of Salerno was held in aversion by
multitudes of strict churchmen, since it prescribed rules for
diet, thereby indicating a belief that diseases arise fro
natural causes and not from the malice of the devil: moreover, i
the medical schools Hippocrates was studied, and he ha
especially declared that demoniacal possession is "nowise more
divine, nowise more infernal, than any other disease." Hence it
was, doubtless, that the Lateran Council, about the beginning of
the thirteenth century, forbade physicians, under pain of
exclusion from the Church, to undertake medical treatment without
calling in ecclesiastical advice.
This view was long cherished in the Church, and nearly two
hundred and fifty years later Pope Pius V revived it by renewing
the command of Pope Innocent and enforcing it with penalties. No
only did Pope Pius order that all physicians befor
admninistering treatment should call in "a physician of the
soul," on the ground, as he declares, that "bodily infirmity
frequently arises from sin," but he ordered that, if at the end
of three days the patient had not made confession to a priest
the medical man should cease his treatment, under pain of being
deprived of his right to practise, and of expulsion from the
faculty if he were a professor, and that every physician and
professor of medicine should make oath that he was strictly
fulfilling these conditions.
Out of this feeling had grown up another practice, which
made the development of medicine still more difficult--th
classing of scientific men generally with sorcerers and
magic-mongers: from this largely rose the charge of atheism
against physicians, which ripened into a proverb, "Where there
are three physicians there are two atheists."[[37]
Magic was so common a charge that many physicians seemed to
believe it themselves. In the tenth century Gerbert, afterward
known as Pope Sylvester II, was at once suspected of sorcery when
he showed a disposition to adopt scientific methods; in the
eleventh century this charge nearly cost the life of Constantin
Africanus when he broke from the beaten path of medicine; in the
thirteenth, it gave Roger Bacon, one of the greatest benefactors
of mankind, many years of imprisonment, and nearly brought him to
the stake: these cases are typical of very many.
Still another charge against physicians who showed a talent
for investigation was that of Mohammedanism and Averroism; and
Petrarch stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark
at Christ."[[38]]
The effect of this widespread ecclesiastical opposition was,
that for many centuries the study of medicine was relegated
mainly to the lowest order of practitioners. There was, indeed,
one orthodox line of medical evolution during the later Middle
Ages: St. Thomas Aquinas insisted that the forces of the body are
independent of its physical organization, and that therefore
these forces are to be studied by the scholastic philosophy and
the theological method, instead of by researches into the
structure of the body; as a result of this, mingled with
survivals of various pagan superstitions, we have in anatomy and
physiology such doctrines as the increase and decrease of the
brain with the phases of the moon, the ebb and flow of human
vitality with the tides of the ocean, the use of the lungs to fa
the heart, the function of the liver as the seat of love, and
that of the spleen as the centre of wit
Closely connected with these methods of thought was the
doctrine of _signatures_. It was reasoned that the Almighty must
have set his sign upon the various means of curing disease which
he has provided: hence it was held that bloodroot, on account of
its red juice, is good for the blood; liverwort, having a leaf
like the liver, cures diseases of the liver; eyebright, being
marked with a spot like an eye, cures diseases of the eyes;
celandine, having a yellow juice, cures jaundice; bugloss,
resembling a snake's head, cures snakebite; red flannel, looking
like blood, cures blood-taints, and therefore rheumatism; bear's
grease, being taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, is
recommended to persons fearing baldness.[[39]]
Still another method evolved by this theological
pseudoscience was that of disgusting the demon with the bod
which he tormented--hence the patient was made to swallow o
apply to himself various unspeakable ordures, with such medicines
as the livers of toads, the blood of frogs and rats, fibres of
the hangman's rope, and ointment made from the body of gibbeted
criminals. Many of these were survivals of heathen superstitions,
but theologic reasoning wrought into them an orthodox
significance. As an example of this mixture of heathen with
Christian magic, we may cite the following from a medieval
medical book as a salve against "nocturnal goblin visitors":
"Take hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, lupine, ash-throat,
henbane, harewort, viper's bugloss, heathberry plant, cropleek,
garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and fennel. Put these
worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing over them
nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add muc
holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running
water. If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin
night visitors come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on
his eyes, and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with
the sign of the cross. His condition will soon be better"[[39b]]
As to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with
survivals of pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of
medical science down to the modern epoch. The nominal hostility
of the Church to the shedding of blood withdrew, as we have seen,
from surgical practice the great body of her educated men; hence
surgery remained down to the fifteenth century a despised
profession, its practice continued largely in the hands o
charlatans, and down to a very recent period the name
"barber-surgeon" was a survival of this. In such surgery, the
application of various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of
the hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled
poison; friction with a dead man's tooth cured toothache.[[40]
The enormous development of miracle and fetich cures in the
Church continued during century after century, and here probably
lay the main causes of hostility between the Church on the one
hand and the better sort of physicians on the other; namely, in
the fact that the Church supposed herself in possession of somethin
far better than scientific methods in medicine. Under the sway of
this belief a natural and laudable veneration for the relics of
Christian martyrs was developed more and more into pure fetichism.
Thus the water in which a single hair of a saint had been,
dipped was used as a purgative; water in which St. Remy's ring
had been dipped cured fevers; wine in which the bones of a saint
had been dipped cured lunacy; oil from a lamp burning before the
tomb of St. Gall cured tumours; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St.
Christopher, throat diseases; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid,
deafness; St. Gervase, rheumatism; St. Apollonia, toothache; St.
Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies
which bear their names. Even as late as 1784 we find certain
authorities in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog
shall at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and not
waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical cure.[[40]]
In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by causin
the invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard had washed his
hands. Flowers which had rested on the tomb of a saint, when
steeped in water, were supposed to be especially effiacious in
various diseases. The pulpit everywhere dwelt with unction on th
reality of fetich cures, and among the choice stories collected
by Archbishop Jacques de Vitry for the use of preachers was on
which, judging from its frequent recurrence in monkish
literature, must have sunk deep into the popular mind: "Two lazy
beggars, one blind, the other lame, try to avoid the relics o
St. Martin, borne about in procession, so that they may not be
healed and lose their claim to alms. The blind man takes the lame
man on his shoulders to guide him, but they are caught in the
crowd and healed against their will."[[41]]
Very important also throughout the Middle Ages were the
medical virtues attributed to saliva. The use of this remedy had
early Oriental sanction. It is clearly found in Egypt. Pliny
devotes a considerable part of one of his chapters to it; Galen
approved it; Vespasian, when he visited Alexandria, is said to
have cured a blind man by applying saliva to his eves; but the
great example impressed most forcibly upon the medieval mind was
the use of it ascribed in the fourth Gospel to Jesus himself:
thence it came not only into Church ceremonial, but largely into
medical practice.[[41b]]
As the theological atmosphere thickened, nearly every
country had its long list of saints, each with a special power
over some one organ or disease. The clergy, having great influenc
over the medical schools, conscientiously mixed this fetich
medicine with the beginnings of science. In the tenth century,
even at the School of Salerno, we find that the sick were cure
not only by medicine, but by the relics of St. Matthew and others
Human nature, too, asserted itself, then as now, by making
various pious cures fashionable for a time and then allowing them
to become unfashionable. Just as we see the relics of St. Cosm
and St. Damian in great vogue during the early Middle Ages, but
out of fashion and without efficacy afterward, so we find in the
thirteenth century that the bones of St. Louis, having come into
fashion, wrought multitudes of cures, while in the fourteenth
having become unfashionable, they ceased to act, and gave place
for a time to the relics of St. Roch of Montpellier and St
Catherine of Sienna, which in their turn wrought many cures unti
they too became out of date and yielded to other saints. Just so i
modern times the healing miracles of La Salette have lost prestige
in some measure, and those of Lourdes have come into fashion.[[42]]
Even such serious matters as fractures, calculi, and difficult
parturition, in which modern science has achieved some of its
greatest triumphs, were then dealt with by relics; and to this hour
the _ex votos_ hanging at such shrines as those of St. Genevieve at
Paris, of St. Antony at Padua, of the Druid image at Chartres, of
the Virgin at Einsiedeln and Lourdes, of the fountain at La Salette,
are survivals of this same conception of disease and its cure.
So, too, with a multitude of sacred pools, streams, and spots
of earth. In Ireland, hardly a parish has not had one such
sacred centre; in England and Scotland there have been many; an
as late as 1805 the eminent Dr. Milner, of the Roman Catholic
Church, gave a careful and earnest account of a miraculous cure
wrought at a sacred well in Flintshire. In all parts of Europe
the pious resort to wells and springs continued long after the
close of the Middle Ages, and has not entirely ceased to-day.
It is not at all necessary to suppose intentional deception
in the origin and maintenance of all fetich cures. Although two
different judicial investigations of the modern miracles at La
Salette have shown their origin tainted with fraud, and though
the recent restoration of the Cathedral of Trondhjem has reveale
the fact that the healing powers of the sacred spring which once
brought such great revenues to that shrine were assisted b
angelic voices spoken through a tube in the walls, not unlike
the pious machinery discovered in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii
there is little doubt that the great majority of fountain and
even shrine cures, such as they have been, have resulted from
natural law, and that belief in them was based on honest argument
from Scripture. For the theological argument which thus stood in
the way of science was simply this: if the Almighty saw fit to
raise the dead man who touched the bones of Elisha, why should
he not restore to life the patient who touches at Cologne the
bones of the Wise Men of the East who followed the star of the
Nativity? If Naaman was cured by dipping himself in the waters o
the Jordan, and so many others by going down into the Pool of
Siloam, why should not men still be cured by bathing in pools
which men equally holy with Elisha have consecrated? If one sick
man was restored by touching the garments of St. Paul, why should
not another sick man be restored by touching the seamless coat of
Christ at Treves, or the winding-sheet of Christ at Besancon? And
out of all these inquiries came inevitably that question whos
logical answer was especially injurious to the development of
medical science: Why should men seek to build up scientific
medicine and surgery, when relics, pilgrimages, and sacred
observances, according to an overwhelming mass of concurren
testimony, have cured and are curing hosts of sick folk in all
parts of Europe?[[43]]
Still another development of the theological spirit, mixed
with professional exclusiveness and mob prejudice, wrought untold
injury. Even to those who had become so far emancipated from
allegiance to fetich cures as to consult physicians, it was
forbidden to consult those who, as a rule, were the best. From a
very early period of European history the Jews had taken the lead
in medicine; their share in founding the great schools of Salerno
and Montpellier we have already noted, and in all parts of Europe
we find them acknowledged leaders in the healing art. The Church
authorities, enforcing the spirit of the time, were especiall
severe against these benefactors: that men who openly rejected
the means of salvation, and whose souls were undeniably lost,
should heal the elect seemed an insult to Providence; preaching
friars denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers in state
and church, while frequently secretly consulting them, openly
proscribed them.
Gregory of Tours tells us of an archdeacon who, having been
partially cured of disease of the eyes by St. Martin, sought
further aid from a Jewish physician, with the result that neither
the saint nor the Jew could help him afterward. Popes Eugene IV,
Nicholas V, and Calixtus III especially forbade Christians to
employ them. The Trullanean Council in the eighth century, the
Councils of Beziers and Alby in the thirteenth, the Councils of
Avignon and Salamanca in the fourteenth, the Synod of Bamberg and
the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth, the Council of Avignon in
the sixteenth, with many others, expressly forbade the faithful
to call Jewish physicians or surgeons; such great preachers as
John Geiler and John Herolt thundered from the pulpit against
them and all who consulted them. As late as the middle of the
seventeenth century, when the City Council of Hall, in
Wurtemberg, gave some privileges to a Jewish physician "on
account of his admirable experience and skill," the clergy of the
city joined in a protest, declaring that "it were better to die
with Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor aided by the devil.
Still, in their extremity, bishops, cardinals, kings, and even
popes, insisted on calling in physicians of the hated race.[[45]
VIII. FETICH CURES UNDER PROTESTANTISM.--THE ROYAL TOUCH.
The Reformation made no sudden change in the sacred theory
of medicine. Luther, as is well known, again and again ascribed
his own diseases to "devils' spells," declaring that "Satan
produces all the maladies which afflict mankind, for he is the
prince of death," and that "he poisons the air"; but that "no
malady comes from God." From that day down to the faith cures o
Boston, Old Orchard, and among the sect of "Peculiar People" in
our own time, we see the results among Protestants of seeking the
cause of disease in Satanic influence and its cure in fetichism.
Yet Luther, with his sturdy common sense, broke away from
one belief which has interfered with the evolution of medicine
from the dawn of Christianity until now. When that troublesom
declaimer, Carlstadt, declared that "whoso falls sick shall use
no physic, but commit his case to God, praying that His will be
done," Luther asked, "Do you eat when you are hungry?" and the
answer being in the affirmative, he continued, "Even so you may
use physic, which is God's gift just as meat and drink is, or
whatever else we use for the preservation of life." Hence it was,
doubtless, that the Protestant cities of Germany were more ready than
others to admit anatomical investigation by proper dissections.[[46]]
Perhaps the best-known development of a theological view in
the Protestant Church was that mainly evolved in England out of a
French germ of theological thought--a belief in the efficacy of
the royal touch in sundry diseases, especially epilepsy and
scrofula, the latter being consequently known as the king's evil.
This mode of cure began, so far as history throws light upon it,
with Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, and came down
from reign to reign, passing from the Catholic saint to
Protestant debauchees upon the English throne, with
ever-increasing miraculous efficacy.
Testimony to the reality of these cures is overwhelming. As
a simple matter of fact, there are no miracles of healing in the
history of the human race more thoroughly attested than those
wrought by the touch of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, the Stuarts, and
especially of that chosen vessel, Charles II. Though Elizabeth
could not bring herself fully to believe in the reality of these
cures, Dr. Tooker, the Queen's chaplain, afterward Dean of
Lichfield, testifies fully of his own knowledge to the cure
wrought by her, as also does William Clowes, the Queen's surgeon.
Fuller, in his _Church History_, gives an account of a Roman
Catholic who was thus cured by the Queen's touch and converted to
Protestantism. Similar testimony exists as to cures wrought by
James I. Charles I also enjoyed the same power, in spite of the
public declaration against its reality by Parliament. In one case
the King saw a patient in the crowd, too far off to be touched,
and simply said, "God bless thee and grant thee thy desire";
whereupon, it is asserted, the blotches and humours disappeared
from the patient's body and appeared in the bottle of medicine
which he held in his hand; at least so says Dr. John Nicholas,
Warden of Winchester College, who declares this of his own
knowledge to be every word of it true.
But the most incontrovertible evidence of this miraculous
gift is found in the case of Charles II, the most thoroughly
cynical debauchee who ever sat on the English throne before the
advent of George IV. He touched nearly one hundred thousand
persons, and the outlay for gold medals issued to the afflicted
on these occasions rose in some years as high as ten thousand
pounds. John Brown, surgeon in ordinary to his Majesty and to St.
Thomas's Hospital, and author of many learned works on surgery
and anatomy, published accounts of sixty cures due to the touch
of this monarch; and Sergeant-Surgeon Wiseman devotes an entire
book to proving the reality of these cures, saying, "I myself
have been frequent witness to many hundreds of cures performed by
his Majesty's touch alone without any assistance of chirurgery,
and these many of them had tyred out the endeavours of able
chirurgeons before they came thither." Yet it is especially
instructive to note that, while in no other reign were so many
people touched for scrofula, and in none were so many cures
vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of that
disease: the bills of mortality show this clearly, and the reason
doubtless is the general substitution of supernatural for
scientific means of cure. This is but one out of many examples
showing the havoc which a scientific test always makes among
miracles if men allow it to be applied.
To James II the same power continued; and if it be said, i
the words of Lord Bacon, that "imagination is next of kin to
miracle--a working faith," something else seems required to
account for the testimony of Dr. Heylin to cures wrought by th
royal touch upon babes in their mothers' arms. Myth-making an
marvel-mongering were evidently at work here as in so many other
places, and so great was the fame of these cures that we find, in
the year before James was dethroned, a pauper at Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, petitioning the General Assembly to enable him to make the
voyage to England in order that he may be healed by the royal touch.
The change in the royal succession does not seem to have
interfered with the miracle; for, though William III evidently
regarded the whole thing as a superstition, and on one occasion
is said to have touched a patient, saying to him, "God give you
better health and more sense," Whiston assures us that this
person was healed, notwithstanding William's incredulity.
As to Queen Anne, Dr. Daniel Turner, in his _Art of Surgery_,
relates that several cases of scrofula which had been
unsuccessfully treated by himself and Dr. Charles Bernard,
sergeant-surgeon to her Majesty, yielded afterward to the
efficacy of the Queen's touch. Naturally does Collier, in his
_Ecclesiastical History_, say regarding these cases that to
dispute them "is to come to the extreme of scepticism, to deny
our senses and be incredulous even to ridiculousness." Testimony
to the reality of these cures is indeed overwhelming, and
multitude of most sober scholars, divines, and doctors of
medicine declared the evidence absolutely convincing. That th
Church of England accepted the doctrine of the royal touch is
witnessed by the special service provided in the _Prayer-Book_ of
that period for occasions when the King exercised this gift.
The ceremony was conducted with great solemnity and pomp:
during the reading of the service and the laying on of the King's
hands, the attendant bishop or priest recited the words, "They
shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover";
afterward came special prayers, the Epistle and Gospel, with the
blessing, and finally his Majesty washed his royal hands in
golden vessels which high noblemen held for him.
In France, too, the royal touch continued, with similar testimony
to its efficacy. On a certain Easter Sunday, that pious king,
Louis XIV, touched about sixteen hundred persons at Versailles.
This curative power was, then, acknowledged far and wide, by
Catholics and Protestants alike, upon the Continent, in Great
Britain, and in America; and it descended not only in spite of
the transition of the English kings from Catholicism to
Protestantism, but in spite of the transition from the legitimate
sovereignty of the Stuarts to the illegitimate succession of the
House of Orange. And yet, within a few years after the whol
world held this belief, it was dead; it had shrivelled away in the
growing scientific light at the dawn of the eighteenth century.[[49]]
IX. THE SCIENTIFIC STRUGGLE FOR ANATOMY
We may now take up the evolution of medical science out o
the medieval view and its modern survivals. All through the
Middle Ages, as we have seen, some few laymen and ecclesiastics
here and there, braving the edicts of the Church and popular
superstition, persisted in medical study and practice: this was
especially seen at the greater universities, which had becom
somewhat emancipated from ecclesiastical control. In the
thirteenth century the University of Paris gave a strong impuls
to the teaching of medicine, and in that and the followin
century we begin to find the first intelligible reports o
medical cases since the coming in of Christianity
In the thirteenth century also the arch-enemy of the papacy
the Emperor Frederick II, showed his free-thinking tendencies by
granting, from time to time, permissions to dissect the huma
subject. In the centuries following, sundry other monarchs
timidly followed his example: thus John of Aragon, in 1391, gave
to the University of Lerida the privilege of dissecting one dead
criminal every three years.[[50]]
During the fifteenth century and the earlier years of th
sixteenth the revival of learning, the invention of printing, and
the great voyages of discovery gave a new impulse to thought, an
in this medical science shared: the old theological way o
thinking was greatly questioned, and gave place in many quarters
to a different way of looking at the universe.
In the sixteenth century Paracelsus appears--a great genius,
doing much to develop medicine beyond the reach of sacred and
scholastic tradition, though still fettered by many
superstitions. More and more, in spite of theological dogmas,
came a renewal of anatomical studies by dissection of the human
subject. The practice of the old Alexandrian School was thus
resumed. Mundinus, Professor of Medicine at Bologna early in the
fourteenth century, dared use the human subject occasionally in
his lectures; but finally came a far greater champion of scientific
truth, Andreas Vesalius, founder of the modern science of anatomy.
The battle waged by this man is one of the glories of our race
From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the
search for real knowledge he risked the most terrible dangers,
and especially the charge of sacrilege, founded upon th
teachings of the Church for ages. As we have seen, even such men
in the early Church as Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy
in abhorrence, and the decretal of Pope Boniface VIII was
universally construed as forbidding all dissection, and as
threatening excommunication against those practising it. Through
this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear; despite
ecclesiastical censure, great opposition in his own profession,
and popular fury, he studied his science by the only method that
could give useful results. No peril daunted him. To secure
material for his investigations, he haunted gibbets and
charnel-houses, braving 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 carefu
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 ar
doomed and gradually sinking. Just as, in the time of Roger
Bacon, excellent men devoted all their energies to bindin
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 for Aquinas against
Erasmus, or for Galen against Vesalius, the cry is always for
"sound learning": the idea always has been that the olde
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 dedicated the work to the Emperor
Charles V, and in his preface he argues for his method, and
against the parrot repetitions of the mediaeval 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 Gale
gave battle at once. After the manner of their time their firs
missiles were epithets; and, the vast arsenal of these having been
exhausted, they began to use sharper weapons--weapons theologic.
In this case there were especial reasons why the theologica
authorities felt called upon to intervene. First, there was the
old idea prevailing in the Church that the dissection of the
human body is forbidden to Christians: this was used with great
force against Vesalius, but he at first gained a temporar
victory; for, 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 was simple: the great Emperor Charles V had made
Vesalius his physician and could not spare him; but, on the
accession of Philip II to the throne of Spain and the
Netherlands, the whole scene changed. Vesalius now complained
that in Spain he could not obtain even a human skull for his
anatomical investigations: the medical and theological
reactionists had their way, and to all appearance they have, as a
rule, had it in Spain ever since. As late as the last years of
the eighteenth century an observant English traveller found that
there were no dissections before medical classes in the Spanish
universities, and that the doctrine of the circulation of th
blood was still denied, more than a century and a half after
Sarpi and Harvey had proved it.
Another theological idea barred the path of Vesalius.
Throughout the Middle Ages it was believed that there exists in
man a bone imponderable, incorruptible, incombustible--the
necessary nucleus of the resurrection body. Belief in a
resurrection of the physical body, despite St. Paul's Epistle to
the Corinthians, had been incorporated into the formula evolved
during the early Christian centuries and known as the Apostles'
Creed, and was held throughout Christendom, "always, everywhere
and by all." This hypothetical bone was therefore held in great
veneration, and many anatomists sought to discover it; but
Vesalius, revealing so much else, did not find it. He contented
himself with saying that he left the question regarding the existence
of such a bone to the theologians. He could not lie; he did not
wish to fight the Inquisition; and thus he fell under suspicion.
The strength of this theological point may be judged from
the fact that no less eminent a surgeon than Riolan consulted the
executioner to find out whether, when he burned a criminal, all
the parts were consumed; and only then was the answer receive
which fatally undermined this superstition. Yet, in 1689 we fin
it still lingering in France, stimulating opposition in th
Church to dissection. Even as late as the eighteenth century,
Bernouilli having shown that the living human body constantly
undergoes a series of changes, so that all its particles are
renewed in a given number of years, so much ill feeling was drawn
upon him, from theologians, who saw in this statement danger t
the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, that for the sak
of peace he struck out his argument on this subject from his
collected works.[[53]]
Still other enroachments upon the theological view were made
by the new school of anatomists, and especially by Vesalius.
During the Middle Ages there had been developed various
theological doctrines regarding the human body; these were base
upon arguments showing what the body, _ought to be_, and
naturally, when anatomical science showed what it _is_, these
doctrines fell. An example of such popular theological reasoning
is seen in a widespread belief of the twelfth century, that
during the year in which the cross of Christ was captured by
Saladin, children, instead of having thirty or thirty-two teeth
as before, had twenty or twenty-two. So, too, in Vesalius's tim
another doctrine of this sort was dominant: it had long been held
that Eve, having been made by the Almighty from a rib taken out
of Adam's side, there must be one rib fewer on one side of every
man than on the other. This creation of Eve was a favourite
subject with sculptors and painters, from Giotto, who carved it
upon his beautiful Campanile at Florence, to the illuminators of
missals, and even to those who illustrated Bibles and religious
books in the first years after the invention of printing; but
Vesalius and the anatomists who followed him put an end among
thoughtful men to this belief in the missing rib, and in doin
this dealt a blow at much else in the sacred theory. Naturally
all these considerations brought the forces of ecclesiasticism
against the innovators in anatomy.[[54]
A new weapon was now forged: Vesalius was charged with
dissecting a living man, and, either from direct persecution, as
the great majority of authors assert, or from indirec
influences, as the recent apologists for Philip II admit, he
became a wanderer: on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, apparently
undertaken to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the
prime of his life and strength he was lost to the world.
And yet not lost. In this century a great painter has again
given him to us. By the magic of Hamann's pencil Vesalius again
stands on earth, and we look once more into his 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 labours; the corpse
of the plague-stricken beneath his hand 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.[[54b]]
His death was hastened, if not caused, by men who
conscientiously supposed that he was injuring religion: his poor,
blind foes aided in destroying one of religion's greatest
apostles. What was his influence on religion? He substituted, for
the repetition of worn-out theories, a conscientious and reverent
search into the works of the great Power giving life to th
universe; he substituted, for representations of the human
structure pitiful and unreal, representations revealing truths
most helpful to the whole human race.
The death of this champion seems to have virtually ended the
contest. Licenses to dissect soon began to be given by sundry
popes to universities, and were renewed at intervals of fro
three to four years, until the Reformation set in motion trains
of thought which did much to release science from this yoke.[[55]]
X. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO INOCULATION, VACCINATION,
AND THE USE OF ANAESTHETICS.
I hasten now to one of the most singular struggles of
medical science during modern times. Early in the last century
Boyer presented inoculation as a preventive of smallpox i
France, and thoughtful physicians in England, inspired by Lady
Montagu and Maitland, followed his example. Ultra-conservatives
in medicine took fright at once on both sides of the Channel, and
theology was soon finding profound reasons against the new
practice. The French theologians of the Sorbonne solemnly
condemned it; the English theologians were most loudly
represented by the Rev. Edward Massey, who in 1772 preached and
published a sermon entitled _The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of
Inoculation_. In this he declared that Job's distemper was
probably confluent smallpox; that he had been inoculated
doubtless 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." Not less vigorous was the
sermon of the Rev. Mr. Delafaye, entitled _Inoculation an
Indefensible Practice_. This struggle went on for thirty years. It
is a pleasure to note some churchmen--and among them Madox,
Bishop of Worcester--giving battle on the side of right reason;
but as late as 1753 we have a noted rector at Canterbury
denouncing inoculation from his pulpit in the primatial city, an
many of his brethren following his example.
The same opposition was vigorous in Protestant Scotland.
large body of ministers joined in denouncing the new practice as
"flying in the face of Providence," and "endeavouring to baffle a
Divine judgment."
On our own side of the ocean, also, this question had to be
fought out. About the year 1721 Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, a physician
in Boston, made an experiment in inoculation, one of his first
subjects being his own son. He at once encountered bitter
hostility, so that the selectmen of the city forbade him to
repeat the experiment. Foremost among his opponents was Dr.
Douglas, a Scotch physician, supported by the medical professton
and the newspapers. The violence of the opposing party knew no
bounds; they insisted that inoculation was "poisoning," and they
urged the authorities to try Dr. Boylston for murder. Having thu
settled his case for this world, they proceeded to settle it for
the next, insisting that "for a man to infect a family in the
morning with smallpox and to pray to God in the evening against
the disease is blasphemy"; that the smallpox is "a judgment of
God on the sins of the people," and that "to avert it is but to
provoke him more"; that inoculation is "an encroachment on the
prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite."
Among the mass of scriptural texts most remote from any possible
bearing on the subject one was employed which was equally cogent
against any use of healing means in any disease--the words o
Hosea: "He hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and
he will bind us up."
So bitter was this opposition that Dr. Boylston's life was
in danger; it was considered unsafe for him to be out of his
house in the evening; a lighted grenade was even thrown into the
house of Cotton Mather, who had favoured the new practice, and
had sheltered another clergyman who had submitted himself to it
To the honour of the Puritan clergy of New England, it
should be said that many of them were Boylston's strongest
supporters. Increase and Cotton Mather had been among the first
to move in favour of inoculation, the latter having called
Boylston's attention to it; and at the very crisis of affairs six
of the leading clergymen of Boston threw their influence on
Boylston's side and shared the obloquy brought upon him. Although
the gainsayers were not slow to fling into the faces of the
Mathers their action regarding witchcraft, urging that their
credulity in that matter argued credulity in this, the
persevered, and among the many services rendered by the clergymen
of New England to their country this ought certainly to be
remembered; for these men had to withstand, shoulder to shoulder
with Boylston and Benjamin Franklin, the same weapons which were
hurled at the supporters of inoculation in Europe--charges o
"unfaithfulness to the revealed law of God."
The facts were soon very strong against the gainsayers:
within a year or two after the first experiment nearly three
hundred persons had been inoculated by Boylston in Boston and
neighbouring towns, and out of these only six had died; whereas,
during the same period, out of nearly six thousand persons who
had taken smallpox naturally, and had received only the usual
medical treatment, nearly one thousand had died. Yet even here
the gainsayers did not despair, and, when obliged to confess the
success of inoculation, they simply fell back upon a new
argument, and answered: "It was good that Satan should be
dispossessed of his habitation which he had taken up in men i
our Lord's day, but it was not lawful that the children of the
Pharisees should cast him out by the help of Beelzebub. We must
always have an eye to the matter of what we do as well as th
result, if we intend to keep a good conscience toward God." But
the facts were too strong; the new practice made its way in th
New World as in the Old, though bitter opposition continued, and
in no small degree on vague scriptural grounds, for more than
twenty years longer.[[57]
The steady evolution of scientific medicine brings us next
to Jenner's discovery of vaccination. Here, too, sundry vague
survivals of theological ideas caused many of the clergy to side
with retrograde physicians. Perhaps the most virulent of Jenner'
enemies was one of his professional brethren, Dr. Moseley, who
placed on the title-page of his book, _Lues Bovilla_, the motto,
referring to Jenner and his followers, "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do": this book of Dr. Moseley was
especially indorsed by the Bishop of Dromore. In 1798 an
Anti-vaccination Society was formed by physicians and clergymen
who called on the people of Boston to suppress vaccination, as
"bidding defiance to Heaven itself, even to the will of God," and
declared that "the law of God prohibits the practice." As late a
1803 the Rev. Dr. Ramsden thundered against vaccination in a
sermon before the University of Cambridge, mingling texts of
Scripture with calumnies against Jenner; but Plumptre and the
Rev. Rowland Hill in England, Waterhouse in America, Thouret in
France, Sacco in Italy, and a host of other good men and true,
pressed forward, and at last science, humanity, and right reason
gained the victory. Most striking results quickly followed. The
diminution in the number of deaths from the terrible scourge was
amazing. In Berlin, during the eight years following 1783, over
four thousand children died of the smallpox; while during the
eight years following 1814, after vaccination had been largely
adopted, out of a larger number of deaths there were but five
hundred and thirty-five from this disease. In Wurtemberg, during
the twenty-four years following 1772, one in thirteen of all the
children died of smallpox, while during the eleven years after
1822 there died of it only one in sixteen hundred. In Copenhagen,
during twelve years before the introduction of vaccination,
fifty-five hundred persons died of smallpox, and during the
sixteen years after its introduction only one hundred and
fifty-eight persons died of it throughout all Denmark. In Vienna,
where the average yearly mortality from this disease had been
over eight hundred, it was steadily and rapidly reduced, until in
1803 it had fallen to less than thirty; and in London, formerly
so afflicted by this scourge, out of all her inhabitants there
died of it in 1890 but one. As to the world at large, the result
is summed up by one of the most honoured English physicians of
our time, in the declaration that "Jenner has saved, is now
saving, and will continue to save in all coming ages, more lives
in one generation than were destroyed in all the wars of Napoleon."
It will have been noticed by those who have read this history
thus far that the record of the Church generally was far mor
honourable in this struggle than in many which preceded it:
the reason is not difficult to find; the decline of theology
enured to the advantage of religion, and religion gave powerful
aid to science.
Yet there have remained some survivals both in Protestantism
and in Catholicism which may be regarded with curiosity. A smal
body of perversely ingenious minds in the medical profession in
England have found a few ardent allies among the less intellectual
clergy. The Rev. Mr. Rothery and the Rev. Mr. Allen, of the
Primitive Methodists, have for sundry vague theological reasons
especially distinguished themselves by opposition to compulsory
vaccination; but it is only just to say that the great body of
the English clergy have for a long time taken the better view.
Far more painful has been the recent history of the other great
branch of the Christian Church--a history developed where it might
have been least expected: the recent annals of the world hardly
present a more striking antithesis between Religion and Theology
On the religious side few things in the history of the Roman
Church have been more beautiful than the conduct of its clergy in
Canada during the great outbreak of ship-fever among immigrants at
Montreal about the middle of the present century. Day and night
the Catholic priesthood of that city ministered fearlessly to
those victims of sanitary ignorance; fear of suffering and death
could not drive these ministers from their work; they laid down
their lives cheerfully while carrying comfort to the poorest and
most ignorant of our kind: such was the record of their religion.
But in 1885 a record was made by their theology. In that year the
smallpox broke out with great virulence in Montreal. The
Protestant population escaped almost entirely by vaccination; but
multitudes of their Catholic fellow-citizens, under some vague
survival of the old orthodox ideas, refused vaccination; and
suffered fearfully. When at last the plague became so serious
that travel and trade fell off greatly and quarantine began to be
established in neighbouring cities, an effort was made to enforce
compulsory vaccination. The result was, that large numbers of the
Catholic working population resisted and even threatened
bloodshed. The clergy at first tolerated and even encouraged thi
conduct: the Abbe Filiatrault, priest of St. James's Church,
declared in a sermon that, "if we are afflicted with smallpox, it
is because we had a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh,
which has offended the Lord; it is to punish our pride that God
has sent us smallpox." The clerical press went further: the
_Etendard_ exhorted the faithful to take up arms rather than
submit to vaccination, and at least one of the secular papers was
forced to pander to the same sentiment. The Board of Health
struggled against this superstition, and addressed a circular to
the Catholic clergy, imploring them to recommend vaccination;
but, though two or three complied with this request, the great
majority were either silent or openly hostile. The Oblate
Fathers, whose church was situated in the very heart of the
infected district, continued to denounce vaccination; th
faithful were exhorted to rely on devotional exercises of various
sorts; under the sanction of the hierarchy a great procession was
ordered with a solemn appeal to the Virgin, and the use of th
rosary was carefully specified.
Meantime, the disease, which had nearly died out among th
Protestants, raged with ever-increasing virulence among th
Catholics; and, the truth becoming more and more clear, even to
the most devout, proper measures were at last enforced and the
plague was stayed, though not until there had been a fearful
waste of life among these simple-hearted believers, and germs of
scepticism planted in the hearts of their children which will
bear fruit for generations to come.[[61]]
Another class of cases in which the theologic spirit has
allied itself with the retrograde party in medical science i
found in the history of certain remedial agents; and first may b
named cocaine. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century
the value of coca had been discovered in South America; th
natives of Peru prized it highly, and two eminent Jesuits, Joseph
Acosta and Antonio Julian, were converted to this view. But the
conservative spirit in the Church was too strong; in 1567 the
Second Council of Lima, consisting of bishops from all parts of
South America, condemned it, and two years later came a roya
decree declaring that "the notions entertained by the natives
regarding it are an illusion of the devil."
As a pendant to this singular mistake on the part of the
older Church came another committed by many Protestants. In the
early years of the seventeenth century the Jesuit missionaries in
South America learned from the natives the value of the so-called
Peruvian bark in the treatment of ague; and in 1638, the Countess
of Cinchon, Regent of Peru, having derived great benefit from the
new remedy, it was introduced into Europe. Although its alkaloid,
quinine, is perhaps the nearest approach to a medical specific,
and has diminished the death rate in certain regions to an
amazing extent, its introduction was bitterly opposed by many
conservative members of the medical profession, and in thi
opposition large numbers of ultra-Protestants joined, out of
hostility to the Roman Church. In the heat of sectarian feeling
the new remedy was stigmatized as "an invention of the devil";
and so strong was this opposition that it was not introduced into
England until 1653, and even then its use was long held back,
owing mainly to anti-Catholic feeling.
What the theological method on the ultra-Protestant side
could do to help the world at this very time is seen in the fact
that, while this struggle was going on, Hoffmann was attempting
to give a scientific theory of the action of the devil in causing
Job's boils. This effort at a _quasi_-scientific explanation whic
should satisfy the theological spirit, comical as it at first
seems, is really worthy of serious notice, because it must be
considered as the beginning of that inevitable effort a
compromise which we see in the history of every science when it
begins to appear triumphant.[[62]]
But I pass to a typical conflict in our days, and in a
Protestant country. In 1847, James Young Simpson, a Scotch
physician, who afterward rose to the highest eminence in his
profession, having advocated the use of anaesthetics in
obstetrical cases, was immediately met by a storm of opposition
This hostility flowed from an ancient and time-honoured belief in
Scotland. As far back as the year 1591, Eufame Macalyane, a lady
of rank, being charged with seeking the aid of Agnes Sampson for
the relief of pain at the time of the birth of her two sons, was
burned alive on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh; and this old
theological view persisted even to the middle of the nineteenth
century. From pulpit after pulpit Simpson's use of chloroform was
denounced as impious and contrary to Holy Writ; texts were cited
abundantly, the ordinary declaration being that to use chloroform
was "to avoid one part of the primeval curse on woman." Simpson
wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to defend the blessing which he
brought into use; but he seemed about to be overcome, when he
seized a new weapon, probably the most absurd by which a great
cause was ever won: "My opponents forget," he said, "the
twenty-first verse of the second chapter of Genesis; it is the
record of the first surgical operation ever performed, and tha
text proves that the Maker of the universe, before he took th
rib from Adam's side for the creation of Eve, caused a deep
sleep to fall upon Adam." This was a stunning blow, but it did
not entirely kill the opposition; they had strength left t
maintain that the "deep sleep of Adam took place before the
introduction of pain into the world--in a state of innocence."
But now a new champion intervened--Thomas Chalmers: with a few
pungent arguments from his pulpit he scattered the enemy forever,
and the greatest battle of science against suffering was won.
This victory was won not less for religion. Wisely did those who
raised the monument at Boston to one of the discoverers of
anaesthetics inscribe upon its pedestal the words from our sacred
text, "This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is
wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working."[[63]]
XI. FINAL BREAKING AWAY OF THE THEOLOGICAL THEORY IN MEDICINE.
While this development of history was going on, the centra
idea on which the whole theologic view rested--the idea of
diseases as resulting from the wrath of God or malice of
Satan--was steadily weakened; and, out of the many things which
show this, one may be selected as indicating the drift of thought
among theologians themselves.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century the most eminen
divines of the American branch of the Anglican Church framed
their _Book of Common Prayer_. Abounding as it does in evidences
of their wisdom and piety, few things are more noteworthy than a
change made in the exhortation to the faithful to present
themselves at the communion. While, in the old form laid down in
the English _Prayer Book_, the minister was required to warn his
flock not "to kindle God's wrath" or "provoke him to plague us
with divers diseases and sundry kinds of death," from th
American form all this and more of similar import in various
services was left out.
Since that day progress in medical science has been rapid
indeed, and at no period more so than during the last half of the
nineteenth century.
The theological view of disease has steadily faded, and the
theological hold upon medical education has been almost entirely
relaxed. In three great fields, especially, discoveries have been
made which have done much to disperse the atmosphere of miracle
First, there has come knowledge regarding the relation between
imagination and medicine, which, though still defective, is of
great importance. This relation has been noted during the whole
history of the science. When the soldiers of the Prince of
Orange, at the siege of Breda in 1625, were dying of scurvy b
scores, he sent to the physicians "two or three small vials
filled with a decoction of camomile, wormwood, and camphor, gave
out that it was a very rare and precious medicine--a medicine of
such virtue that two or three drops sufficed to impregnate a
gallon of water, and that it had been obtained from the East with
great difficulty and danger." This statement, made with much
solemnity, deeply impressed the soldiers; they took the medicine
eagerly, and great numbers recovered rapidly. Again, two
centuries later, young Humphry Davy, being employed to apply the
bulb of the thermometer to the tongues of certain patients at
Bristol after they had inhaled various gases as remedies fo
disease, and finding that the patients supposed this application
of the thermometer-bulb was the cure, finally wrought cures by
this application alone, without any use of the gases whatever.
Innumerable cases of this sort have thrown a flood of light upo
such cures as those wrought by Prince Hohenlohe, by the "metallic
tractors," and by a multitude of other agencies temporarily in
vogue, but, above all, upon the miraculous cures which in past
ages have been so frequent and of which a few survive.
The second department is that of hypnotism. Within the last
half-century many scattered indications have been collected and
supplemented by thoughtful, patient investigators of genius, and
especially by Braid in England and Charcot in France. Here, too,
great inroads have been made upon the province hitherto sacred to
miracle, and in 1888 the cathedral preacher, Steigenberger, o
Augsburg, sounded an alarm. He declared his fears "lest
accredited Church miracles lose their hold upon the public,"
denounced hypnotism as a doctrine of demons, and ended with the
singular argument that, inasmuch as hypnotism is avowedl
incapable of explaining all the wonders of history, it is idle to
consider it at all. But investigations in hypnotism still go on
and may do much in the twentieth century to carry the world yet
further from the realm of the miraculous.
In a third field science has won a striking series o
victories. Bacteriology, beginning in the researches of
Leeuwenhoek in the seventeenth century, continued by O. F. Muller
in the eighteenth, and developed or applied with wonderful skill
by Ehrenberg, Cohn, Lister, Pasteur, Koch, Billings, Bering, and
their compeers in the nineteenth, has explained the origin and
proposed the prevention or cure of various diseases widel
prevailing, which until recently have been generally held to be
"inscrutable providences." Finally, the closer study of
psychology, especially in its relations to folklore, has revealed
processes involved in the development of myths and legends: the
phenomena of "expectant attention," the tendency to
marvel-mongering, and the feeling of "joy in believing."
In summing up the history of this long struggle between
science and theology, two main facts are to be noted: First, that
in proportion as the world approached the "ages of faith" it
receded from ascertained truth, and in proportion as the world
has receded from the "ages of faith" it has approache
ascertained truth; secondly, that, in proportion as the grasp o
theology Upon education tightened, medicine declined, and in
proportion as that grasp has relaxed, medicine has been developed.
The world is hardly beyond the beginning of medical
discoveries, yet they have already taken from theology what was
formerly its strongest province--sweeping away from this vas
field of human effort that belief in miracles which for more than
twenty centuries has been the main stumblingblock in the path o
medicine; and in doing this they have cleared higher paths not
only for science, but for religion.[[66]]
CHAPTER XIV.
FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE.
I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EPIDEMICS AND SANITATION.
A VERY striking feature in recorded history has been the
recurrence of great pestilences. Various indications in ancient
times show their frequency, while the famous description of the
plague of Athens given by Thucydides, and the discussion of it by
Lucretius, exemplify their severity. In the Middle Ages they
raged from time to time throughout Europe: such plagues as the
Black Death and the sweating sickness swept off vast multitudes,
the best authorities estimating that of the former, at the middle
of the fourteenth century, more than half the population of
England died, and that twenty-five millions of people perished in
various parts of Europe. In 1552 sixty-seven thousand patient
died of the plague at Paris alone, and in 1580 more than twenty
thousand. The great plague in England and other parts of Europe
in the seventeenth century was also fearful, and that which swept
the south of Europe in the early part of the eighteenth century,
as well as the invasions by the cholera at various times durin
the nineteenth, while less terrible than those of former years
have left a deep impress upon the imaginations of men.
From the earliest records we find such pestilences attributed
to the wrath or malice of unseen powers. This had been the
prevailing view even in the most cultured ages before the
establishment of Christianity: in Greece and Rome especially,
plagues of various sorts were attributed to the wrath of the
gods; in Judea, the scriptural records of various plagues sent
upon the earth by the Divine fiat as a punishment for sin show
the continuance of this mode of thought. Among many examples
and intimations of this in our sacred literature, we have the
epidemic which carried off fourteen thousand seven hundred of the
children of Israel, and which was only stayed by the prayers an
offerings of Aaron, the high priest; the destruction of sevent
thousand men in the pestilence by which King David was punished
for the numbering of Israel, and which was only stopped when the
wrath of Jahveh was averted by burnt-offerings; the plague
threatened by the prophet Zechariah, and that delineated in the
Apocalypse. From these sources this current of ideas was poured
into the early Christian Church, and hence it has been that
during nearly twenty centuries since the rise of Christianity,
and down to a period within living memory, at the appearance of
any pestilence the Church authorities, instead of devising
sanitary measures, have very generally preached the necessity of
immediate atonement for offences against the Almighty.
This view of the early Church was enriched greatly by a new
development of theological thought regarding the powers of Satan
and evil angels, the declaration of St. Paul that the gods of
antiquity were devils being cited as its sufficient warrant.[[68]]
Moreover, comets, falling stars, and earthquakes were
thought, upon scriptural authority, to be "signs and wonders"-
evidences of the Divine wrath, heralds of fearful visitations;
and this belief, acting powerfully upon the minds of millions,
did much to create a panic-terror sure to increase epidemic
disease wherever it broke forth.
The main cause of this immense sacrifice of life is now
known to have been the want of hygienic precaution, both in the
Eastern centres, where various plagues were developed, and in the
European towns through which they spread. And here certain
theological reasonings came in to resist the evolution of a
proper sanitary theory. Out of the Orient had been poured int
the thinking of western Europe the theological idea that th
abasement of man adds to the glory of God; that indignity to the
body may secure salvation to the soul; hence, that cleanliness
betokens pride and filthiness humility. Living in filth was
regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the
Church and to society, as an evidence of sanctity. St. Jerome and
the Breviary of the Roman Church dwell with unction on the fac
that St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical
uncleanliness; St. Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony because h
had never washed his feet; St. Abraham's most striking evidence
of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither his hands
nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her body save
her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to a convent in which th
nuns religiously abstained from bathing. St. Mary of Egypt was
emninent for filthiness; St. Simnon Stylites was in this respect
unspeakable--the least that can be said is, that he lived in
ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors. The _Lives of the
Saints_ dwell with complacency on the statement that, when sundry
Eastern monks showed a disposition to wash themselves, the
Almighty manifested his displeasure by drying up a neighbourin
stream until the bath which it had supplied was destroyed.
The religious world was far indeed from the inspired utterance
attributed to John Wesley, that "cleanliness is near akin
to godliness." For century after century the idea prevailed
that filthiness was akin to holiness; and, while we may well
believe that the devotion of the clergy to the sick was one cause
why, during the greater plagues, they lost so large a proportio
of their numbers, we can not escape the conclusion that their
want of cleanliness had much to do with it. In France, during the
fourteenth century, Guy de Chauliac, the great physician of his
time, noted particularly that certain Carmelite monks suffered
especially from pestilence, and that they were especially filthy.
During the Black Death no less than nine hundred Carthusian monks
fell victims in one group of buildings.
Naturally, such an example set by the venerated leaders of
thought exercised great influence throughout society, and all the
more because it justified the carelessness and sloth to which
ordinary humanity is prone. In the principal towns of Europe, as
well as in the country at large, down to a recent period, the
most ordinary sanitary precautions were neglected, and
pestilences continued to be attributed to the wrath of God or the
malice of Satan. As to the wrath of God, a new and powerful
impulse was given to this belief in the Church toward the end of
the sixth century by St. Gregory the Great. In 590, when he was
elected Pope, the city of Rome was suffering from a dreadful
pestilence: the people were dying by thousands; out of one
procession imploring the mercy of Heaven no less than eight
persons died within an hour: what the heathen in an earlier epoch
had attributed to Apollo was now attributed to Jehovah, and
chroniclers tell us that fiery darts were seen flung from heaven
into the devoted city. But finally, in the midst of all this
horror, Gregory, at the head of a penitential procession, saw
hovering over the mausoleum of Hadrian the figure of the
archangel Michael, who was just sheathing a flaming sword, while
three angels were heard chanting the Regina Coeli. The legend
continues that the Pope immediately broke forth into hallelujahs
for this sign that the plague was stayed, and, as it shortly
afterward became less severe, a chapel was built at the summit of
the mausoleum and dedicated to St. Michael; still later, above
the whole was erected the colossal statue of the archangel
sheathing his sword, which still stands to perpetuate the legend.
Thus the greatest of Rome's ancient funeral monuments was made to
bear testimony to this medieval belief; the mausoleum of Hadria
became the castle of St. Angelo. A legend like this, claiming to
date from the greatest of the early popes, and vouched for by
such an imposing monument, had undoubtedly a marked effect upon
the dominant theology throughout Europe, which was constantl
developing a great body of thought regarding the agencies by
which the Divine wrath might be averted.
First among these agencies, naturally, were evidences of
devotion, especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to
churches, monasteries, and shrines--the seats of fetiches which
it was supposed had wrought cures or might work them. The whole
evolution of modern history, not only ecclesiastical but civil,
has been largely affected by the wealth transferred to the clergy
at such periods. It was noted that in the fourteenth century,
after the great plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensel
increased proportion of the landed and personal property of every
European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a great
ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of the
ministers of God."[[71]]
Other modes of propitiating the higher powers wer
penitential processions, the parading of images of the Virgin or
of saints through plague-stricken towns, and fetiches
innumerable. Very noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were the processions of the flagellants, trooping
through various parts of Europe, scourging their naked bodies,
shrieking the penitential psalms, and often running from wild
excesses of devotion to the maddest orgies
Sometimes, too, plagues were attributed to the wrath of
lesser heavenly powers. Just as, in former times, the fury of
"far-darting Apollo" was felt when his name was not respectfully
treated by mortals, so, in 1680, the Church authorities at Rome
discovered that the plague then raging resulted from the anger of
St. Sebastian because no monument had been erected to him. Such a
monument was therefore placed in the Church of St. Peter ad
Vincula, and the plague ceased
So much for the endeavour to avert the wrath of the heavenly
powers. On the other hand, theological reasoning no less subtle
was used in thwarting the malice of Satan. This idea, too, came
from far. In the sacred books of India and Persia, as well as in
our own, we find the same theory of disease, leading to similar
means of cure. Perhaps the most astounding among Christian
survivals of this theory and its resultant practices was see
during the plague at Rome in 1522. In that year, at that centr
of divine illumination, certain people, having reasoned upon the
matter, came to the conclusion that this great scourge was the
result of Satanic malice; and, in view of St. Paul's declaration
that the ancient gods were devils, and of the theory that th
ancient gods of Rome were the devils who had the most reason t
punish that city for their dethronement, and that the great
amphitheatre was the chosen haunt of these demon gods, an ox
decorated with garlands, after the ancient heathen manner, was
taken in procession to the Colosseum and solemnly sacrificed.
Even this proved vain, and the Church authorities then ordered
expiatory processions and ceremonies to propitiate the Almighty,
the Virgin, and the saints, who had been offended by this
temporary effort to bribe their enemies.
But this sort of theological reasoning developed an idea far
more disastrous, and this was that Satan, in causing pestilences,
used as his emissaries especially Jews and witches. The proof of
this belief in the case of the Jews was seen in the fact tha
they escaped with a less percentage of disease than did th
Christians in the great plague periods. This was doubtless due in
some measure to their remarkable sanitary system, which ha
probably originated thousands of years before in Egypt, and had
been handed down through Jewish lawgivers and statesmen.
Certainly they observed more careful sanitary rules and mor
constant abstinence from dangerous foods than was usual among
Christians; but the public at large could not understand so
simple a cause, and jumped to the conclusion that their immunity
resulted from protection by Satan, and that this protection was
repaid and the pestilence caused by their wholesale poisoning of
Christians. As a result of this mode of thought, attempts were
made in all parts of Europe to propitiate the Almighty, to
thwart Satan, and to stop the plague by torturing and murdering
the Jews. Throughout Europe during great pestilences we hear of
extensive burnings of this devoted people. In Bavaria, at th
time of the Black Death, it is computed that twelve thousand
Jews thus perished; in the small town of Erfurt the number is
said to have been three thousand; in Strasburg, the Rue Brulee
remains as a monument to the two thousand Jews burned there for
poisoning the wells and causing the plague of 1348; at the royal
castle of Chinon, near Tours, an immense trench was dug, fille
with blazing wood, and in a single day one hundred and sixty Jews
were burned. Everywhere in continental Europe this mad
persecution went on; but it is a pleasure to say that one great
churchman, Pope Clement VI, stood against this popular unreason,
and, so far as he could bring his influence to bear on the
maddened populace, exercised it in favour of mercy to these
supposed enemies of the Almighty.[[73]]
Yet, as late as 1527, the people of Pavia, being threatened
with plague, appealed to St. Bernardino of Feltro, who during his
life had been a fierce enemy of the Jews, and they passed a
decree promising that if the saint would avert the pestilence they
would expel the Jews from the city. The saint apparently accepted
the bargain, and in due time the Jews were expelled
As to witches, the reasons for believing them the cause of
pestilence also came from far. This belief, too, had been poured
mainly from Oriental sources into our sacred books and thenc
into the early Church, and was strengthened by a whole line of
Church authorities, fathers, doctors, and saints; but, above all,
by the great bull, _Summis Desiderantes_, issued by Pope Innocent
VIII, in 1484. This utterance from the seat of St. Peter
infallibly committed the Church to the idea that witches are a
great cause of disease, storms, and various ills which afflict
humanity; and the Scripture on which the action recommended
against witches in this papal bull, as well as in so many sermons
and treatises for centuries afterward, was based, was the famous
text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This idea
persisted long, and the evolution of it is among the most fearful
things in human history.[[74]]
In Germany its development was especially terrible. From the
middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth,
Catholic and Protestant theologians and ecclesiastics vied with
each other in detecting witches guilty of producing sickness or
bad weather; women were sent to torture and death by thousands,
and with them, from time to time, men and children. On the
Catholic side sufficient warrant for this work was found in the
bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops' palaces of sout
Germany became shambles,--the lordly prelates of Salzburg
Wurzburg, and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery
In north Germany Protestantism was just as conscientiously
cruel. It based its theory and practice toward witches directl
upon the Bible, and above all on the great text which has cost
the lives of so many myriads of innocent men, women, and
children, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Naturally th
Protestant authorities strove to show that Protestantism was no
less orthodox in this respect than Catholicism; and suc
theological jurists as Carpzov, Damhouder, and Calov did their
work thoroughly. An eminent authority on this subject estimates
the number of victims thus sacrificed during that century in
Germany alone at over a hundred thousand.
Among the methods of this witch activity especially credited
in central and southern Europe was the anointing of city wall
and pavements with a diabolical unguent causing pestilence. In
1530 Michael Caddo was executed with fearful tortures for thus
besmearing the pavements of Geneva. But far more dreadful was the
torturing to death of a large body of people at Milan, in th
following century, for producing the plague by anointing th
walls; and a little later similar punishments for the same crime
were administered in Toulouse and other cities. The case in Milan
may be briefly summarized as showing the ideas on sanitary
science of all classes, from highest to lowest, in th
seventeenth century. That city was then under the control of
Spain; and, its authorities having received notice from th
Spanish Government that certain persons suspected of witchcraft
had recently left Madrid, and had perhaps gone to Milan to anoint
the walls, this communication was dwelt upon in the pulpits as
another evidence of that Satanic malice which the Church alon
had the means of resisting, and the people were thus excited and
put upon the alert. One morning, in the year 1630, an old woman,
looking out of her window, saw a man walking along the street and
wiping his fingers upon the walls; she immediately called the
attention of another old woman, and they agreed that this man
must be one of the diabolical anointers. It was perfectly evident
to a person under ordinary conditions that this unfortunate man
was simply trying to remove from his fingers the ink gathered
while writing from the ink-horn which he carried in his girdle;
but this explanation was too simple to satisfy those who first
observed him or those who afterward tried him: a mob was raised
and he was thrown into prison. Being tortured, he at first did
not know what to confess; but, on inquiring from the jailer and
others, he learned what the charge was, and, on being again
subjected to torture utterly beyond endurance, he confesse
everything which was suggested to him; and, on being torture
again and again to give the names of his accomplices, he accused,
at hazard, the first people in the city whom he thought of.
These, being arrested and tortured beyond endurance, confessed
and implicated a still greater number, until members of the
foremost families were included in the charge. Again and again
all these unfortunates were tortured beyond endurance. Under
paganism, the rule regarding torture had been that it should not
be carried beyond human endurance; and we therefore find Cicero
ridiculing it as a means of detecting crime, because a stalwart
criminal of strong nerves might resist it and go free, while a
physically delicate man, though innocent, would be forced to
confess. Hence it was that under paganism a limit was imposed t
the torture which could be administered; but, when Christianity
had become predominant throughout Europe, torture was developed
with a cruelty never before known. There had been evolved a
doctrine of "excepted cases"--these "excepted cases" being
especially heresy and witchcraft; for by a very simple and
logical process of theological reasoning it was held that Satan
would give supernatural strength to his special devotees--that
is, to heretics and witches--and therefore that, in dealing with
them, there should be no limit to the torture. The result was i
this particular case, as in tens of thousands besides, that the
accused confessed everything which could be suggested to them,
and often in the delirium of their agony confessed far more than
all that the zeal of the prosecutors could suggest. Finally, a
great number of worthy people were sentenced to the most cruel
death which could be invented. The records of their trials and
deaths are frightful. The treatise which in recent years has
first brought to light in connected form an authentic account of
the proceedings in this affair, and which gives at the end
engravings of the accused subjected to horrible tortures on thei
way to the stake and at the place of execution itself, is one of
the most fearful monuments of theological reasoning and human folly.
To cap the climax, after a poor apothecary had been tortured
into a confession that he had made the magic ointment, and when
he had been put to death with the most exquisite refinements of
torture, his family were obliged to take another name, and were
driven out from the city; his house was torn down, and on its
site was erected "The Column of Infamy," which remained on thi
spot until, toward the end of the eighteenth century, a party of
young radicals, probably influenced by the reading of Beccaria,
sallied forth one night and leveled this pious monument to the ground.
Herein was seen the culmination and decline of the bull
_Summis Desiderantes_. It had been issued by him whom a majorit
of the Christian world believes to be infallible in his teachings
to the Church as regards faith and morals; yet here was a
deliberate utterance in a matter of faith and morals which even
children now know to be utterly untrue. Though Beccaria's book on
_Crimes and Punishments_, with its declarations against torture,
was placed by the Church authorities upon the _Index_, and though
the faithful throughout the Christian world were forbidden t
read it, even this could not prevent the victory of truth over
this infallible utterance of Innocent VIII.[[78]]
As the seventeenth century went on, ingenuity in all parts
of Europe seemed devoted to new developments of fetichism. A very
curious monument of this evolution in Italy exists in the Royal
Gallery of Paintings at Naples, where may be seen several
pictures representing the measures taken to save the city from
the plague during the seventeenth century, but especially from
the plague of 1656. One enormous canvas gives a curious example
of the theological doctrine of intercession between man and his
Maker, spun out to its logical length. In the background is the
plague-stricken city: in the foreground the people are praying
to the city authorities to avert the plague; the city authorities
are praying to the Carthusian monks; the monks are praying to St
Martin, St. Bruno, and St. Januarius; these three saints in their
turn are praying to the Virgin; the Virgin prays to Christ; an
Christ prays to the Almighty. Still another picture represents
the people, led by the priests, executing with horrible tortures
the Jews, heretics, and witches who were supposed to cause the
pestilence of 1656, while in the heavens the Virgin and St
Januarius are interceding with Christ to sheathe his sword and
stop the plague.
In such an atmosphere of thought it is no wonder that the
death statistics were appalling. We hear of districts in which
not more than one in ten escaped, and some were entirely
depopulated. Such appeals to fetich against pestilence have
continued in Naples down to our own time, the great saving power
being the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. In 1856 the
present writer saw this miracle performed in the gorgeous chapel
of the saint forming part of the Cathedral of Naples. The chape
was filled with devout worshippers of every class, from the
officials in court dress, representing the Bourbon king, down to
the lowest lazzaroni. The reliquary of silver-gilt, shaped like a
large human head, and supposed to contain the skull of the saint,
was first placed upon the altar; next, two vials containing a
dark substance said to be his blood, having been taken from the
wall, were also placed upon the altar near the head. As the
priests said masses, they turned the vials from time to time,
and the liquefaction being somewhat delayed, the great crowd of
people burst out into more and more impassioned expostulation an
petitions to the saint. Just in front of the altar were the
lazzaroni who claimed to be descendants of the saint's family,
and these were especially importunate: at such times they beg,
they scold, they even threaten; they have been known to abuse the
saint roundly, and to tell him that, if he did not care to sho
his favour to the city by liquefying his blood, St. Cosmo and St.
Damian were just as good saints as he, and would no doubt be very
glad to have the city devote itself to them. At last, on the
occasion above referred to, the priest, turning the vials
suddenly, announced that the saint had performed the miracle
and instantly priests, people, choir, and organ burst forth into
a great _Te Deum_; bells rang, and cannon roared; a procession was
formed, and the shrine containing the saint's relics was carried
through the streets, the people prostrating themselves on both
sides of the way and throwing showers of rose leaves upon th
shrine and upon the path before it. The contents of these
precious vials are an interesting relic indeed, for they
represent to us vividly that period when men who were willing to
go to the stake for their religious opinions thought it not wrong
to save the souls of their fellowmen by pious mendacity and
consecrated fraud. To the scientific eye this miracle is very
simple: the vials contain, no doubt, one of those mixtures fusing
at low-temperature, which, while kept in its place within the
cold stone walls of the church, remains solid, but upon being
brought out into the hot, crowded chapel, and fondled by the warm
hands of the priests, gradually softens and becomes liquid. It
was curious to note, at the time above mentioned, that even the
high functionaries representing the king looked at the miracle
with awe: they evidently found "joy in believing," and one of
them assured the present writer that the only thing which _could_
cause it was the direct exercise of miraculous power.
It may be reassuring to persons contemplating a visit to
that beautiful capital in these days, that, while this miracl
still goes on, it is no longer the only thing relied upon to
preserve the public health. An unbelieving generation, especially
taught by the recent horrors of the cholera, has thought it wise
to supplement the power of St. Januarius by the "Risanamento,"
begun mainly in 1885 and still going on. The drainage of the city
has thus been greatly improved, the old wells closed, and pure
water introduced from the mountains. Moreover, at the last
outburst of cholera a few years since, a noble deed was done
which by its moral effect exercised a widespread healing power.
Upon hearing of this terrific outbreak of pestilence, King
Humbert, though under the ban of the Church, broke from all the
entreaties of his friends and family, went directly into th
plague-stricken city, and there, in the streets, public places,
and hospitals, encouraged the living, comforted the sick and
dying, and took means to prevent a further spread of the
pestilence. To the credit of the Church it should also be said
that the Cardinal Archbishop San Felice joined him in this
Miracle for miracle, the effect of this visit of the kin
seems to have surpassed anything that St. Januarius could do, for
it gave confidence and courage which very soon showed their
effects in diminishing the number of deaths. It would certainly
appear that in this matter the king was more directly under
Divine inspiration and guidance than was the Pope; for the fact
that King Humbert went to Naples at the risk of his life, while
Leo XIII remained in safety at the Vatican, impressed the Italian
people in favour of the new _regime_ and against the old as
nothing else could have done.
In other parts of Italy the same progress is seen under the
new Italian government. Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, and especially
Rome, which under the sway of the popes was scandalously filthy,
are now among the cleanest cities in Europe. What the relics of
St. Januarius, St. Anthony, and a multitude of local fetiches
throughout Italy were for ages utterly unable to do, has been
accomplished by the development of the simplest sanitary principles.
Spain shows much the same characteristics of a country wher
theological considerations have been all-controlling for
centuries. Down to the interference of Napoleon with that
kingdom, all sanitary efforts were looked upon as absurd if not
impious. The most sober accounts of travellers in the Spanish
Peninsula until a recent period are sometimes irresistibly comic
in their pictures of peoples insisting on maintaining
arrangements more filthy than any which would be permitted i
an American backwoods camp, while taking enormous pains to stop
pestilence by bell-ringings, processions, and new dresses bestowed
upon the local Madonnas; yet here, too, a healthful scepticism ha
begun to work for good. The outbreaks of cholera in recent years
have done some little to bring in better sanitary measures.[[81]]
II. GRADUAL DECAY OF THEOLOGICAL VIEWS REGARDING SANITATION.
We have seen how powerful in various nations especially
obedient to theology were the forces working in opposition to the
evolution of hygiene, and we shall find this same opposition,
less effective, it is true, but still acting with great power, in
countries which had become somewhat emancipated from theological
control. In England, during the medieval period, persecutions of
Jews were occasionally resorted to, and here and there we hear of
persecutions of witches; but, as torture was rarely used i
England, there were, from those charged with producing plague
few of those torture-born confessions which in other countrie
gave rise to widespread cruelties. Down to the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the filthiness in the ordinary mode of life
in England was such as we can now hardly conceive: fermenting
organic material was allowed to accumulate and become a part o
the earthen floors of rural dwellings; and this undoubtedly
developed the germs of many diseases. In his noted letter to the
physician of Cardinal Wolsey, Erasmus describes the filth thus
incorporated into the floors of English houses, and, what is of
far more importance, he shows an inkling of the true cause of the
wasting diseases of the period. He says, "If I entered into a
chamber which had been uninhabited for months, I was immediately
seized with a fever." He ascribed the fearful plague of the
sweating sickness to this cause. So, too, the noted Dr. Caiu
advised sanitary precautions against the plague, and in
after-generations, Mead, Pringle, and others urged them; but the
prevailing thought was too strong, and little was done. Even the
floor of the presence chamber of Queen Elizabeth in Greenwich
Palace was "covered with hay, after the English fashion," as one
of the chroniclers tells us.
In the seventeenth century, aid in these great scourges was
mainly sought in special church services. The foremost English
churchmen during that century being greatly given to study of the
early fathers of the Church; the theological theory of disease,
so dear to the fathers, still held sway, and this was the case
when the various visitations reached their climax in the grea
plague of London in 1665, which swept off more than a hundred
thousand people from that city. The attempts at meeting it by
sanitary measures were few and poor; the medical system of the
time was still largely tinctured by superstitions resulting from
medieval modes of thought; hence that plague was generall
attributed to the Divine wrath caused by "the prophaning of th
Sabbath." Texts from Numbers, the Psalms, Zechariah, and the
Apocalypse were dwelt upon in the pulpits to show that plagues
are sent by the Almighty to punish sin; and perhaps the most
ghastly figure among all those fearful scenes described by De Foe
is that of the naked fanatic walking up and down the streets wit
a pan of fiery coals upon his head, and, after the manner of
Jonah at Nineveh, proclaiming woe to the city, and its
destruction in forty days
That sin caused this plague is certain, but it was sanitary
sin. Both before and after this culmination of the disease cases
of plague were constantly occurring in London throughout th
seventeenth century; but about the beginning of the eighteenth
century it began to disappear. The great fire had done a good
work by sweeping off many causes and centres of infection, an
there had come wider streets, better pavements, and improved
water supply; so that, with the disappearance of the plague,
other diseases, especially dysenteries, which had formerly raged
in the city, became much less frequent.
But, while these epidemics were thus checked in London
others developed by sanitary ignorance raged fearfully both there
and elsewhere, and of these perhaps the most fearful was the jail
fever. The prisons of that period were vile beyond belief. Men
were confined in dungeons rarely if ever disinfected after the
death of previous occupants, and on corridors connecting directly
with the foulest sewers: there was no proper disinfection,
ventilation, or drainage; hence in most of the large prisons for
criminals or debtors the jail fever was supreme, and from these
centres it frequently spread through the adjacent towns. This was
especially the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. In the Black Assize at Oxford, in 1577, the chief
baron, the sheriff, and about three hundred men died within forty
hours. Lord Bacon declared the jail fever "the most perniciou
infection next to the plague." In 1730, at the Dorsetshire
Assize, the chief baron and many lawyers were killed by it. The
High Sheriff of Somerset also took the disease and died. A single
Scotch regiment, being infected from some prisoners, lost no less
than two hundred. In 1750 the disease was so virulent at Newgate,
in the heart of London, that two judges, the lord mayor, sundry
aldermen, and many others, died of it.
It is worth noting that, while efforts at sanitary dealing
with this state of things were few, the theological spirit
developed a new and special form of prayer for the sufferers and
placed it in the Irish _Prayer Book_.
These forms of prayer seem to have been the main reliance
through the first half of the eighteenth century. But about 1750
began the work of John Howard, who visited the prisons of
England, made known their condition to the world, and never
rested until they were greatly improved. Then he applied the same
benevolent activity to prisons in other countries, in the far
East, and in southern Europe, and finally laid down his life, a
victim to disease contracted on one of his missions of mercy; but
the hygienic reforms he began were developed more and more until
this fearful blot upon modern civilization was removed.[[84]]
The same thing was seen in the Protestant colonies of
America; but here, while plagues were steadily attributed to
Divine wrath or Satanic malice, there was one case in which it
was claimed that such a visitation was due to the Divine mercy.
The pestilence among the _Indians_, before the arrival of the
Plymouth Colony, was attributed in a notable work of that period
to the Divine purpose of clearing New England for the heralds o
the gospel; on the other hand, the plagues which destroyed the
_white_ population were attributed by the same authority to devils
and witches. In Cotton Mather's _Wonder of the Invisible World_,
published at Boston in 1693, we have striking examples of this.
The great Puritan divine tells us:
"Plagues are some of those woes, with which the Divil
troubles us. It is said of the Israelites, in 1 Cor. 10. 10
_They were destroyed of the destroyer_. That is, they had th
Plague among them. 'Tis the Destroyer, or the Divil, that
scatters Plagues about the World: Pestilential and Contagious
Diseases, 'tis the Divel, who do's oftentimes Invade us with
them. 'Tis no uneasy thing, for the Divel, to impregnate the Air
about us, with such Malignant Salts, as meeting with the Salt of
our Microcosm, shall immediately cast us into that Fermentation
and Putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes
within us; Ev'n as an Aqua Fortis, made with a conjuuction of
Nitre and Vitriol, Corrodes what it Siezes upon. And when the
Divel has raised those Arsenical Fumes, which become Venomous.
Quivers full of Terrible Arrows, how easily can he shoot the
deleterious Miasms into those Juices or Bowels of Men's Bodies,
which will soon Enflame them with a Mortal Fire! Hence come suc
Plagues, as that Beesome of Destruction which within our memory
swept away such a throng of people from one English City in one
Visitation: and hence those Infectious Feavers, which are but so
many Disguised Plagues among us, Causing Epidemical Desolations."
Mather gives several instances of witches causing diseases,
and speaks of "some long Bow'd down under such a Spirit of
Infirmity" being "Marvelously Recovered upon the Death of the
Witches," of which he gives an instance. He also cites a case
where a patient "was brought unto death's door and so remained
until the witch was taken and carried away by the constable, when
he began at once to recover and was soon well."[[86]]
In France we see, during generation after generation, a
similar history evolved; pestilence after pestilence came, and
was met by various fetiches. Noteworthy is the plague at
Marseilles near the beginning of the last century. The chronicles
of its sway are ghastly. They speak of great heaps of the
unburied dead in the public places, "forming pestilential
volcanoes"; of plague-stricken men and women in delirium
wandering naked through the streets; of churches and shrine
thronged with great crowds shrieking for mercy; of other crowds
flinging themselves into the wildest debauchery; of robber band
assassinating the dying and plundering the dead; of three
thousand neglected children collected in one hospital and then
left to die; and of the death-roll numbering at last fifty
thousand out of a population of less than ninety thousand.
In the midst of these fearful scenes stood a body of men an
women worthy to be held in eternal honour--the physicians fro
Paris and Montpellier; the mayor of the city, and one or two of
his associates; but, above all, the Chevalier Roze and Bishop
Belzunce. The history of these men may well make us glory in
human nature; but in all this noble group the figure of Belzunce
is the most striking. Nobly and firmly, when so many others even
among the regular and secular ecclesiastics fled, he stood by his
flock: day and night he was at work in the hospitals, cheering
the living, comforting the dying, and doing what was possible for
the decent disposal of the dead. In him were united the, two
great antagonistic currents of religion and of theology. As a
theologian he organized processions and expiatory services,
which, it must be confessed, rather increased the disease than
diminished it; moreover, he accepted that wild dream of
hysterical nun--the worship of the material, physical sacred
heart of Jesus--and was one of the first to consecrate his diocese
to it; but, on the other hand, the religious spirit gave in hi
one of its most beautiful manifestations in that or any other
century; justly have the people of Marseilles placed his statu
in the midst of their city in an attitude of prayer and blessing.
In every part of Europe and America, down to a recent
period, we find pestilences resulting from carelessness or
superstition still called "inscrutable providences." As late as
the end of the eighteenth century, when great epidemics made
fearful havoc in Austria, the main means against them seem to
have been grovelling before the image of St. Sebastian and
calling in special "witch-doctors"--that is, monks who cast out
devils. To seek the aid of physicians was, in the neighbourhood
of these monastic centres, very generally considered impious, and
the enormous death rate in such neighbourhoods was only
diminished in the present century, when scientific hygiene began
to make its way.
The old view of pestilence had also its full course i
Calvinistic Scotland; the only difference being that, while in
Roman Catholic countries relief was sought by fetiches, gifts,
processions, exorcisms, burnings of witches, and other works of
expiation, promoted by priests; in Scotland, after the
Reformation, it was sought in fast-days and executions of witches
promoted by Protestant elders. Accounts of the filthiness of
Scotch cities and villages, down to a period well within this
century, seem monstrous. All that in these days is swept into the
sewers was in those allowed to remain around the houses or
thrown into the streets. The old theological theory, that "vain
is the help of man," checked scientific thought and paralyzed
sanitary endeavour. The result was natural: between the
thirteenth and seventeenth centuries thirty notable epidemics
swept the country, and some of them carried off multitudes; but
as a rule these never suggested sanitary improvement; they were
called "visitations," attributed to Divine wrath against human
sin, and the work of the authorities was to announce th
particular sin concerned and to declaim against it. Amazing
theories were thus propounded--theories which led to spasms of
severity; and, in some of these, offences generally punished much
less severely were visited with death. Every pulpit interprete
the ways of God to man in such seasons so as rather to increase
than to diminish the pestilence. The effect of thus seeking
supernatural causes rather than natural may be seen in such
facts as the death by plague of one fourth of the whole
population of the city of Perth in a single year of the fifteenth
century, other towns suffering similarly both then and afterward.
Here and there, physicians more wisely inspired endeavoured
to push sanitary measures, and in 1585 attempts were made to
clean the streets of Edinburgh; but the chroniclers tell us that
"the magistrates and ministers gave no heed." One sort of
calamity, indeed, came in as a mercy--the great fires which swept
through the cities, clearing and cleaning them. Though the town
council of Edinburgh declared the noted fire of 1700 "a fearfu
rebuke of God," it was observed that, after it had done its work,
disease and death were greatly diminished.[[88]]
III. THE TRIUMPH OF SANITARY SCIENCE
But by those standing in the higher places of thought some
glimpses of scientific truth had already been obtained, an
attempts at compromise between theology and science in this field
began to be made, not only by ecclesiastics, but first of all, as
far back as the seventeenth century, by a man of science eminent
both for attainments and character--Robert Boyle. Inspired by the
discoveries in other fields, which had swept away so much o
theological thought, he could no longer resist the conviction
that some epidemics are due--in his own words--"to a tragica
concourse of natural causes"; but he argued that some of these
may be the result of Divine interpositions provoked by human
sins. As time went on, great difficulties showed themselves i
the way of this compromise--difficulties theological not less
than difficulties scientific. To a Catholic it was more and more
hard to explain the theological grounds why so many orthodox
cities, firm in the faith, were punished, and so many heretical
cities spared; and why, in regions devoted to the Church, th
poorer people, whose faith in theological fetiches was
unquestioning, died in times of pestilence like flies, whil
sceptics so frequently escaped. Difficulties of the same sor
beset devoted Protestants; they, too, might well ask why it was
that the devout peasantry in their humble cottages perished
while so much larger a proportion of the more sceptical uppe
classes were untouched. Gradually it dawned both upon Catholic
and Protestant countries that, if any sin be punished by
pestilence, it is the sin of filthiness; more and more it began
to be seen by thinking men of both religions that Wesley's great
dictum stated even less than the truth; that not only wa
"cleanliness akin to godliness," but that, as a means of keeping
off pestilence, it was far superior to godliness as godliness was
then generally understood.[[89]]
The recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries
shows triumphs which might well fill us with wonder, did there
not rise within us a far greater wonder that they were so long
delayed. Amazing is it to see how near the world has come agai
and again to discovering the key to the cause and cure of
pestilence. It is now a matter of the simplest elementar
knowledge that some of the worst epidemics are conveyed in water.
But this fact seems to have been discovered many times in human
history. In the Peloponnesian war the Athenians asserted that
their enemies had poisoned their cisterns; in the Middle Ages the
people generally declared that the Jews had poisoned their wells;
and as late as the cholera of 1832 the Parisian mob insisted that
the water-carriers who distributed water for drinking purposes
from the Seine, polluted as it was by sewage, had poisoned it
and in some cases murdered them on this charge: so far did thi
feeling go that locked covers were sometimes placed upon the
water-buckets. Had not such men as Roger Bacon and his long line
of successors been thwarted by theological authority,--had not
such men as Thomas Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, and Albert the
Great been drawn or driven from the paths of science into the
dark, tortuous paths of theology, leading no whither,--the world
to-day, at the end of the nineteenth century, would have arrived
at the solution of great problems and the enjoyment of great
results which will only be reached at the end of the twentieth
century, and even in generations more remote. Diseases like
typhoid fever, influenza and pulmonary consumption, scarlet
fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and _la grippe_, which now carry off
so many most precious lives, would have long since ceased to
scourge the world.
Still, there is one cause for satisfaction: the la
governing the relation of theology to disease is now well befor
the world, and it is seen in the fact that, just in proportion a
the world progressed from the sway of Hippocrates to that of th
ages of faith, so it progressed in the frequency and severity of
great pestilences; and that, on the other hand, just i
proportion as the world has receded from that period when
theology was all-pervading and all-controlling, plague after
plague has disappeared, and those remaining have become less and
less frequent and virulent.[[90]]
The recent history of hygiene in all countries shows a long
series of victories, and these may well be studied in Great
Britain and the United States. In the former, though there had
been many warnings from eminent physicians, and above all in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from men like Caius, Mead,
and Pringle, the result was far short of what might have bee
gained; and it was only in the year 1838 that a systemati
sanitary effort was begun in England by the public authorities.
The state of things at that time, though by comparison with the
Middle Ages happy, was, by comparison with what has since been
gained, fearful: the death rate among all classes was high, but
among the poor it was ghastly. Out of seventy-seven thousand
paupers in London during the years 1837 and 1838, fourteen
thousand were suffering from fever, and of these nearly six
thousand from typhus. In many other parts of the British Islands
the sanitary condition was no better. A noble body of men
grappled with the problem, and in a few years one of these rose
above his fellows--the late Edwin Chadwick. The opposition to his
work was bitter, and, though many churchmen aided him, the
support given by theologians and ecclesiastics as a whole was
very far short of what it should have been. Too many of them were
occupied in that most costly and most worthless of all
processes, "the saving of souls" by the inculcation of dogma. Yet
some of the higher ecclesiastics and many of the lesser clergy
did much, sometimes risking their lives, and one of them, Sidney
Godolphin Osborne, deserves lasting memory for his struggle to
make known the sanitary wants of the peasantry.
Chadwick began to be widely known in 1848 as a member of the
Board of Health, and was driven out for a time for overzeal; bu
from one point or another, during forty years, he fought the
opposition, developed the new work, and one of the best exhibits
of its results is shown in his address before the Sanitary
Conference at Brighton in 1888. From this and other perfectly
trustworthy sources some idea may be gained of the triumph of the
scientific over the theological method of dealing with disease,
whether epidemic or sporadic.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century the annual
mortality of London is estimated at not less than eighty in a
thousand; about the middle of this century it stood at
twenty-four in a thousand; in 1889 it stood at less than eighteen
in a thousand; and in many parts the most recent statistics sho
that it has been brought down to fourteen or fifteen in a
thousand. A quarter of a century ago the death rate from diseas
in the Royal Guards at London was twenty in a thousand; in 1888
it had been reduced to six in a thousand. In the army generally
it had been seventeen in a thousand, but it has been reduced
until it now stands at eight. In the old Indian army it had been
sixty-nine in a thousand, but of late it has been brought down
first to twenty, and finally to fourteen. Mr. Chadwick in his
speech proved that much more might be done, for he called
attention to the German army, where the death rate from diseas
has been reduced to between five and six in a thousand. The
Public Health Act having been passed in 1875, the death rate in
England among men fell, between 1871 and 1880, more than four in
a thousand, and among women more than six in a thousand. In th
decade between 1851 and 1860 there died of diseases attributabl
to defective drainage and impure water over four thousand persons
in every million throughout England: these numbers have declined
until in 1888 there died less than two thousand in every million.
The most striking diminution of the deaths from such causes was
found in 1891, in the case of typhoid fever, that diminution
being fifty per cent. As to the scourge which, next to plagues
like the Black Death, was formerly the most dreaded--smallpox--there
died of it in London during the year 1890 just one person. Drainage
in Bristol reduced the death rate by consumption from 4.4 to 2.3; at
Cardiff, from 3.47 to 2.31; and in all England and Wales, from 2.68
in 1851 to 1.55 in 1888
What can be accomplished by better sanitation is also seen
to-day by a comparison between the death rate among the childre
outside and inside the charity schools. The death rate among
those outside in 1881 was twelve in a thousand; while inside
where the children were under sanitary regulations maintained by
competent authorities, it has been brought down first to eight,
then to four, and finally to less than three in a thousand.
In view of statistics like these, it becomes clear that
Edwin Chadwick and his compeers among the sanitary authorities
have in half a century done far more to reduce the rate of
disease and death than has been done in fifteen hundred years by
all the fetiches which theological reasoning could devise or
ecclesiastical power enforce.
Not less striking has been the history of hygiene in France:
thanks to the decline of theological control over the
universities, to the abolition of monasteries, and to such
labours in hygienic research and improvement as those of Tardieu,
Levy, and Bouchardat, a wondrous change has been wrought in
public health. Statistics carefully kept show that the mean
length of human life has been remarkably increased. In th
eighteenth century it was but twenty-three years; from 1825 to
1830 it was thirty-two years and eight months; and since 1864,
thirty-seven years and six months.
IV. THE RELATION OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION.
The question may now arise whether this progress in sanitary
science has been purchased at any real sacrifice of religion in
its highest sense. One piece of recent history indicates an
answer to this question. The Second Empire in France had its head
in Napoleon III, a noted Voltairean. At the climax of his power
he determined to erect an Academy of Music which should be th
noblest building of its kind. It was projected on a scale never
before known, at least in modern times, and carried on for years
millions being lavished upon it. At the same time the empero
determined to rebuild the Hotel-Dieu, the great Paris hospital;
this, too, was projected on a greater scale than anything of th
kind ever before known, and also required millions. But in the
erection of these two buildings the emperor's determination was
distinctly made known, that with the highest provision fo
aesthetic enjoyment there should be a similar provision, movin
on parallel lines, for the relief of human suffering. This plan
was carried out to the letter: the Palace of the Opera and the
Hotel-Dieu went on with equal steps, and the former was not
allowed to be finished before the latter. Among all the "most
Christian kings" of the house of Bourbon who had preceded him fo
five hundred years, history shows no such obedience to the
religious and moral sense of the nation. Catharine de' Medici and
her sons, plunging the nation into the great wars of religion,
never showed any such feeling; Louis XIV, revoking the Edict of
Nantes for the glory of God, and bringing the nation to sorrow
during many generations, never dreamed of making the construction
of his palaces and public buildings wait upon the demands o
charity. Louis XV, so subservient to the Church in all things,
never betrayed the slightest consciousness that, while making
enormous expenditures to gratify his own and the national
vanity, he ought to carry on works, _pari passu_, for charity. Nor
did the French nation, at those periods when it was most largely
under the control of theological considerations, seem to have an
inkling of the idea that nation or monarch should make provision
for relief from human suffering, to justify provision for the
sumptuous enjoyment of art: it was reserved for the second half
of the nineteenth century to develop this feeling so strongly,
though quietly, that Napoleon III, notoriously an unbeliever in al
orthodoxy, was obliged to recognise it and to set this great example
Nor has the recent history of the United States been less
fruitful in lessons. Yellow fever, which formerly swept not only
Southern cities but even New York and Philadelphia, has now been
almost entirely warded off. Such epidemics as that in Memphis a
few years since, and the immunity of the city from such
visitations since its sanitary condition was changed by Mr.
Waring, are a most striking object lesson to the whole country.
Cholera, which again and again swept the country, has ceased to
be feared by the public at large. Typhus fever, once so deadly,
is now rarely heard of. Curious is it to find that some of the
diseases which in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in
every country, now cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought
of little account, and for the cure of which people therefor
rely, to their cost, on quackery instead of medical science.
This development of sanitary science and hygiene in the
United States has also been coincident with a marked change in
the attitude of the American pulpit as regards the theory of
disease. In this country, as in others, down to a period within
living memory, deaths due to want of sanitary precautions wer
constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as "results of national
sin," or as "inscrutable Providences." That view has mainly
passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of the
country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreadin
useful ideas as to the prevention of disease. The religious press
has been especially faithful in this respect, carrying to every
household more just ideas of sanitary precautions and hygienic living.
The attitude even of many among the most orthodox rulers i
church and state has been changed by facts like these. Lord
Palmerston refusing the request of the Scotch clergy that a fast
day be appointed to ward off cholera, and advising them to go
home and clean their streets,--the devout Emperor William I
forbidding prayer-meetings in a similar emergency, on the ground
that they led to neglect of practical human means of help,--all
this is in striking contrast to the older methods.
Well worthy of note is the ground taken in 1893, at
Philadelphia, by an eminent divine of the Protestant Episcopal
Church. The Bishop of Pennsylvania having issued a special call
to prayer in order to ward off the cholera, this clergyma
refused to respond to the call, declaring that to do so, in the
filthy condition of the streets then prevailing in Philadelphia
would be blasphemous.
In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field,
as in so many others, the triumph of scientific thought has
gradually done much to evolve in the world not only a theology
but also a religious spirit more and more worthy of the goodnes
of God and of the destiny of man.[[95]]
CHAPTER XV.
FROM "DEMONIACAL POSSESSION" TO INSANITY.
I. THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF LUNACY AND ITS TREATMENT.
OF all the triumphs won by science for humanity, few have
been farther-reaching in good effects than the modern treatmen
of the insane. But this is the result of a struggle long and
severe between two great forces. On one side have stood the
survivals of various superstitions, the metaphysics of various
philosophies, the dogmatism of various theologies, the literal
interpretation of various sacred books, and especially of our
own--all compacted into a creed that insanity is mainly or
largely demoniacal possession; on the other side has stood
science, gradually accumulating proofs that insanity is alway
the result of physical disease
I purpose in this chapter to sketch, as briefly as I may, the history
of this warfare, or rather of this evolution of truth out of error.
Nothing is more simple and natural, in the early stages of
civilization, than belief in occult, self-conscious powers of
evil. Troubles and calamities come upon man; his ignorance of
physical laws forbids him to attribute them to physical causes;
he therefore attributes them sometimes to the wrath of a goo
being, but more frequently to the malice of an evil being
Especially is this the case with diseases. The real cause
of disease are so intricate that they are reached only after ages
of scientific labour; hence they, above all, have been attributed
to the influence of evil spirits.[[97]]
But, if ordinary diseases were likely to be attributed t
diabolical agency, how much more diseases of the brain, and
especially the more obscure of these! These, indeed, seemed t
the vast majority of mankind possible only on the theory of
Satanic intervention: any approach to a true theory of the
connection between physical causes and mental results is one of
the highest acquisitions of science.
Here and there, during the whole historic period, keen men
had obtained an inkling of the truth; but to the vast multitude,
down to the end of the seventeenth century, nothing was more
clear than that insanity is, in many if not in most cases,
demoniacal possession.
Yet at a very early date, in Greece and Rome, science had
asserted itself, and a beginning had been made which seemed
destined to bring a large fruitage of blessings.[[98]] In the fifth
century before the Christian era, Hippocrates of Cos asserted the
great truth that all madness is simply disease of the brain,
thereby beginning a development of truth and mercy which lasted
nearly a thousand years. In the first century after Christ,
Aretaeus carried these ideas yet further, observed the phenomena
of insanity with great acuteness, and reached yet more valuable
results. Near the beginning of the following century, Soranus
went still further in the same path, giving new results of
research, and strengthening scientific truth. Toward the end of
the same century a new epoch was ushered in by Galen, under who
the same truth was developed yet further, and the path toward
merciful treatment of the insane made yet more clear. In the
third century Celius Aurelianus received this deposit of precious
truth, elaborated it, and brought forth the great idea which, had
theology, citing biblical texts, not banished it, would have
saved fifteen centuries of cruelty--an idea not fully recognised
again till near the beginning of the present century--the ide
that insanity is brain disease, and that the treatment of it must
be gentle and kind. In the sixth century Alexander of Tralles
presented still more fruitful researches, and taught the world
how to deal with _melancholia_; and, finally, in the seventh
century, this great line of scientific men, working mainly under
pagan auspices, was closed by Paul of AEgina, who under the
protection of Caliph Omar made still further observations, but,
above all, laid stress on the cure of madness as a disease, an
on the absolute necessity of mild treatment
Such was this great succession in the apostolate of science:
evidently no other has ever shown itself more directly under
Divine grace, illumination, and guidance. It had given to th
world what might have been one of its greatest blessings.[[99]]
This evolution of divine truth was interrupted by theology.
There set into the early Church a current of belief which was
destined to bring all these noble acquisitions of science and
religion to naught, and, during centuries, to inflict tortures,
physical and mental, upon hundreds of thousands of innocent men
and women--a belief which held its cruel sway for nearly eighteen
centuries; and this belief was that madness was mainly or largely
possession by the devil.
This idea of diabolic agency in mental disease had grown
luxuriantly in all the Oriental sacred literatures. In the series
of Assyrian mythological tablets in which we find those legends
of the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and other early conceptions
from which the Hebrews so largely drew the accounts wrought into
the book of Genesis, have been discovered the formulas for
driving out the evil spirits which cause disease. In the Persian
theology regarding the struggle of the great powers of good and
evil this idea was developed to its highest point. From these and
other ancient sources the Jews naturally received this addition
to their earlier view: the Mocker of the Garden of Eden became
Satan, with legions of evil angels at his command; and the theory
of diabolic causes of mental disease took a firm place in our
sacred books. Such cases in the Old Testament as the evil spiri
in Saul, which we now see to have been simply melancholy--and,
in the New Testament, the various accounts of the casting out of
devils, through which is refracted the beautiful and simple story
of that power by which Jesus of Nazareth soothed perturbed minds
by his presence or quelled outbursts of madness by his words,
give examples of this. In Greece, too, an idea akin to this found
lodgment both in the popular belief and in the philosophy of
Plato and Socrates; and though, as we have seen, the great
leaders in medical science had taught with more or less
distinctness that insanity is the result of physical disease,
there was a strong popular tendency to attribute the more
troublesome cases of it to hostile spiritual influence.[[100]
From all these sources, but especially from our sacred books
and the writings of Plato, this theory that mental disease is
caused largely or mainly by Satanic influence passed on into the
early Church. In the apostolic times no belief seems to have been
more firmly settled. The early fathers and doctors in the
following age universally accepted it, and the apologists
generally spoke of the power of casting out devils as a leading
proof of the divine origin of the Christian religion.
This belief took firm hold upon the strongest men. The cas
of St. Gregory the Great is typical. He was a pope of exceedingly
broad mind for his time, and no one will think him unjustly
reckoned one of the four Doctors of the Western Church. Yet he
solemnly relates that a nun, having eaten some lettuce withou
making the sign of the cross, swallowed a devil, and that, when
commanded by a holy man to come forth, the devil replied: "How am
I to blame? I was sitting on the lettuce, and this woman, not
having made the sign of the cross, ate me along with it."[[101]]
As a result of this idea, the Christian Church at an early
period in its existence virtually gave up the noble conquests of
Greek and Roman science in this field, and originated, for
persons supposed to be possessed, a regular discipline, developed
out of dogmatic theology. But during the centuries before
theology and ecclesiasticism had become fully dominant this
discipline was, as a rule, gentle and useful. The afflicted, when
not too violent, were generally admitted to the exercises of
public worship, and a kindly system of cure was attempted, i
which prominence was given to holy water, sanctified ointments,
the breath or spittle of the priest, the touching of relics,
visits to holy places, and submission to mild forms of exorcism.
There can be no doubt that many of these things, when judiciously
used in that spirit of love and gentleness and devotion inherited
by the earlier disciples from "the Master," produced good effects
in soothing disturbed minds and in aiding their cure.
Among the thousands of fetiches of various sorts the
resorted to may be named, as typical, the Holy Handkerchief of
Besancon. During many centuries multitudes came from far and near
to touch it; for, it was argued, if touching the garments of St
Paul at Ephesus had cured the diseased, how much more might be
expected of a handkerchief of the Lord himself
With ideas of this sort was mingled a vague belief in
medical treatment, and out of this mixture were evolved such
prescriptions as the following:
"If an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this
salve, put it on his eyes, cense him with incense, and sign him
frequently with the sign of the cross."
"For a fiend-sick man: When a devil possesses a man, or controls
him from within with disease, a spew-drink of lupin, bishopswort,
henbane, garlic. Pound these together, add ale and holy water."
And again: "A drink for a fiend-sick man, to be drunk out of
a church bell: Githrife, cynoglossum, yarrow, lupin,
flower-de-luce, fennel, lichen, lovage. Work up to a drink with
clear ale, sing seven masses over it, add garlic and holy water
and let the possessed sing the _Beati Immaculati_; then let him
drink the dose out of a church bell, and let the priest sing ove
him the _Domine Sancte Pater Omnipotens_."[[102]]
Had this been the worst treatment of lunatics developed in
the theological atmosphere of the Middle Ages, the world would
have been spared some of the most terrible chapters in its
history; but, unfortunately, the idea of the Satanic possessio
of lunatics led to attempts to punish the indwelling demon. As
this theological theory and practice became more fully developed,
and ecclesiasticism more powerful to enforce it, all mildness
began to disappear; the admonitions to gentle treatment by the
great pagan and Moslem physicians were forgotten, and the
treatment of lunatics tended more and more toward severity: more
and more generally it was felt that cruelty to madmen was
punishment of the devil residing within or acting upon them.
A few strong churchmen and laymen made efforts to resist
this tendency. As far back as the fourth century, Nemesius,
Bishop of Emesa, accepted the truth as developed by pagan
physicians, and aided them in strengthening it. In the seventh
century, a Lombard code embodied a similar effort. In the eighth
century, one of Charlemagne's capitularies seems to have had a
like purpose. In the ninth century, that great churchman and
statesman, Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, superior to his time in
this as in so many other things, tried to make right reason
prevail in this field; and, near the beginning of the tenth
century, Regino, Abbot of Prum, in the diocese of Treves,
insisted on treating possession as disease. But all in vain
the current streaming most directly from sundry texts in th
Christian sacred books, and swollen by theology, had become
overwhelming.[[103]]
The first great tributary poured into this stream, as we
approach the bloom of the Middle Ages, appears to have come from
the brain of Michael Psellus. Mingling scriptural texts, Platonic
philosophy, and theological statements by great doctors of the
Church, with wild utterances obtained from lunatics, he gave
forth, about the beginning of the twelfth century, a treatise o
_The Work of Demons_. Sacred science was vastly enriched thereby
in various ways; but two of his conclusions, the results of his
most profound thought, enforced by theologians and popularized by
preachers, Soon took special hold upon the thinking portion o
the people at large. The first of these, which he easily base
upon Scripture and St. Basil, was that, since all demons suffer
by material fire and brimstone, they must have material bodies;
the second was that, since all demons are by nature cold, they
gladly seek a genial warmth by entering the bodies of men and
beasts.[[104]]
Fed by this stream of thought, and developed in the warm
atmosphere of medieval devotion, the idea of demoniacal
possession as the main source of lunacy grew and blossomed and
bore fruit in noxious luxuriance.
There had, indeed, come into the Middle Ages an inheritance
of scientific thought. The ideas of Hippocrates, Celius
Aurelianus, Galen, and their followers, were from time to tim
revived; the Arabian physicians, the School of Salerno, such
writers as Salicetus and Guy de Chauliac, and even some of the
religious orders, did something to keep scientific doctrines
alive; but the tide of theological thought was too strong; it
became dangerous even to seem to name possible limits to
diabolical power. To deny Satan was atheism; and perhaps nothing
did so much to fasten the epithet "atheist" upon the medical
profession as the suspicion that it did not fully acknowledge
diabolical interference in mental disease. Following in the lines
of the earlier fathers, St. Anselm, Abelard, St. Thomas Aquinas,
Vincent of Beauvais, all the great doctors in the medieval
Church, some of them in spite of occasional misgivings, upheld
the idea that insanity is largely or mainly demoniacal
possession, basing their belief steadily on the sacred
Scriptures; and this belief was followed up in every quarter by
more and more constant citation of the text "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live." No other text of Scripture--save perhaps
one--has caused the shedding of so much innocent blood.
As we look over the history of the Middle Ages, we do,
indeed, see another growth from which one might hope much; for
there were two great streams of influence in the Church, and
never were two powers more unlike each other.
On one side was the spirit of Christianity, as it proceeded
from the heart and mind of its blessed Founder, immensely
powerful in aiding the evolution of religious thought and effort,
and especially of provision for the relief of suffering by
religious asylums and tender care. Nothing better expresses this
than the touching words inscribed upon a great medieval
hospital, "_Christo in pauperibus suis_." But on the other side
was the theological theory--proceeding, as we have seen, from the
survival of ancient superstitions, and sustained by constant
reference to the texts in our sacred books--that many, and
probably most, of the insane were possessed by the devil or in
league with him, and that the cruel treatment of lunatics was
simply punishment of the devil and his minions. By this current
of thought was gradually developed one of the greatest masses of
superstitious cruelty that has ever afflicted humanity. At the
same time the stream of Christian endeavour, so far as the insane
were concerned, was almost entirely cut off. In all the beautiful
provision during the Middle Ages for the alleviation of human
suffering, there was for the insane almost no care. Some
monasteries, indeed, gave them refuge. We hear of a charitable
work done for them at the London Bethlehem Hospital in the
thirteenth century, at Geneva in the fifteenth, at Marseilles in
the sixteenth, by the Black Penitents in the south of France,
by certain Franciscans in northern France, by the Alexia
Brothers on the Rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of
Europe; but, curiously enough, the only really important effor
in the Christian Church was stimulated by the Mohammedans.
Certain monks, who had much to do with them in redeeming
Christian slaves, found in the fifteenth century what John Howard
found in the eighteenth, that the Arabs and Turks made a large
and merciful provision for lunatics, such as was not seen in
Christian lands; and this example led to better establishments in
Spain and Italy.
All honour to this work and to the men who engaged in it;
but, as a rule, these establishments were few and poor, compare
with those for other diseases, and they usually degenerated int
"mad-houses," where devils were cast out mainly by cruelty.[[106]]
The first main weapon against the indwelling Satan continue
to be the exorcism; but under the influence of inferences from
Scripture farther and farther fetched, and of theological
reasoning more and more subtle, it became something very
different from the gentle procedure of earlier times, and som
description of this great weapon at the time of its highest
development will throw light on the laws which govern the growth
of theological reasoning, as well as upon the main subject in hand.
A fundamental premise in the fully developed exorcism was
that, according to sacred Scripture, a main characteristic of
Satan is pride. Pride led him to rebel; for pride he was cast
down; therefore the first thing to do, in driving him out of a
lunatic, was to strike a fatal blow at his pride,--to disgust him.
This theory was carried out logically, to the letter. The
treatises on the subject simply astound one by their wealth of
blasphemous and obscene epithets which it was allowable for the
exorcist to use in casting out devils. The _Treasury of Exorcisms_
contains hundreds of pages packed with the vilest epithets which
the worst imagination could invent for the purpose of
overwhelming the indwelling Satan.[[106b]
Some of those decent enough to be printed in these
degenerate days ran as follows
"Thou lustful and stupid one,... thou lean sow,
famine-stricken and most impure,... thou wrinkled beast, thou
mangy beast, thou beast of all beasts the most beastly,... thou
mad spirit,... thou bestial and foolish drunkard,... most greedy
wolf,... most abominable whisperer,... thou sooty spirit from
Tartarus!... I cast thee down, O Tartarean boor, into the
infernal kitchen!... Loathsome cobbler,... dingy collier,...
filthy sow (_scrofa stercorata_),... perfidious boar,... envious
crocodile,... malodorous drudge,... wounded basilisk,...
rust-coloured asp,... swollen toad,... entangled spider,... lous
swine-herd (_porcarie pedicose_),... lowest of the low,... cudgelled
ass," etc
But, in addition to this attempt to disgust Satan's pride
with blackguardism, there was another to scare him with
tremendous words. For this purpose, thunderous names, from Hebrew
and Greek, were imported, such as Acharon, Eheye, Schemhamphora
Tetragrammaton, Homoousion, Athanatos, Ischiros, AEcodes, and the
like.[[107]]
Efforts were also made to drive him out with filthy and
rank-smelling drugs; and, among those which can be mentioned in a
printed article, we may name asafoetida, sulphur, squills, etc.,
which were to be burned under his nose.
Still further to plague him, pictures of the devil were to
be spat upon, trampled under foot by people of low condition, and
sprinkled with foul compounds.
But these were merely preliminaries to the exorcism proper.
In this the most profound theological thought and sacred science
of the period culminated.
Most of its forms were childish, but some rise to almost Miltonic
grandeur. As an example of the latter, we may take the following:
"By the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God hath given to
make known unto his servants those things which are shortly to
be; and hath signified, sending by his angel,... I exorcise you,
ye angels of untold perversity!
"By the seven golden candlesticks,... and by one like unto
the Son of man, standing in the midst of the candlesticks; by his
voice, as the voice of many waters;... by his words, `I am living,
who was dead; and behold, I live forever and ever; and I have the
keys of death and of hell,' I say unto you, Depart, O angels that
show the way to eternal perdition!
Besides these, were long litanies of billingsgate, cursing,
and threatening. One of these "scourging" exorcisms runs
partly as follows
"May Agyos strike thee, as he did Egypt, with frogs!... Ma
all the devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee, and drag
thee down to hell!... May... Tetragrammaton... drive thee forth
and stone thee, as Israel did to Achan!... May the Holy One
trample on thee and hang thee up in an infernal fork, as was done
to the five kings of the Amorites!... May God set a nail to your
skull, and pound it in with a hammer, as Jael did unto Sisera!...
May... Sother... break thy head and cut off thy hands, as was
done to the cursed Dagon!... May God hang thee in a hellish yoke,
as seven men were hanged by the sons of Saul!" And so on, through
five pages of close-printed Latin curses.[[108]]
Occasionally the demon is reasoned with, as follows: "O obstinate,
accursed, fly!... why do you stop and hold back, when you know tha
your strength is lost on Christ? For it is hard for thee to kick
against the pricks; and, verily, the longer it takes you to go,
the worse it will go with you. Begone, then: take flight, thou
venomous hisser, thou lying worm, thou begetter of vipers!"[[108b]
This procedure and its results were recognised as among the
glories of the Church. As typical, we may mention an exorcism
directed by a certain Bishop of Beauvais, which was so effective
that five devils gave up possession of a sufferer and signed
their names, each for himself and his subordinate imps, to an
agreement that the possessed should be molested no more. So,
too, the Jesuit fathers at Vienna, in 1583, gloried in the fact
that in such a contest they had cast out twelve thousand six
hundred and fifty-two living devils. The ecclesiastical annals of
the Middle Ages, and, indeed, of a later period, abound in boasts
of such "mighty works."[[109]]
Such was the result of a thousand years of theological
reasoning, by the strongest minds in Europe, upon data partly
given in Scripture and partly inherited from paganism, regarding
Satan and his work among men.
Under the guidance of theology, always so severe against
"science falsely so called," the world had come a long way indeed
from the soothing treatment of the possessed by him who bore
among the noblest of his titles that of "The Great Physician."
The result was natural: the treatment of the insane fell more an
more into the hands of the jailer, the torturer, and the executioner.
To go back for a moment to the beginnings of this unfortunate
development. In spite of the earlier and more kindly tendency
in the Church, the Synod of Ancyra, as early as 314 A. D.,
commanded the expulsion of possessed persons from the Church;
the Visigothic Christians whipped them; and Charlemagne, in spite
of some good enactments, imprisoned them. Men and women, whos
distempered minds might have been restored to health by
gentleness and skill, were driven into hopeless madness by
noxious medicines and brutality. Some few were saved as mere
lunatics--they were surrendered to general carelessness, and
became simply a prey to ridicule and aimless brutality; but vast
numbers were punished as tabernacles of Satan
One of the least terrible of these punishments, and perhaps
the most common of all, was that of scourging demons out of the
body of a lunatic. This method commended itself even to the
judgment of so thoughtful and kindly a personage as Sir Thomas
More, and as late as the sixteenth century. But if the disease
continued, as it naturally would after such treatment, the
authorities frequently felt justified in driving out the demons
by torture.[[110]
Interesting monuments of this idea, so fruitful in evil,
still exist. In the great cities of central Europe, "witch
towers," where witches and demoniacs were tortured, and "fool
towers," where the more gentle lunatics were imprisoned, may
still be seen.
In the cathedrals we still see this idea fossilized. Devils
and imps, struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl unde
cornices, peer out from bosses of foliage, perch upon capitals,
nestle under benches, flame in windows. Above the great main
entrance, the most common of all representations still shows
Satan and his imps scowling, jeering, grinning, while takin
possession of the souls of men and scourging them with serpents,
or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains into
the flaming mouth of hell. Even in the most hidden and sacred
places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations of
Satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. In these
representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the
sculptor. Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known
example represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched
near the head of a dying man, eager to seize his soul as it
issues from his mouth, and only kept off by the efforts of the
attendant priest. Typical are the colossal portrait of Satan, and
the vivid picture of the devils cast out of the possessed an
entering into the swine, as shown in the cathedral-windows of
Strasburg. So, too, in the windows of Chartres Cathedral we see
saint healing a lunatic: the saint, with a long devil-scaring
formula in Latin issuing from his mouth; and the lunatic, with a
little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed, and tailed, issuing
from _his_ mouth. These examples are but typical of myriads in
cathedrals and abbeys and parish churches throughout Europe; and
all served to impress upon the popular mind a horror of
everything called diabolic, and a hatred of those charged with
it. These sermons in stones preceded the printed book; they were
a sculptured Bible, which preceded Luther's pictorial Bible.[[111]]
Satan and his imps were among the principal personages in
every popular drama, and "Hell's Mouth" was a piece of stage
scenery constantly brought into requisition. A miracle-play
without a full display of the diabolic element in it would hav
stood a fair chance of being pelted from the stage.[[111b]]
Not only the popular art but the popular legends embodie
these ideas. The chroniclers delighted in them; the _Lives of the
Saints_ abounded in them; sermons enforced them from every pulpit.
What wonder, then, that men and women had vivid dreams of Satanic
influence, that dread of it was like dread of the plague, and
that this terror spread the disease enormously, until we hear of
convents, villages, and even large districts, ravaged by
epidemics of diabolical possession![[112]]
And this terror naturally bred not only active cruelty
toward those supposed to be possessed, but indifference to the
sufferings of those acknowledged to be lunatics. As we have
already seen, while ample and beautiful provision was made fo
every other form of human suffering, for this there was
comparatively little; and, indeed, even this little was generally
worse than none. Of this indifference and cruelty we have a
striking monument in a single English word--a word originally
significant of gentleness and mercy, but which became significant
of wild riot, brutality, and confusion-- Bethlehem Hospital
became "Bedlam."
Modern art has also dwelt upon this theme, and perhaps the most
touching of all its exhibitions is the picture by a great French
master, representing a tender woman bound to a column and expose
to the jeers, insults, and missiles of street ruffians.[[112b]]
Here and there, even in the worst of times, men arose who attempted
to promote a more humane view, but with little effect. One expositor
of St. Matthew, having ventured to recall the fact that some of the
insane were spoken of in the New Testament as lunatics and to
suggest that their madness might be caused by the moon, was
answered that their madness was not caused by the moon, but by
the devil, who avails himself of the moonlight for his work.[[112c]]
One result of this idea was a mode of cure which especially
aggravated and spread mental disease: the promotion of grea
religious processions. Troops of men and women, crying, howling,
imploring saints, and beating themselves with whips, visited
various sacred shrines, images, and places in the hope of driving
off the powers of evil. The only result was an increase in the
numbers of the diseased.
For hundreds of years this idea of diabolic possession was
steadily developed. It was believed that devils entered into
animals, and animals were accordingly exorcised, tried, tortured,
convicted, and executed. The great St. Ambrose tells us that a
priest, while saying mass, was troubled by the croaking of frogs
in a neighbouring marsh; that he exorcised them, and so stoppe
their noise. St. Bernard, as the monkish chroniclers tell us,
mounting the pulpit to preach in his abbey, was interrupted by a
cloud of flies; straightway the saint uttered the sacred formula
of excommunication, when the flies fell dead upon the pavement in
heaps, and were cast out with shovels! A formula of exorcism
attributed to a saint of the ninth century, which remained in us
down to a recent period, especially declares insects injurious to
crops to be possessed of evil spirits, and names, among the
animals to be excommunicated or exorcised, mice, moles, and
serpents. The use of exorcism against caterpillars and
grasshoppers was also common. In the thirteenth century a Bishop
of Lausanne, finding that the eels in Lake Leman troubled the
fishermen, attempted to remove the difficulty by exorcism, and
two centuries later one of his successors excommunicated all the
May-bugs in the diocese. As late as 1731 there appears an entry
on the Municipal Register of Thonon as follows: "_Resolved_, That
this town join with other parishes of this province in obtaining
from Rome an excommunication against the insects, and that it
will contribute _pro rata_ to the expenses of the same."
Did any one venture to deny that animals could be possessed
by Satan, he was at once silenced by reference to the entrance of
Satan into the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and to the casting
of devils into swine by the Founder of Christianity himself.[[113]]
One part of this superstition most tenaciously held was the
belief that a human being could be transformed into one of the
lower animals. This became a fundamental point. The most dreaded
of predatory animals in the Middle Ages were the wolves. Drive
from the hills and forests in the winter by hunger, they not only
devoured the flocks, but sometimes came into the villages and
seized children. From time to time men and women whose brains
were disordered dreamed that they had been changed into various
animals, and especially into wolves. On their confessing this
and often implicating others, many executions of lunatics
resulted; moreover, countless sane victims, suspected of the same
impossible crime, were forced by torture to confess it, and sent
unpitied to the stake. The belief in such a transformatio
pervaded all Europe, and lasted long even in Protestant countries
Probably no article in the witch creed had more adherents in the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries than this. Nearl
every parish in Europe had its resultant horrors.
The reformed Church in all its branches fully accepted the
doctrines of witchcraft and diabolic possession, and developed
them still further. No one urged their fundamental ideas more
fully than Luther. He did, indeed, reject portions of the
witchcraft folly; but to the influence of devils he not only
attributed his maladies, but his dreams, and nearly everything
that thwarted or disturbed him. The flies which lighted upon his
book, the rats which kept him awake at night, he believed to b
devils; the resistance of the Archbishop of Mayence to his ideas,
he attributed to Satan literally working in that prelate's heart;
to his disciples he told stories of men who had been killed by
rashly resisting the devil. Insanity, he was quite sure, was
caused by Satan, and he exorcised sufferers. Against some he
appears to have advised stronger remedies; and his horror of
idiocy, as resulting from Satanic influence, was so great, tha
on one occasion he appears to have advised the killing of an
idiot child, as being the direct offspring of Satan. Yet Luther
was one of the most tender and loving of men; in the whole range
of literature there is hardly anything more touching than his
words and tributes to children. In enforcing his ideas regarding
insanity, he laid stress especially upon the question of St. Paul
as to the bewitching of the Galatians, and, regarding idiocy, on
the account in Genesis of the birth of children whose fathers
were "sons of God" and whose mothers were "daughters of men."
One idea of his was especially characteristic. The descent
of Christ into hell was a frequent topic of discussion in th
Reformed Church. Melanchthon, with his love of Greek studies,
held that the purpose of the Saviour in making such a descent was
to make himself known to the great and noble men of
antiquity--Plato, Socrates, and the rest; but Luther insisted
that his purpose was to conquer Satan in a hand-to-hand struggle.
This idea of diabolic influence pervaded his conversation, his
preaching, his writings, and spread thence to the Lutheran
Church in general.
Calvin also held to the same theory, and, having more power
with less kindness of heart than Luther, carried it out with yet
greater harshness. Beza was especially severe against those who
believed insanity to be a natural malady, and declared, "Such
persons are refuted both by sacred and profane history."
Under the influence, then, of such infallible teachings, in
the older Church and in the new, this superstition was developed
more and more into cruelty; and as the biblical texts,
popularized in the sculptures and windows and mural decorations
of the great medieval cathedrals, had done much to develop it
among the people, so Luther's translation of the Bible,
especially in the numerous editions of it illustrated wit
engravings, wrought with enormous power to spread and deepen it.
In every peasant's cottage some one could spell out the story of
the devil bearing Christ through the air and placing him upon the
pinnacle of the Temple--of the woman with seven devils--of the
devils cast into the swine. Every peasant's child could be made
to understand the quaint pictures in the family Bible or th
catechism which illustrated vividly all those texts. In the ideas
thus deeply implanted, the men who in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries struggled against this mass of folly an
cruelty found the worst barrier to right reason.[[115]]
Such was the treatment of demoniacs developed by theology,
and such the practice enforced by ecclesiasticism for more than a
thousand years.
How an atmosphere was spread in which this belief began to
dissolve away, how its main foundations were undermined by
science, and how there came in gradually a reign of humanity,
will now be related.
II. BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
We have now seen the culmination of the old procedure
regarding insanity, as it was developed under theology and
enforced by ecclesiasticism; and we have noted how, under the
influence of Luther and Calvin, the Reformation rather deepened
than weakened the faith in the malice and power of a persona
devil. Nor was this, in the Reformed churches any more than in
the old, mere matter of theory. As in the early ages of
Christianity, its priests especially appealed, in proof of the
divine mission, to their power over the enemy of mankind in the
bodies of men, so now the clergy of the rival creeds eagerly
sought opportunities to establish the truth of their own and the
falsehood of their opponents' doctrines by the visible castin
out of devils. True, their methods differed somewhat: where th
Catholic used holy water and consecrated wax, the Protestant was
content with texts of Scripture and importunate prayer; but the
supplementary physical annoyance of the indwelling demon did not
greatly vary. Sharp was the competition for the unhappy objects
of treatment. Each side, of course, stoutly denied all efficacy
to its adversaries' efforts, urging that any seeming victory over
Satan was due not to the defeat but to the collusion of the
fiend. As, according to the Master himself, "no man can by
Beelzebub cast out devils," the patient was now in greater need
of relief than before; and more than one poor victim had to bear
alternately Lutheran, Roman, and perhaps Calvinistic exorcism.[[117]]
But far more serious in its consequences was another rivalry
to which in the sixteenth century the clergy of all creeds found
themselves subject. The revival of the science of medicine, under
the impulse of the new study of antiquity, suddenly bade fair to
take out of the hands of the Church the profession of which she
had enjoyed so long and so profitable a monopoly. Only one class
of diseases remained unquestionably hers--those which were still
admitted to be due to the direct personal interference of
Satan--and foremost among these was insanity.[[117b]] It was surely
no wonder that an age of religious controversy and excitement
should be exceptionally prolific in ailments of the mind; and, to
men who mutually taught the utter futility of that baptismal
exorcism by which the babes of their misguided neighbours were
made to renounce the devil and his works, it ought not to have
seemed strange that his victims now became more numerous.[[117c]]
But so simple an explanation did not satisfy these physicians of
souls; they therefore devised a simpler one: their patients, they
alleged, were bewitched, and their increase was due to the
growing numbers of those human allies of Satan known as witches.
Already, before the close of the fifteenth century, Pope
innocent VIII had issued the startling bull by which he called on
the archbishops, bishops, and other clergy of Germany to join
hands with his inquisitors in rooting out these willing
bond-servants of Satan, who were said to swarm throughout all
that country and to revel in the blackest crimes. Other popes had
since reiterated the appeal; and, though none of these document
touched on the blame of witchcraft for diabolic possession, the
inquisitors charged with their execution pointed it out mos
clearly in their fearful handbook, the _Witch-Hammer_, and
prescribed the special means by which possession thus caused
should be met. These teachings took firm root in religious minds
everywhere; and during the great age of witch-burning that
followed the Reformation it may well be doubted whether any
single cause so often gave rise to an outbreak of the persecution
as the alleged bewitchment of some poor mad or foolish or
hysterical creature. The persecution, thus once under way, fed
itself; for, under the terrible doctrine of "excepted cases," by
which in the religious crimes of heresy and witchcraft there wa
no limit to the use of torture, the witch was forced to confes
to accomplices, who in turn accused others, and so on to the end
of the chapter.[[118]]
The horrors of such a persecution, with the consciousness of
an ever-present devil it breathed and the panic terror of him it
inspired, could not but aggravate the insanity it claimed to
cure. Well-authenticated, though rarer than is often believed,
were the cases where crazed women voluntarily accused themselve
of this impossible crime. One of the most eminent authorities on
diseases of the mind declares that among the unfortunate being
who were put to death for witchcraft he recognises well-marked
victims of cerebral disorders; while an equally eminent authority
in Germany tells us that, in a most careful study of the original
records of their trials by torture, he has often found their
answers and recorded conversations exactly like those familiar to
him in our modern lunatic asylums, and names some forms o
insanity which constantly and un mistakably appear among those
who suffered for criminal dealings with the devil.[[119]]
The result of this widespread terror was naturally, therefore,
a steady increase in mental disorders. A great modern
authority tells us that, although modern civilization tends to
increase insanity, the number of lunatics at present is far les
than in the ages of faith and in the Reformation period. The
treatment of the "possessed," as we find it laid down in standard
treatises, sanctioned by orthodox churchmen and jurists, accounts
for this abundantly. One sort of treatment used for those accused
of witchcraft will also serve to show this--the "_tortura
insomniae_." Of all things in brain-disease, calm and regular
sleep is most certainly beneficial; yet, under this practice,
these half-crazed creatures were prevented, night after night and
day after day, from sleeping or even resting. In this way
temporary delusion became chronic insanity, mild cases became
violent, torture and death ensued, and the "ways of God to man"
were justified.[[119b]]
But the most contemptible creatures in all those centuries
were the physicians who took sides with religious orthodoxy.
While we have, on the side of truth, Flade sacrificing his life,
Cornelius Agrippa his liberty, Wier and Loos their hopes of
preferment, Bekker his position, and Thomasius his ease,
reputation, and friends, we find, as allies of the other side, a
troop of eminently respectable doctors mixing Scripture,
metaphysics, and pretended observations to support the "safe
side" and to deprecate interference with the existing
superstition, which seemed to them "a very safe belief to be held
by the common people."[[119c]]
Against one form of insanity both Catholics and Protestants were
especially cruel. Nothing is more common in all times of religious
excitement than strange personal hallucinations, involving the
belief, by the insane patient, that he is a divine person. In the
most striking representation of insanity that has ever been made,
Kaulbach shows, at the centre of his wonderful group, a patient
drawing attention to himself as the Saviour of the world.
Sometimes, when this form of disease took a milder
hysterical character, the subject of it was treated with
reverence, and even elevated to sainthood: such examples as St.
Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena in Italy, St.
Bridget in Sweden, St. Theresa in Spain, St. Mary Alacoque in
France, and Louise Lateau in Belgium, are typical. But mor
frequently such cases shocked public feeling, and were treated
with especial rigour: typical of this is the case of Simo
Marin, who in his insanity believed himself to be the Son of God,
and was on that account burned alive at Paris and his ashes
scattered to the winds.[[120]]
The profundity of theologians and jurists constantly
developed new theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into
the "possessed." One such theory was that Satan could be taken
into the mouth with one's food--perhaps in the form of an insect
swallowed on a leaf of salad, and this was sanctioned, as we have
seen, by no less infallible an authority than Gregory the Great,
Pope and Saint--Another theory was that Satan entered the body
when the mouth was opened to breathe, and there ar
well-authenticated cases of doctors and divines who, when castin
out evil spirits, took especial care lest the imp might jump into
their own mouths from the mouth of the patient. Another theory
was that the devil entered human beings during sleep; and at
comparatively recent period a King of Spain was wont to sleep
between two monks, to keep off the devil.[[121]]
The monasteries were frequent sources of that form of mental
disease which was supposed to be caused by bewitchment. From th
earliest period it is evident that monastic life tended to
develop insanity. Such cases as that of St. Anthony are typica
of its effects upon the strongest minds; but it was especially
the convents for women that became the great breeding-beds of
this disease. Among the large numbers of women and girls thus
assembled--many of them forced into monastic seclusion against
their will, for the reason that their families could give them n
dower--subjected to the unsatisfied longings, suspicions,
bickerings, petty jealousies, envies, and hatreds, so inevitabl
in convent life--mental disease was not unlikely to be developed
at any moment. Hysterical excitement in nunneries took shapes
sometimes comical, but more generally tragical. Noteworthy is it
that the last places where executions for witchcraft took plac
were mainly in the neighbourhood of great nunneries; and the las
famous victim, of the myriads executed in Germany for this
imaginary crime, was Sister Anna Renata Singer, sub-prioress of a
nunnery near Wurzburg.[[121b]]
The same thing was seen among young women exposed to sundry
fanatical Protestant preachers. Insanity, both temporary and
permanent, was thus frequently developed among the Huguenots of
France, and has been thus produced in America, from the days of
the Salem persecution down to the "camp meetings" of the present
time.[[121c]]
At various times, from the days of St. Agobard of Lyons in
the ninth century to Pomponatius in the sixteenth, protests or
suggestions, more or less timid, had been made by thoughtful men
against this system. Medicine had made some advance toward a
better view, but the theological torrent had generally
overwhelmed all who supported a scientific treatment. At last,
toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men made a beginning
of a much more serious attack upon this venerable superstition.
The revival of learning, and the impulse to thought on materia
matters given during the "age of discovery," undoubtedly produced
an atmosphere which made the work of these men possible. In the
year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations of demoniacal
possession by the most eminent theologians and judges, who sat i
their robes and looked wise, while women, shrieking, praying, and
blaspheming, were put to the torture, a man arose who dared to
protest effectively that some of the persons thus charged might
be simply insane; and this man was John Wier, of Cleves.
His protest does not at this day strike us as particularly
bold. In his books, _De Praestigiis Daemonum_ and _De Lamiis_, he
did his best not to offend religious or theological
susceptibilities; but he felt obliged to call attention to th
mingled fraud and delusion of those who claimed to be bewitched,
and to point out that it was often not their accusers, but the
alleged witches themselves, who were really ailing, and to urg
that these be brought first of all to a physician.
His book was at once attacked by the most eminent
theologians. One of the greatest laymen of his time, Jean Bodin,
also wrote with especial power against it, and by a plentiful use
of scriptural texts gained to all appearance a complete victory
this superstition seemed thus fastened upon Europe for a thousand
years more. But doubt was in the air, and, about a quarter of a
century after the publication of Wier's book there were published
in France the essays of a man by no means so noble, but of far
greater genius--Michel de Montaigne. The general scepticism which
his work promoted among the French people did much to produce an
atmosphere in which the belief in witchcraft and demoniacal
possession must inevitably wither. But this process, though real,
was hidden, and the victory still seemed on the theological side.
The development of the new truth and its struggle agains
the old error still went on. In Holland, Balthazar Bekker wrote
his book against the worst forms of the superstition, and
attempted to help the scientific side by a text from the Second
Epistle of St. Peter, showing that the devils had been confined
by the Almighty, and therefore could not be doing on earth the
work which was imputed to them. But Bekker's Protestant brethren
drove him from his pulpit, and he narrowly escaped with his life
The last struggles of a great superstition are ver
frequently the worst. So it proved in this case. In the first
half of the seventeenth century the cruelties arising from the
old doctrine were more numerous and severe than ever before. In
Spain, Sweden, Italy, and, above all, in Germany, we see constan
efforts to suppress the evolution of the new truth.
But in the midst of all this reactionary rage glimpses of
right reason began to appear. It is significant that at this very
time, when the old superstition was apparently everywhere
triumphant, the declaration by Poulet that he and his brother and
his cousin had, by smearing themselves with ointment, changed
themselves into wolves and devoured children, brought no severe
punishment upon them. The judges sent him to a mad-house. More
and more, in spite of frantic efforts from the pulpit to save the
superstition, great writers and jurists, especially in France,
began to have glimpses of the truth and courage to uphold it.
Malebranche spoke against the delusion; Seguier led the Frenc
courts to annul several decrees condemning sorcerers; the great
chancellor, D'Aguesseau, declared to the Parliament of Pari
that, if they wished to stop sorcery, they must stop talkin
about it--that sorcerers are more to be pitied than blamed.[[123]]
But just at this time, as the eighteenth century was
approaching, the theological current was strengthened by a great
ecclesiastic--the greatest theologian that France has produced,
whose influence upon religion and upon the mind of Louis XIV was
enormous--Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. There had been reason to
expect that Bossuet would at least do something to mitigate the
superstition; for his writings show that, in much which before
his day had been ascribed to diabolic possession, he saw simple
lunacy. Unfortunately, the same adherence to the literal
interpretation of Scripture which led him to oppose every other
scientific truth developed in his time, led him also to attack
this: he delivered and published two great sermons, which, while
showing some progress in the form of his belief, showed none the
less that the fundamental idea of diabolic possession was still
to be tenaciously held. What this idea was may be seen in one
typical statement: he declared that "a single devil could turn
the earth round as easily as we turn a marble."[[124]]
III. THE FINAL STRUGGLE AND VICTORY OF SCIENCE.-
PINEL AND TUKE.
The theological current, thus re-enforced, seemed to becom
again irresistible; but it was only so in appearance. In spite of
it, French scepticism continued to develop; signs of quiet chang
among the mass of thinking men were appearing more and more; and
in 1672 came one of great significance, for, the Parliament o
Rouen having doomed fourteen sorcerers to be burned, their
execution was delayed for two years, evidently on account of
scepticism among officials; and at length the great minister of
Louis XIV, Colbert, issued an edict checking such trials, and
ordering the convicted to be treated for madness.
Victory seemed now to incline to the standard of science,
and in 1725 no less a personage than St. Andre, a court
physician, dared to publish a work virtually showing "demoniacal
possession" to be lunacy.
The French philosophy, from the time of its early
development in the eighteenth century under Montesquieu and
Voltaire, naturally strengthened the movement; the results of
_post-mortem_ examinations of the brains of the "possessed"
confirmed it; and in 1768 we see it take form in a declaration by
the Parliament of Paris, that possessed persons were to be
considered as simply diseased. Still, the old belief lingered on,
its life flickering up from time to time in those parts of France
most under ecclesiastical control, until in these last years of
the nineteenth century a blow has been given it by the researches
of Charcot and his compeers which will probably soon extinguish
it. One evidence of Satanic intercourse with mankind especially,
on which for many generations theologians had laid peculiar
stress, and for which they had condemned scores of little girls
and hundreds of old women to a most cruel death, was found to be
nothing more than one of the many results of hysteria.[[125]]
In England the same warfare went on. John Locke had asserted
the truth, but the theological view continued to control public
opinion. Most prominent among those who exercised great power in
its behalf was John Wesley, and the strength and beauty of his
character made his influence in this respect all the more
unfortunate. The same servitude to the mere letter of Scripture
which led him to declare that "to give up witchcraft is to give
up the Bible," controlled him in regard to insanity. He insisted,
on the authority of the Old Testament, that bodily diseases are
sometimes caused by devils, and, upon the authority of the New
Testament, that the gods of the heathen are demons; he believed
that dreams, while in some cases caused by bodily conditions and
passions, are shown by Scripture to be also caused by occult
powers of evil; he cites a physician to prove that "most lunatics
are really demoniacs." In his great sermon on _Evil Angels_, he
dwells upon this point especially; resists the idea that
"possession" may be epilepsy, even though ordinary symptoms of
epilepsy be present; protests against "giving up to infidels such
proofs of an invisible world as are to be found in diabolic
possession"; and evidently believes that some who have been made
hysterical by his own preaching are "possessed of Satan." On all
this, and much more to the same effect, he insisted with all the
power given to him by his deep religious nature, his wonderful
familiarity with the Scriptures, his natural acumen, and his eloquence.
But here, too, science continued its work. The old belief
was steadily undermined, an atmosphere favourable to the truth
was more and more developed, and the act of Parliament, in 1735,
which banished the crime of witchcraft from the statute book, was
the beginning of the end.
In Germany we see the beginnings of a similar triumph for
science. In Prussia, that sturdy old monarch, Frederick William I
nullified the efforts of the more zealous clergy and orthodox
jurists to keep up the old doctrine in his dominions; throughout
Protestant Germany, where it had raged most severely, it was, as
a rule, cast out of the Church formulas, catechisms, and hymns
and became more and more a subject for jocose allusion. Fro
force of habit, and for the sake of consistency, some of the more
conservative theologians continued to repeat the old arguments,
and there were many who insisted upon the belief as absolutel
necessary to ordinary orthodoxy; but it is evident that it had
become a mere conventionality, that men only believed that they
believed it, and now a reform seemed possible in the treatment of
the insane.[[126]]
In Austria, the government set Dr. Antonio Haen at making
careful researches into the causes of diabolic possession. He did
not think it best, in view of the power of the Church, to dispute
the possibility or probability of such cases, but simply decided,
after thorough investigation, that out of the many cases which
had been brought to him, not one supported the belief in
demoniacal influence. An attempt was made to follow up this
examination, and much was done by men like Francke and Van
Swieten, and especially by the reforming emperor, Joseph II, t
rescue men and women who would otherwise have fallen victims to
the prevalent superstition. Unfortunately, Joseph had arrayed
against himself the whole power of the Church, and most of his
good efforts seemed brought to naught. But what the noblest of
the old race of German emperors could not do suddenly, the German
men of science did gradually. Quietly and thoroughly, by proofs
that could not be gainsaid, they recovered the old scientific
fact established in pagan Greece and Rome, that madness is simply
physical disease. But they now established it on a basis that can
never again be shaken; for, in _post-mortem_ examinations of large
numbers of "possessed" persons, they found evidence of
brain-disease. Typical is a case at Hamburg in 1729. An afflicte
woman showed in a high degree all the recognised characteristics
of diabolic possession: exorcisms, preachings, and sanctified
remedies of every sort were tried in vain; milder medical means
were then tried, and she so far recovered that she was allowed t
take the communion before she died: the autopsy, held in the
presence of fifteen physicians and a public notary, showed it t
be simply a case of chronic meningitis. The work of German men o
science in this field is noble indeed; a great succession, from
Wier to Virchow, have erected a barrier against which all th
efforts of reactionists beat in vain.[[127]]
In America, the belief in diabolic influence had, in the
early colonial period, full control. The Mathers, so superior to
their time in many things, were children of their time in this:
they supported the belief fully, and the Salem witchcraft horrors
were among its results; but the discussion of that folly by Calef
struck it a severe blow, and a better influence spread rapidly
throughout the colonies.
By the middle of the eighteenth century belief in diabolic
possession had practically disappeared from all enlightened
countries, and during the nineteenth century it has lost its hold
even in regions where the medieval spirit continues strongest
Throughout the Middle Ages, as we have seen, Satan was a leading
personage in the miracle-plays, but in 1810 the Bavarian
Government refused to allow the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau if
Satan was permitted to take any part in it; in spite of heroic
efforts to maintain the old belief, even the childlike faith of
the Tyrolese had arrived at a point which made a representation
of Satan simply a thing to provoke laughter.
Very significant also was the trial which took place at
Wemding, in southern Germany, in 1892. A boy had become
hysterical, and the Capuchin Father Aurelian tried to exorcise
him, and charged a peasant's wife, Frau Herz, with bewitching
him, on evidence that would have cost the woman her life at any
time during the seventeenth century. Thereupon the woman's
husband brought suit against Father Aurelian for slander. Th
latter urged in his defence that the boy was possessed of an evil
spirit, if anybody ever was; that what had been said and done was
in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Church, as
laid down in decrees, formulas, and rituals sanctioned by popes,
councils, and innumerable bishops during ages. All in vain. The
court condemned the good father to fine and imprisonment. As in a
famous English case, "hell was dismissed, with costs." Even more
significant is the fact that recently a boy declared by tw
Bavarian priests to be possessed by the devil, was taken, after
all Church exorcisms had failed, to Father Kneipp's hydropathic
establishment and was there speedily cured.[[128]]
But, although the old superstition had been discarded, the
inevitable conservatism in theology and medicine caused many old
abuses to be continued for years after the theological basis for
them had really disappeared. There still lingered also a feeling
of dislike toward madmen, engendered by the early feeling of
hostility toward them, which sufficed to prevent for many years
any practical reforms.
What that old theory had been, even under the most
favourable circumstances and among the best of men, we have seen
in the fact that Sir Thomas More ordered acknowledged lunatics to
be publicly flogged; and it will be remembered that Shakespeare
makes one of his characters refer to madmen as deserving "a dark
house and a whip." What the old practice was and continued to be
we know but too well. Taking Protestant England as an
example--and it was probably the most humane--we have a chain of
testimony. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Bethlehem
Hospital was reported too loathsome for any man to enter; in the
seventeenth century, John Evelyn found it no better; in th
eighteenth, Hogarth's pictures and contemporary reports show it to
be essentially what it had been in those previous centuries.[[129]]
The first humane impulse of any considerable importance i
this field seems to have been aroused in America. In the year
1751 certain members of the Society of Friends founded a small
hospital for the insane, on better principles, in Pennsylvania.
To use the language of its founders, it was intended "as a good
work, acceptable to God." Twenty years later Virginia established
a similar asylum, and gradually others appeared in other colonies
But it was in France that mercy was to be put upon a
scientific basis, and was to lead to practical results which were
to convert the world to humanity. In this case, as in so many
others, from France was spread and popularized not only th
scepticism which destroyed the theological theory, but also the
devotion which built up the new scientific theory and endowed the
world with a new treasure of civilization.
In 1756 some physicians of the great hospital at Paris known
as the Hotel-Dieu protested that the cruelties prevailing in the
treatment of the insane were aggravating the disease; and some
protests followed from other quarters. Little effect was produced
at first; but just before the French Revolution, Tenon, La
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and others took up the subject, and in
1791 a commission was appointed to undertake a reform.
By great good fortune, the man selected to lead in the
movement was one who had already thrown his heart into it--Jean
Baptiste Pinel. In 1792 Pinel was made physician at Bicetre, one
of the most extensive lunatic asylums in France, and to the work
there imposed upon him he gave all his powers. Little was heard
of him at first. The most terrible scenes of the Frenc
Revolution were drawing nigh; but he laboured on, modestly and
devotedly--apparently without a thought of the great political
storm raging about him.
His first step was to discard utterly the whole theological
doctrine of "possession," and especially the idea that insanity
is the result of any subtle spiritual influence. He simply put i
practice the theory that lunacy is the result of bodily disease
It is a curious matter for reflection, that but for this sway
of the destructive philosophy of the eighteenth century, and
of the Terrorists during the French Revolution, Pinel's blesse
work would in all probability have been thwarted, and he himself
excommunicated for heresy and driven from his position. Doubtless
the same efforts would have been put forth against him which the
Church, a little earlier, had put forth against inoculation as a
remedy for smallpox; but just at that time the great churchmen
had other things to think of besides crushing this particula
heretic: they were too much occupied in keeping their own heads
from the guillotine to give attention to what was passing in the
head of Pinel. He was allowed to work in peace, and in a short
time the reign of diabolism at Bicetre was ended. What the
exorcisms and fetiches and prayers and processions, and drinking
of holy water, and ringing of bells, had been unable to
accomplish during eighteen hundred years, he achieved in a few
months. His method was simple: for the brutality and cruelt
which had prevailed up to that time, he substituted kindness and
gentleness. The possessed were taken out of their dungeons, given
sunny rooms, and allowed the liberty of pleasant ground fo
exercise; chains were thrown aside. At the same time, the mental
power of each patient was developed by its fitting exercise, and
disease was met with remedies sanctioned by experiment, observation
and reason. Thus was gained one of the greatest, though one o
the least known, triumphs of modern science and humanity.
The results obtained by Pinel had an instant effect, not
only in France but throughout Europe: the news spread from
hospital to hospital. At his death, Esquirol took up his work;
and, in the place of the old training of judges, torturers, and
executioners by theology to carry out its ideas in cruelty, there
was now trained a school of physicians to develop science in this
field and carry out its decrees in mercy.[[132]]
A similar evolution of better science and practice took
place in England. In spite of the coldness, and even hostility,
of the greater men in the Established Church, and notwithstandin
the scriptural demonstrations of Wesley that the majority of the
insane were possessed of devils, the scientific method steadily
gathered strength. In 1750 the condition of the insane began to
attract especial attention; it was found that mad-houses were
swayed by ideas utterly indefensible, and that the practices
engendered by these ideas were monstrous. As a rule, the patients
were immured in cells, and in many cases were chained to the
walls; in others, flogging and starvation played leading parts,
and in some cases the patients were killed. Naturally enough,
John Howard declared, in 1789, that he found in Constantinople a
better insane asylum than the great St. Luke's Hospital in London.
Well might he do so; for, ever since Caliph Omar had protected and
encouraged the scientific investigation of insanity by Paul o
AEgina, the Moslem treatment of the insane had been far more
merciful than the system prevailing throughout Christendom.[[132b]]
In 1792--the same year in which Pinel began his great wor
in France--William Tuke began a similar work in England. There
seems to have been no connection between these two reformers;
each wrought independently of the other, but the results arrived
at were the same. So, too, in the main, were their methods; and
in the little house of William Tuke, at York, began a better er
for England
The name which this little asylum received is a monument
both of the old reign of cruelty and of the new reign of
humanity. Every old name for such an asylum had been made odiou
and repulsive by ages of misery; in a happy moment of inspiration
Tuke's gentle Quaker wife suggested a new name; and, in accordance
with this suggestion, the place became known as a "Retreat."
From the great body of influential classes in church and
state Tuke received little aid. The influence of the theological
spirit was shown when, in that same year, Dr. Pangster published
his _Observations on Mental Disorders_, and, after displaying much
ignorance as to the causes and nature of insanity, summed up by
saying piously, "Here our researches must stop, and we must
declare that `wonderful are the works of the Lord, and his ways
past finding out.'" Such seemed to be the view of the Church at
large: though the new "Retreat" was at one of the two great
ecclesiastical centres of England, we hear of no aid or
encouragement from the Archbishop of York or from his clergy. No
was this the worst: the indirect influence of the theological
habit of thought and ecclesiastical prestige was displayed in the
_Edinburgh Review_. That great organ of opinion, not content wit
attacking Tuke, poured contempt upon his work, as well as on that
of Pinel. A few of Tuke's brother and sister Quakers seem to have
been his only reliance; and in a letter regarding his efforts at
that time he says, "All men seem to desert me."[[133]
In this atmosphere of English conservative opposition or
indifference the work could not grow rapidly. As late as 1815, a
member of Parliament stigmatized the insane asylums of England as
the shame of the nation; and even as late as 1827, and in a few
cases as late as 1850, there were revivals of the old absurdity
and brutality. Down to a late period, in the hospitals of St.
Luke and Bedlam, long rows of the insane were chained to the
walls of the corridors. But Gardner at Lincoln, Donnelly at
Hanwell, and a new school of practitioners in mental disease,
took up the work of Tuke, and the victory in England was gained
in practice as it had been previously gained in theory.
There need be no controversy regarding the comparative
merits of these two benefactors of our race, Pinel and Tuke. The
clearly did their thinking and their work independently of each
other, and thereby each strengthened the other and benefited
mankind. All that remains to be said is, that while France has
paid high honours to Pinel, as to one who did much to free the
world from one of its most cruel superstitions and to bring in a
reign of humanity over a wide empire, England has as yet made no
fitting commemoration of her great benefactor in this field. York
Minster holds many tombs of men, of whom some were blessings to
their fellow-beings, while some were but "solemnly constituted
impostors" and parasites upon the body politic; yet, to this
hour, that great temple has received no consecration by a
monument to the man who did more to alleviate human misery than
any other who has ever entered it.
But the place of these two men in history is secure. They
stand with Grotius, Thomasius, and Beccaria--the men who in
modern times have done most to prevent unmerited sorrow. They
were not, indeed, called to suffer like their great compeers
they were not obliged to see their writings--among the most
blessed gifts of God to man--condemned, as were those of Grotius
and Beccaria by the Catholic Church, and those of Thomasius by a
large section of the Protestant Church; they were not obliged to
flee for their lives, as were Grotius and Thomasius; but their
effort is none the less worthy. The French Revolution, indeed,
saved Pinel, and the decay of English ecclesiasticism gave Tuke
his opportunity; but their triumphs are none the less among the
glories of our race; for they were the first acknowledged victor
in a struggle of science for humanity which had lasted nearly two
thousand years.
CHAPTER XVI
FROM DIABOLISM TO HYSTERIA.
I. THE EPIDEMICS OF "POSSESSION."
IN the foregoing chapter I have sketched the triumph of
science in destroying the idea that individual lunatics are
"possessed by devils," in establishing the truth that insanity is
physical disease, and in substituting for superstitious cruelties
toward the insane a treatment mild, kindly, and based upon
ascertained facts.
The Satan who had so long troubled individual men and women
thus became extinct; henceforth his fossil remains only wer
preserved: they may still be found in the sculptures and storied
windows of medieval churches, in sundry liturgies, and in popular
forms of speech
But another Satan still lived--a Satan who wrought on
larger scale--who took possession of multitudes. For, after thi
triumph of the scientific method, there still remained a class of
mental disorders which could not be treated in asylums, whic
were not yet fully explained by science, and which therefore gave
arguments of much apparent strength to the supporters of the old
theological view: these were the epidemics of "diabolic possession"
which for so many centuries afflicted various parts of the world.
When obliged, then, to retreat from their old position in
regard to individual cases of insanity, the more conservative
theologians promptly referred to these epidemics as beyond the
domain of science--as clear evidences of the power of Satan
and, as the basis of this view, they cited from the Old Testament
frequent references to witchcraft, and, from the New Testament,
St. Paul's question as to the possible bewitching of the Galatians,
and the bewitching of the people of Samaria by Simon the Magician
Naturally, such leaders had very many adherents in tha
class, so large in all times, who find tha
"To follow foolish precedents and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think."[[136]]
It must be owned that their case seemed strong. Though in all
human history, so far as it is closely known, these phenomena
had appeared, and though every classical scholar could recall the
wild orgies of the priests, priestesses, and devotees of Dionysus
and Cybele, and the epidemic of wild rage which took its name
from some of these, the great fathers and doctors of the Church
had left a complete answer to any scepticism based on these
facts; they simply pointed to St. Paul's declaration that the
gods of the heathen were devils: these examples, then, could be
transformed into a powerful argument for diabolic possession.[[136b]]
But it was more especially the epidemics of diabolism in
medieval and modern times which gave strength to the theological
view, and from these I shall present a chain of typical examples.
As early as the eleventh century we find clear accounts of
diabolical possession taking the form of epidemics of raving,
jumping, dancing, and convulsions, the greater number of the
sufferers being women and children. In a time so rude, accounts
of these manifestations would rarely receive permanent record;
but it is very significant that even at the beginning of the
eleventh century we hear of them at the extremes of Europe--in
northern Germany and in southern Italy. At various times durin
that century we get additional glimpses of these exhibitions, but
it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that we
have a renewal of them on a large scale. In 1237, at Erfurt, a
jumping disease and dancing mania afflicted a hundred children,
many of whom died in consequence; it spread through the whol
region, and fifty years later we hear of it in Holland.
But it was the last quarter of the fourteenth century that
saw its greatest manifestations. There was abundant cause fo
them. It was a time of oppression, famine, and pestilence: th
crusading spirit, having run its course, had been succeeded by
wild, mystical fanaticism; the most frightful plague in huma
history--the Black Death--was depopulating whol
regions--reducing cities to villages, and filling Europe wit
that strange mixture of devotion and dissipation which we always
note during the prevalence of deadly epidemics on a large scale.
It was in this ferment of religious, moral, and social
disease that there broke out in 1374, in the lower Rhine region
the greatest, perhaps, of all manifestations of "possession"--an
epidemic of dancing, jumping, and wild raving. The cures resorted
to seemed on the whole to intensify the disease: the afflicted
continued dancing for hours, until they fell in utter exhaustion.
Some declared that they felt as if bathed in blood, some sa
visions, some prophesied
Into this mass of "possession" there was also clearly poured
a current of scoundrelism which increased the disorder.
The immediate source of these manifestations seems to hav
been the wild revels of St. John's Day. In those revels sundry
old heathen ceremonies had been perpetuated, but under a
nominally Christian form: wild Bacchanalian dances had thus
become a semi-religious ceremonial. The religious and social
atmosphere was propitious to the development of the germs of
diabolic influence vitalized in these orgies, and they were
scattered far and wide through large tracts of the Netherlands
and Germany, and especially through the whole region of the
Rhine. At Cologne we hear of five hundred afflicted at once; at
Metz of eleven hundred dancers in the streets; at Strasburg of
yet more painful manifestations; and from these and other citie
they spread through the villages and rural districts
The great majority of the sufferers were women, but there
were many men, and especially men whose occupations were
sedentary. Remedies were tried upon a large scale-exorcism
first, but especially pilgrimages to the shrine of St. Vitus. The
exorcisms accomplished so little that popular faith in them grew
small, and the main effect of the pilgrimages seemed to be to
increase the disorder by subjecting great crowds to the diabolic
contagion. Yet another curative means was seen in the flagellant
processions--vast crowds of men, women, and children who wandered
through the country, screaming, praying, beating themselves wit
whips, imploring the Divine mercy and the intervention of St.
Vitus. Most fearful of all the main attempts at cure were the
persecutions of the Jews. A feeling had evidently spread amon
the people at large that the Almighty was filled with wrath a
the toleration of his enemies, and might be propitiated by thei
destruction: in the principal cities and villages of Germany,
then, the Jews were plundered, tortured, and murdered by tens of
thousands. No doubt that, in all this, greed was united with
fanaticism; but the argument of fanaticism was simple and cogent;
the dart which pierced the breast of Israel at that time wa
winged and pointed from its own sacred books: the biblical
argument was the same used in various ages to promote
persecution; and this was, that the wrath of the Almighty was
stirred against those who tolerated his enemies, and that becaus
of this toleration the same curse had now come upon Europe which
the prophet Samuel had denounced against Saul for showing mercy
to the enemies of Jehovah.
It is but just to say that various popes and kings exerted
themselves to check these cruelties. Although the argument of
Samuel to Saul was used with frightful effect two hundred years
later by a most conscientious pope in spurring on the rulers of
France to extirpate the Huguenots, the papacy in the fourteenth
century stood for mercy to the Jews. But even this interventio
was long without effect; the tide of popular Superstition had
become too strong to be curbed even by the spiritual and temporal
powers.[[138]]
Against this overwhelming current science for many
generations could do nothing. Throughout the whole of the
fifteenth century physicians appeared to shun the whole matter.
Occasionally some more thoughtful man ventured to ascribe some
phase of the disease to natural causes; but this was an unpopula
doctrine, and evidently dangerous to those who developed it.
Yet, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, cases of
"possession" on a large scale began to be brought within the scope
of medical research, and the man who led in this evolution of
medical science was Paracelsus. He it was who first bade modern
Europe think for a moment upon the idea that these diseases are
inflicted neither by saints nor demons, and that the "dancin
possession" is simply a form of disease, of which the cure may be
effected by proper remedies and regimen.
Paracelsus appears to have escaped any serious interference:
it took some time, perhaps, for the theological leaders to
understand that he had "let a new idea loose upon the planet,"
but they soon understood it, and their course was simple. For
about fifty years the new idea was well kept under; but in 156
another physician, John Wier, of Cleves, revived it at much risk
to his position and reputation.[[139]]
Although the new idea was thus resisted, it must have taken
some hold upon thoughtful men, for we find that in the second
half of the same century the St. Vitus's dance and forms of
demoniacal possession akin to it gradually diminished in
frequency and were sometimes treated as diseases. In the
seventeenth century, so far as the north of Europe is concerned
these displays of "possession" on a great scale had almos
entirely ceased; here and there cases appeared, but there was no
longer the wild rage extending over great districts and
afflicting thousands of people. Yet it was, as we shall see, in
this same seventeenth century, in the last expiring throes of
this superstition, that it led to the worst acts of cruelty.[[140]]
While this Satanic influence had been exerted on so great a
scale throughout northern Europe, a display strangely like it,
yet strangely unlike it, had been going on in Italy. There, too,
epidemics of dancing and jumping seized groups and communities;
but they were attributed to a physical cause--the theory being
that the bite of a tarantula in some way provoked a supernatural
intervention, of which dancing was the accompaniment and cure.
In the middle of the sixteenth century Fracastoro made an
evident impression on the leaders of Italian opinion by using
medical means in the cure of the possessed; though it is worthy
of note that the medicine which he applied successfully was suc
as we now know could not by any direct effects of its own
accomplish any cure: whatever effect it exerted was wrought upon
the imagination of the sufferer. This form of "possession," then,
passed out of the supernatural domain, and became known as
"tarantism." Though it continued much longer than the corresponding
manifestations in northern Europe, by the beginning of the eighteenth
century it had nearly disappeared; and, though special manifestations
of it on a small scale still break out occasionally, its main
survival is the "tarantella," which the traveller sees danced
at Naples as a catchpenny assault upon his purse.[[140b]]
But, long before this form of "possession" had begun to
disappear, there had arisen new manifestations, apparently more
inexplicable. As the first great epidemics of dancing and
jumping had their main origin in a religious ceremony, so
various new forms had their principal source in what were
supposed to be centres of religious life--in the convents, and
more especially in those for women
Out of many examples we may take a few as typical
In the fifteenth century the chroniclers assure us that, an
inmate of a German nunnery having been seized with a passion for
biting her companions, her mania spread until most, if not all,
of her fellow-nuns began to bite each other; and that this
passion for biting passed from convent to convent into other
parts of Germany, into Holland, and even across the Alps into Italy.
So, too, in a French convent, when a nun began to mew like a
cat, others began mewing; the disease spread, and was only
checked by severe measures.[[141]]
In the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation gave ne
force to witchcraft persecutions in Germany, the new Church
endeavouring to show that in zeal and power she exceeded the old.
But in France influential opinion seemed not so favourable to
these forms of diabolical influence, especially after the
publication of Montaigne's _Essays_, in 1580, had spread a
sceptical atmosphere over many leading minds
In 1588 occurred in France a case which indicates the growth
of this sceptical tendency even in the higher regions of the
french Church, In that year Martha Brossier, a country girl, was
it was claimed, possessed of the devil. The young woman was to
all appearance under direct Satanic influence. She roamed about,
begging that the demon might be cast out of her, and her
imprecations and blasphemies brought consternation wherever she
went. Myth-making began on a large scale; stories grew and sped.
The Capuchin monks thundered from the pulpit throughout France
regarding these proofs of the power of Satan: the alarm spread,
until at last even jovial, sceptical King Henry IV was
disquieted, and the reigning Pope was asked to take measures to
ward off the evil
Fortunately, there then sat in the episcopal chair of Angers
a prelate who had apparently imbibed something of Montaigne's
scepticism--Miron; and, when the case was brought before him, h
submitted it to the most time-honoured of sacred tests. He first
brought into the girl's presence two bowls, one containing hol
water, the other ordinary spring water, but allowed her to draw a
false inference regarding the contents of each: the result was
that at the presentation of the holy water the devils were
perfectly calm, but when tried with the ordinary water they thre
Martha into convulsions.
The next experiment made by the shrewd bishop was to similar
purpose. He commanded loudly that a book of exorcisms be brought,
and under a previous arrangement, his attendants brought him a
copy of Virgil. No sooner had the bishop begun to read the first
line of the _AEneid_ than the devils threw Martha into convulsions.
On another occasion a Latin dictionary, which she had reason to
believe was a book of exorcisms, produced a similar effect
Although the bishop was thereby led to pronounce the whole
matter a mixture of insanity and imposture, the Capuchin monk
denounced this view as godless. They insisted that these tests
really proved the presence of Satan--showing his cunning in
covering up the proofs of his existence. The people at large
sided with their preachers, and Martha was taken to Paris, where
various exorcisms were tried, and the Parisian mob became as
devoted to her as they had been twenty years before to the
murderers of the Huguenots, as they became two centuries later to
Robespierre, and as they more recently were to General Boulanger.
But Bishop Miron was not the only sceptic. The Cardinal d
Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, charged the most eminent physicians
of the city, and among them Riolan, to report upon the case.
Various examinations were made, and the verdict was that Martha
was simply a hysterical impostor. Thanks, then, to medical
science, and to these two enlightened ecclesiastics who summoned
its aid, what fifty or a hundred years earlier would have been
the centre of a widespread epidemic of possession was isolated,
and hindered from producing a national calamity.
In the following year this healthful growth of scepticism
continued. Fourteen persons had been condemned to death for
sorcery, but public opinion was strong enough to secure a new
examination by a special commission, which reported that "the
prisoners stood more in need of medicine than of punishment," and
they were released.[[143]]
But during the seventeenth century, the clergy generally
having exerted themselves heroically to remove this "evil heart
of unbelief" so largely due to Montaigne, a theological reaction
was brought on not only in France but in all parts of the
Christian world, and the belief in diabolic possession, though
certainly dying, flickered up hectic, hot, and malignant through
the whole century. In 1611 we have a typical case at Aix. An
epidemic of possession having occurred there, Gauffridi, a man of
note, was burned at the stake as the cause of the trouble.
Michaelis, one of the priestly exorcists, declared that he had
driven out sixty-five hundred devils from one of the possessed
Similar epidemics occurred in various parts of the world.[[143b]]
Twenty years later a far more striking case occurred at Loudun,
in western France, where a convent of Ursuline nuns was
"afflicted by demons.
The convent was filled mainly with ladies of noble birth,
who, not having sufficient dower to secure husbands, had,
according to the common method of the time, been made nuns.
It is not difficult to understand that such an imprisonment
of a multitude of women of different ages would produce some
woful effects. Any reader of Manzoni's _Promessi Sposi_, with its
wonderful portrayal of the feelings and doings of a noble lady
kept in a convent against her will, may have some idea of the
rage and despair which must have inspired such assemblages in
which pride, pauperism, and the attempted suppression of the
instincts of humanity wrought a fearful work.
What this work was may be seen throughout the Middle Ages;
but it is especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
that we find it frequently taking shape in outbursts of diabolic
possession.[[143c]]
In this case at Loudun, the usual evidences of Satanic
influence appeared. One after another of the inmates fell int
convulsions: some showed physical strength apparentl
supernatural; some a keenness of perception quite as surprising;
many howled forth blasphemies and obscenities.
Near the convent dwelt a priest--Urbain Grandier--noted for
his brilliancy as a writer and preacher, but careless in his way
of living. Several of the nuns had evidently conceived a passio
for him, and in their wild rage and despair dwelt upon his name.
In the same city, too, were sundry ecclesiastics and laymen with
whom Grandier had fallen into petty neighbourhood quarrels, an
some of these men held the main control of the convent.
Out of this mixture of "possession" within the convent and
malignity without it came a charge that Grandier had bewitched
the young women.
The Bishop of Poictiers took up the matter. A trial was
held, and it was noted that, whenever Grandier appeared, the
"possessed" screamed, shrieked, and showed every sign of diabolic
influence. Grandier fought desperately, and appealed to the
Archbishop of Bordeaux, De Sourdis. The archbishop ordered a more
careful examination, and, on separating the nuns from each other
and from certain monks who had been bitterly hostile to Grandier,
such glaring discrepancies were found in their testimony that th
whole accusation was brought to naught
But the enemies of Satan and of Grandier did not rest.
Through their efforts Cardinal Richelieu, who appears to have had
an old grudge against Grandier, sent a representative, Laubardemont,
to make another investigation. Most frightful scenes were now
enacted: the whole convent resounded more loudly than ever wit
shrieks, groans, howling, and cursing, until finally Grandier,
though even in the agony of torture he refused to confess the
crimes that his enemies suggested, was hanged and burned.
From this centre the epidemic spread: multitudes of women
and men were affected by it in various convents; several of the
great cities of the south and west of France came under the same
influence; the "possession" went on for several years longer and
then gradually died out, though scattered cases have occurred
from that day to this.[[145]]
A few years later we have an even more striking example
among the French Protestants. The Huguenots, who had taken
refuge in the mountains of the Cevennes to escape persecution,
being pressed more and more by the cruelties of Louis XIV, began
to show signs of a high degree of religious exaltation. Assembled
as they were for worship in wild and desert places, an epidemic
broke out among them, ascribed by them to the Almighty, but by
their opponents to Satan. Men, women, and children preached and
prophesied. Large assemblies were seized with trembling. Some
underwent the most terrible tortures without showing any signs of
suffering. Marshal de Villiers, who was sent against them,
declared that he saw a town in which all the women and girls,
without exception, were possessed of the devil, and ran leaping
and screaming through the streets. Cases like this, inexplicable
to the science of the time, gave renewed strength to the
theological view.[[145b]]
Toward the end of the same century similar manifestation
began to appear on a large scale in America.
The life of the early colonists in New England was such as to
give rapid growth to the germs of the doctrine of possession
brought from the mother country. Surrounded by the dark pine
forests; having as their neighbours indians, who were more tha
suspected of being children of Satan; harassed by wild beasts
apparently sent by the powers of evil to torment the elect; wit
no varied literature to while away the long winter evenings; with
few amusements save neighbourhood quarrels; dwelling intently o
every text of Scripture which supported their gloomy theology,
and adopting its most literal interpretation, it is not strange
that they rapidly developed ideas regarding the darker side of
nature.[[146]]
This fear of witchcraft received a powerful stimulus from
the treatises of learned men. Such works, coming from Europe
which was at that time filled with the superstition, acted
powerfully upon conscientious preachers, and were brought by them
to bear upon the people at large. Naturally, then, throughout the
latter half of the seventeenth century we find scattered cases of
diabolic possession. At Boston, Springfield, Hartford, Groton,
and other towns, cases occurred, and here and there we hear of
death-sentences.
In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the fruit of
these ideas began to ripen. In the year 1684 Increase Mather
published his book, _Remarkable Providences_, laying stress upon
diabolic possession and witchcraft. This book, having been sent
over to England, exercised an influence there, and came back with
the approval of no less a man than Richard Baxter: by this it
power at home was increased.
In 1688 a poor family in Boston was afflicted by demons:
four children, the eldest thirteen years of age, began leaping
and barking like dogs or purring like cats, and complaining of
being pricked, pinched, and cut; and, to help the matter, an old
Irishwoman was tried and executed.
All this belief might have passed away like a troubled dream
had it not become incarnate in a strong man. This man was Cotton
Mather, the son of Increase Mather. Deeply religious, possessed
of excellent abilities, a great scholar, anxious to promote the
welfare of his flock in this world and in the next, he was far in
advance of ecclesiastics generally on nearly all the main
questions between science and theology. He came out of his
earlier superstition regarding the divine origin of the Hebrew
punctuation; he opposed the old theologic idea regarding the
taking of interest for money; he favoured inoculation as a
preventive of smallpox when a multitude of clergymen and laymen
opposed it; he accepted the Newtonian astronomy despite th
outcries against its "atheistic tendency"; he took ground
against the time-honoured dogma that comets are "signs an
wonders." He had, indeed, some of the defects of his qualities,
and among them pedantic vanity, pride of opinion, and love of
power; but he was for his time remarkably liberal and
undoubtedly sincere. He had thrown off a large part of his
father's theology, but one part of it he could not throw off: he
was one of the best biblical scholars of his time, and he could
not break away from the fact that the sacred Scripture
explicitly recognise witchcraft and demoniacal possession as
realities, and enjoin against witchcraft the penalty of death
Therefore it was that in 1689 he published his _Memorable
Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions_. The book,
according to its title-page, was "recommended by the Ministers of
Boston and Charleston," and its stories soon became the familiar
reading of men, women, and children throughout New England.
Out of all these causes thus brought to bear upon public
opinion began in 1692 a new outbreak of possession, which is on
of the most instructive in history. The Rev. Samuel Parris was the
minister of the church in Salem, and no pope ever had higher ideas
of his own infallibility, no bishop a greater love of ceremony,
no inquisitor a greater passion for prying and spying.[[147]]
Before long Mr. Parris had much upon his hands. Many of his
hardy, independent parishioners disliked his ways. Quarrel
arose. Some of the leading men of the congregation were pitte
against him. The previous minister, George Burroughs, had left
the germs of troubles and quarrels, and to these were now added
new complications arising from the assumptions of Parris. Ther
were innumerable wranglings and lawsuits; in fact, all the
essential causes for Satanic interference which we saw at work in
and about the monastery at Loudun, and especially the turmoil of
a petty village where there is no intellectual activity, and
where men and women find their chief substitute for it in
squabbles, religious, legal, political, social, and personal
In the darkened atmosphere thus charged with the germs of
disease it was suddenly discovered that two young girls in the
family of Mr. Parris were possessed of devils: they complained of
being pinched, pricked, and cut, fell into strange spasms and
made strange speeches--showing the signs of diabolic possession
handed down in fireside legends or dwelt upon in popular witch
literature--and especially such as had lately been described by
Cotton Mather in his book on _Memorable Providences_. The two
girls, having been brought by Mr. Parris and others to tell who
had bewitched them, first charged an old Indian woman, and the
poor old Indian husband was led to join in the charge. This at
once afforded new scope for the activity of Mr. Parris.
Magnifying his office, he immediately began making a great sti
in Salem and in the country round about. Two magistrates wer
summoned. With them came a crowd, and a court was held at th
meeting-house. The scenes which then took place would have bee
the richest of farces had they not led to events so tragical. The
possessed went into spasms at the approach of those charged with
witchcraft, and when the poor old men and women attempted to
attest their innocence they were overwhelmed with outcries by the
possessed, quotations of Scripture by the ministers, and
denunciations by the mob. One especially--Ann Putnam, a child of
twelve years--showed great precocity and played a striking part
in the performances. The mania spread to other children; and two
or three married women also, seeing the great attention paid to
the afflicted, and influenced by that epidemic of morbid
imitation which science now recognises in all such cases, soon
became similarly afflicted, and in their turn made charges
against various persons. The Indian woman was flogged by her
master, Mr. Parris, until she confessed relations with Satan; and
others were forced or deluded into confession. These hysterical
confessions, the results of unbearable torture, or the
reminiscences of dreams, which had been prompted by the witch
legends and sermons of the period, embraced such facts as flying
through the air to witch gatherings, partaking of witch
sacraments, signing a book presented by the devil, and submitting
to Satanic baptism
The possessed had begun with charging their possession upon
poor and vagrant old women, but ere long, emboldened by their
success, they attacked higher game, struck at some of the
foremost people of the region, and did not cease until several of
these were condemned to death, and every man, woman, and chil
brought under a reign of terror. Many fled outright, and one of
the foremost citizens of Salem went constantly armed, and kept
one of his horses saddled in the stable to flee if brought unde
accusation.
The hysterical ingenuity of the possessed women grew with
their success. They insisted that they saw devils prompting the
accused to defend themselves in court. Did one of the accused
clasp her hands in despair, the possessed clasped theirs; did the
accused, in appealing to Heaven, make any gesture, the possessed
simultaneously imitated it; did the accused in weariness drop her
head, the possessed dropped theirs, and declared that the witch
was trying to break their necks. The court-room resounded with
groans, shrieks, prayers, and curses; judges, jury, and people
were aghast, and even the accused were sometimes thus led to
believe in their own guilt.
Very striking in all these cases was the alloy of frenzy
with trickery. In most of the madness there was method. Sundr
witches charged by the possessed had been engaged in controversy
with the Salem church people. Others of the accused had
quarrelled with Mr. Parris. Still others had been engaged in old
lawsuits against persons more or less connected with the girls.
One of the most fearful charges, which cost the life of a noble
and lovely woman, arose undoubtedly from her better style of
dress and living. Old slumbering neighbourhood or personal
quarrels bore in this way a strange fruitage of revenge; for the
cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are
the enemies of God.
Any person daring to hint the slightest distrust of the
proceedings was in danger of being immediately brought under
accusation of a league with Satan. Husbands and children were
thus brought to the gallows for daring to disbelieve these
charges against their wives and mothers. Some of the clergy were
accused for endeavouring to save members of their churches.[[150]]
One poor woman was charged with "giving a look toward th
great meeting-house of Salem, and immediately a demon entered the
house and tore down a part of it." This cause for the falling o
a bit of poorly nailed wainscoting seemed perfectly satisfactory
to Dr. Cotton Mather, as well as to the judge and jury, and she
was hanged, protesting her innocence. Still another lady,
belonging to one of the most respected families of the region,
was charged with the crime of witchcraft. The children were
fearfully afflicted whenever she appeared near them. It seemed
never to occur to any one that a bitter old feud between the Rev
Mr. Parris and the family of the accused might have prejudiced
the children and directed their attention toward the woman. N
account was made of the fact that her life had been entirely
blameless; and yet, in view of the wretched insufficiency o
proof, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. As the
brought in this verdict, all the children began to shriek and
scream, until the court committed the monstrous wrong of causing
her to be indicted anew. In order to warrant this, the judge
referred to one perfectly natural and harmless expression made b
the woman when under examination. The jury at last brought her in
guilty. She was condemned; and, having been brought into the
church heavily ironed, was solemnly excommunicated and delivered
over to Satan by the minister. Some good sense still prevailed,
and the Governor reprieved her; but ecclesiastical pressure and
popular clamour were too powerful. The Governor was induced to
recall his reprieve, and she was executed, protesting her
innocence and praying for her enemies.[[150b]]
Another typical case was presented. The Rev. Mr. Burroughs,
against whom considerable ill will had been expressed, and whose
petty parish quarrel with the powerful Putnam family had led t
his dismissal from his ministry, was named by the possessed as
one of those who plagued them, one of the most influential amon
the afflicted being Ann Putnam. Mr. Burroughs had led a blameless
life, the main thing charged against him by the Putnams bein
that he insisted strenuously that his wife should not go abou
the parish talking of her own family matters. He was charged with
afflicting the children, convicted, and executed. At the last
moment he repeated the Lord's Prayer solemnly and fully, which it
was supposed that no sorcerer could do, and this, together with
his straightforward Christian utterances at the execution, shook
the faith of many in the reality of diabolic possession
Ere long it was known that one of the girls had acknowledged
that she had belied some persons who had been executed, and
especially Mr. Burroughs, and that she had begged forgiveness;
but this for a time availed nothing. Persons who would not
confess were tied up and put to a sort of torture which was
effective in securing new revelations.
In the case of Giles Corey the horrors of the persecutio
culminated. Seeing that his doom was certain, and wishing to
preserve his family from attainder and their property from
confiscation, he refused to plead. Though eighty years of age, h
was therefore pressed to death, and when, in his last agonies,
his tongue was pressed out of his mouth, the sheriff with his
walking-stick thrust it back again.
Everything was made to contribute to the orthodox view of
possession. On one occasion, when a cart conveying eight
condemned persons to the place of execution stuck fast in the
mire, some of the possessed declared that they saw the devi
trying to prevent the punishment of his associates. Confessions
of witchcraft abounded; but the way in which these confessions
were obtained is touchingly exhibited in a statement afterwar
made by several women. In explaining the reasons why, when
charged with afflicting sick persons, they made a fals
confession, they said
"... By reason of that suddain surprizal, we knowing
ourselves altogether Innocent of that Crime, we were all
exceedingly astonished and amazed, and consternated an
affrighted even out of our Reason; and our nearest and deares
Relations, seeing us in that dreadful condition, and knowing our
great danger, apprehending that there was no other way to save
our lives,... out of tender... pitty perswaded us to confess what
we did confess. And indeed that Confession, that it is said we
made, was no other than what was suggested to us by some
Gentlemen; they telling us, that we were Witches, and they kne
it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us
think that it was so; and our understanding, our reason, and our
faculties almost gone, we were not capable of judging our
condition; as also the hard measures they used with us, rendre
us uncapable of making our Defence, but said anything and
everything which they desired, and most of what we said, was in
effect a consenting to what they said...."[[152]]
Case after case, in which hysteria, fanaticism, cruelty,
injustice, and trickery played their part, was followed up to the
scaffold. In a short time twenty persons had been put to a cruel
death, and the number of the accused grew larger and larger. The
highest position and the noblest character formed no barrier.
Daily the possessed became more bold, more tricky, and more wild.
No plea availed anything. In behalf of several women, whose live
had been of the purest and gentlest, petitions were presented,
but to no effect. A scriptural text was always ready to aid in
the repression of mercy: it was remembered that "Satan himself i
transformed into an angel of light," and above all resounded the
Old Testament injunction, which had sent such multitudes in
Europe to the torture-chamber and the stake, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live."
Such clergymen as Noyes, Parris, and Mather, aided by such
judges as Stoughton and Hathorn, left nothing undone to stimulate
these proceedings. The great Cotton Mather based upon this
outbreak of disease thus treated his famous book, _Wonders of the
Invisible World_, thanking God for the triumphs over Satan thus
gained at Salem; and his book received the approbation of the
Governor of the Province, the President of Harvard College, and
various eminent theologians in Europe as well as in America.
But, despite such efforts as these, observation, and thought
upon observation, which form the beginning of all true science
brought in a new order of things. The people began to fall away.
Justice Bradstreet, having committed thirty or forty persons,
became aroused to the absurdity of the whole matter; the minister
of Andover had the good sense to resist the theological view;
even so high a personage as Lady Phips, the wife of the Governor,
began to show lenity.
Each of these was, in consequence of this disbelief, charged
with collusion with Satan; but such charges seemed now to lose
their force.
In the midst of all this delusion and terrorism stood Cotton
Mather firm as ever. His efforts to uphold the declining
superstition were heroic. But he at last went one step too far.
Being himself possessed of a mania for myth-making and
wonder-mongering, and having described a case of witchcraft wit
possibly greater exaggeration than usual, he was confronted by
Robert Calef. Calef was a Boston merchant, who appears to have
united the good sense of a man of business to considerable
shrewdness in observation, power in thought, and love for truth;
and he began writing to Mather and others, to show the weak
points in the system. Mather, indignant that a person so much his
inferior dared dissent from his opinion, at first affected to
despise Calef; but, as Calef pressed him more and more closely,
Mather denounced him, calling him among other things "A Coal from
Hell." All to no purpose: Calef fastened still more firmly upon
the flanks of the great theologian. Thought and reason now began
to resume their sway.
The possessed having accused certain men held in very high
respect, doubts began to dawn upon the community at large. Her
was the repetition of that which had set men thinking in the
German bishoprics when those under trial for witchcraft there ha
at last, in their desperation or madness, charged the ver
bishops and the judges upon the bench with sorcery. The party of
reason grew stronger. The Rev. Mr. Parris was soon put upon the
defensive: for some of the possessed began to confess that they
had accused people wrongfully. Herculean efforts were made by
certain of the clergy and devout laity to support the declinin
belief, but the more thoughtful turned more and more against it;
jurymen prominent in convictions solemnly retracted their
verdicts and publicly craved pardon of God and man. Most striking
of all was the case of Justice Sewall. A man of the highest
character, he had in view of authority deduced from Scripture an
the principles laid down by the great English judges,
unhesitatingly condemned the accused; but reason now dawned upon
him. He looked back and saw the baselessness of the wliole
proceedings, and made a public statement of his errors. His
diary contains many passages showing deep contrition, and eve
afterward, to the end of his life, he was wont, on one day in the
year, to enter into solitude, and there remain all the day long
in fasting, prayer, and penitence.
Chief-Justice Stoughton never yielded. To the last he
lamented the "evil spirit of unbelief" which was thwarting the
glorious work of freeing New England from demons.
The church of Salem solemnly revoked the excommunications o
the condemned and drove Mr. Parris from the pastorate. Cotton
Mather passed his last years in groaning over the decline of the
faith and the ingratitude of a people for whom he had done so
much. Very significant is one of his complaints, since it shows
the evolution of a more scientific mode of thought abroad as wel
as at home: he laments in his diary that English publishers
gladly printed Calef's book, but would no longer publish his
own, and he declares this "an attack upon the glory of the Lord."
About forty years after the New England epidemic of "possession"
occurred another typical series of pheniomena in France. In
1727 there died at the French capital a simple and kindl
ecclesiastic, the Archdeacon Paris. He had lived a pious,
Christian life, and was endeared to multitudes by his charity;
unfortunately, he had espoused the doctrine of Jansen on grace
and free will, and, though he remained in the Gallican Church, he
and those who thought like him were opposed by the Jesuits, and
finally condemned by a papal bull
His remains having been buried in the cemetery of St. Medard,
the Jansenists flocked to say their prayers at his grave,
and soon miracles began to be wrought there. Ere long they were
multiplied. The sick being brought and laid upon the tombstone,
many were cured. Wonderful stories were attested by
eye-witnesses. The myth-making tendency--the passion for
developing, enlarging, and spreading tales of wonder--came int
full play and was given free course.
Many thoughtful men satisfied themselves of the truth of
these representations. One of the foremost English scholars came
over, examined into them, and declared that there could be n
doubt as to the reality of the cures.
This state of things continued for about four years, when,
in 1731, more violent effects showed themselves. Sundry persons
approaching the tomb were thrown into convulsions, hysterics, and
catalepsy; these diseases spread, became epidemic, and soon
multitudes were similarly afflicted. Both religious parties made
the most of these cases. In vain did such great authorities in
medical science as Hecquet and Lorry attribute the whole to
natural causes: the theologians on both sides declared them
Supernatural--the Jansenists attributing them to God, the Jesuits
to Satan.
Of late years such cases have been treated in France wit
much shrewdness. When, about the middle of the present century,
the Arab priests in Algiers tried to arouse fanaticism against
the French Christians by performing miracles, the French
Government, instead of persecuting the priests, sent
Robert-Houdin, the most renowned juggler of his time, to the scene
of action, and for every Arab miracle Houdin performed two: di
an Arab marabout turn a rod into a serpent, Houdin turned his rod
into two serpents; and afterward showed the people how he did it.
So, too, at the last International Exposition, the French
Government, observing the evil effects produced by the mania for
table turning and tipping, took occasion, when a great number of
French schoolmasters and teachers were visiting the exposition,
to have public lectures given in which all the business of dark
closets, hand-tying, materialization of spirits, presenting the
faces of the departed, and ghostly portraiture was fully performed
by professional mountebanks, and afterward as fully explained.
So in this case. The Government simply ordered the gate of the
cemetery to be locked, and when the crowd could no longer approach
the tomb the miracles ceased. A little Parisian ridicule helped
to end the matter. A wag wrote up over the gate of the cemetery.
"De par le Roi, defense a Dieu
De faire des miracles dans ce lieu"--
which, being translated from doggerel French into doggerel
English, is--
"By order of the king, the Lord must forbear
To work any more of his miracles here."
But the theological spirit remained powerful. The French
Revolution had not then intervened to bring it under healthy
limits. The agitation was maintained, and, though the miracles
and cases of possession were stopped in the cemetery, it spread
Again full course was given to myth-making and the retailing o
wonders. It was said that men had allowed themselves to be
roasted before slow fires, and had been afterward foun
uninjured; that some had enormous weights piled upon them, but
had supernatural powers of resistance given them; and that, in
one case, a voluntary crucifixion had taken place.
This agitation was long, troublesome, and no doubt robbed
many temporarily or permanently of such little brains as they
possessed. It was only when the violence had become an old story
and the charm of novelty had entirely worn off, and the afflicted
found themselves no longer regarded with especial interest, that
the epidemic died away.[[156]]
But in Germany at that time the outcome of this belief was
far more cruel. In 1749 Maria Renata Singer, sub-prioress of
convent at Wurzburg, was charged with bewitching her fellow-nuns
There was the usual story--the same essential facts as at
Loudun--women shut up against their will, dreams of Satan
disguised as a young man, petty jealousies, spites, quarrels,
mysterious uproar, trickery, utensils thrown about in a way not
to be accounted for, hysterical shrieking and convulsions, and,
finally, the torture, confession, and execution of the supposed
culprit.[[157]]
Various epidemics of this sort broke out from time to tim
in other parts of the world, though happily, as modern scepticis
prevailed, with less cruel results.
In 1760 some congregations of Calvinistic Methodists in Wales
became so fervent that they began leaping for joy. The mania
spread, and gave rise to a sect called the "Jumpers." A similar
outbreak took place afterward in England, and has been repeated
at various times and places since in our own country.[[157b]]
In 1780 came another outbreak in France; but this time it
was not the Jansenists who were affected, but the strictl
orthodox. A large number of young girls between twelve and
nineteen years of age, having been brought together at the church
of St. Roch, in Paris, with preaching and ceremonies calculated
to arouse hysterics, one of them fell into convulsions.
Immediately other children were similarly taken, until some fifty
or sixty were engaged in the same antics. This mania spread to
other churches and gatherings, proved very troublesome, and in
some cases led to results especially painful.
About the same period came a similar outbreak among the
Protestants of the Shetland Isles. A woman having been seized
with convulsions at church, the disease spread to others, mainly
women, who fell into the usual contortions and wild shriekings. A
very effective cure proved to be a threat to plunge the diseased
into a neighbouring pond
II. BEGINNINGS OF HELPFUL SCEPTICISM.
But near the end of the eighteenth century a fact very
important for science was established. It was found that these
manifestations do not arise in all cases from supernatural
sources. In 1787 came the noted case at Hodden Bridge, in
Lancashire. A girl working in a cotton manufactory there put a
mouse into the bosom of another girl who had a great dread of
mice. The girl thus treated immediately went into convulsions,
which lasted twenty-four hours. Shortly afterward three othe
girls were seized with like convulsions, a little later six more,
and then others, until, in all, twenty-four were attacked. Then
came a fact throwing a flood of light upon earlier occurrences.
This epidemic, being noised abroad, soon spread to anothe
factory five miles distant. The patients there suffered from
strangulation, danced, tore their hair, and dashed their heads
against the walls. There was a strong belief that it was a
disease introduced in cotton, but a resident physician amused th
patients with electric shocks, and the disease died out.
In 1801 came a case of like import in the Charite Hospital
in Berlin. A girl fell into strong convulsions. The disease
proved contagious, several others becoming afflicted in a similar
way; but nearly all were finally cured, principally by th
administration of opium, which appears at that time to have been
a fashionable remedy.
Of the same sort was a case at Lyons in 1851. Sixty women
were working together in a shop, when one of them, after a bitter
quarrel with her husband, fell into a violent nervous paroxysm.
The other women, sympathizing with her, gathered about to assist
her, but one after another fell into a similar condition, until
twenty were thus prostrated, and a more general spread of th
epidemic was only prevented by clearing the premises.[[158]]
But while these cases seemed, in the eye of Science, fatal
to the old conception of diabolic influence, the great majority
of such epidemics, when unexplained, continued to give strengt
to the older view.
In Roman Catholic countries these manifestations, as we have
seen, have generally appeared in convents, or in churches where
young girls are brought tog
