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Edmund Burke - "Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches"

John Masefield - "Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger"

Ellis Parker Butler - "The Water Goats and Other Troubles"

Johann Wolfgang Goethe - "Italienische Reise Teil 1"

History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

A >> Andrew Dickson White >> History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom




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, and
obliged to devote himself to proving that Solomon used more money
than he possibly could have obtained from Ophir or his subjects,
and therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical
methods and the philosopher's stone as the result of them.[277]

[277] For an extract from Agrippa's Occulta Philosophia, giving
examples of the way in which mystical names were obtained from
the Bible, see Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, pp. 143 et seq.
For the germs of many mystic beliefs regarding number and the
like, which were incorporated into mediaeval theology, see
Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, English translation, pp. 254
and 572, and elsewhere. As to the connection of spiritual things
with inorganic nature in relation to chemistry, see Eicken, p.
634. On the injury to science wrought by Platonism acting
through mediaeval theology, see Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie,
vol. i, p. 90. As to the influence of mysticism upon strong men
in science, see Hoefer; also Kopp, Geschichte der Alchemie, vol.
i, p. 211. For a very curious Catholic treatise on sacred
numbers, see the Abbe Auber, Symbolisme Religieux, Paris, 1870;
also Detzel, Christliche Ikonographie, pp. 44 et seq.; and for an
equally important Protestant work, see Samuell, Seven the Sacred
number, London 1887. It is interesting to note that the latter
writer, having been forced to give up the seven planets, consoles
himself with the statement that "the earth is the seventh planet,
counting from Neptune and calling the asteroids one" (see p.
426). For the electrum magicum, the seven metals composing it,
and its wonderful qualities, see extracts from Paracelsus's
writings in Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus, London, 1887, pp. 168
et seq. As to the more rapid transition of light than sound, the
following expresses the scholastic method well: "What is the
cause why we see sooner the lightning than we heare the thunder
clappe? That is because our sight is both nobler and sooner
perceptive of its object than our eare; as being the more active
part, and priore to our hearing: besides, the visible species are
more subtile and less corporeal than the audible species."--
Person's Varieties, Meteors, p. 82. For Basil Valentine's view,
see Hoefer, vol. i, pp. 453-465; Schmieder, Geschichte der
Alchemie, pp. 197-209; Allgemeine deutsche Biographies, article
Basilius. For the discussions referred to on possibilities of
God assuming forms of stone, or log, or beast, see Lippert,
Christenthum, Volksglaube, und Volksbrauch, pp. 372, 373, where
citations are given, etc. For the syllogism regarding Solomon,
see Figuier, L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes, pp. 106, 107. For
careful appreciation of Becher's position in the history of
chemistry, see Kopp, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der Chemie, etc.,
von Geber bis Stahl, Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 201 et seq. For the
text proving the existence of the philosopher's stone from the
book of Revelation, see Figuier, p. 22.


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 the power
of medieval theology seemed broken.

The first of these examples is Melanchthon. He was the scholar
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.[278]

[278] For Melanchthon's ideas on physics, see his Initia
Doctrinae Physicae, Wittenberg, 1557, especially pp. 243 and 274;
also in vol. xiii of Bretschneider's edition of the collected
works, and especially pp. 339-343.


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 first
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 striking
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 natural
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 sometimes craftily conjecturing
that, if science be little understood, "each single thing can be
referred more easily to the hand and rod of God," and says, "THIS
IS NOTHING MORE OR LESS THAN 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 the
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."[279]

[279] See the Novum Organon, translated by the Rev. G. W.
Kitchin, Oxford, 1855, chaps. lxv and lxxxix.


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," the "fixing of
the stars, ever standing at equal distances," the "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 truths 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, he says that Solomon was
enabled in his Proverbs, "by donation of God, to compile a
natural history of all verdure."[280]

[280] See Bacon, Advancement of Learning, edited by W. Aldis
Wright, London, 1873, pp. 47, 48. Certainly no more striking
examples of the strength of the evil which he had all along been
denouncing could be exhibited that these in his own writings.
Nothing better illustrates the sway of the mediaeval theology, or
better explains his blindness to the discoveries of Copernicus
and to the experiments of Gilbert. For a very contemptuous
statement of Lord Bacon's claim to his position as a philosopher,
see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, Leipsic, 1872, vol.i, p.
219. For a more just statement, see Brewster, Life of Sir Isaac
Newton, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 298.


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 had
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--was not strong
enough to free himself from theologic bias; he still inclined to
believe that the gases he had discovered, were in 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 the theological view.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century there had come a great
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 is
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 gradually
weakened, and the working of the deserted mines was resumed; yet
even at a comparatively recent period we find it still 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 the 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 the blessing of God."[281]
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. More and more there rose men
bold enough to break away from 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.[282]

[281] For Loescher's protest, see Julian Schmidt, Geschichte des
geistigen Lebens, etc., vol. i, p. 319.

[282] For the general view of noxious gases as imps of Satan, see
Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. i, p. 350; vol. ii, p. 48.
For the work of Black, Priestley, Bergmann, and others, see main
authorities already cited, and especially the admirable paper of
Dr. R. G. Eccles on The Evolution of Chemistry, New York, D.
Appleton & Co., 1891. For the treatment of Priesley, see
Spence's Essays, London, 1892; also Rutt, Life and Correspondence
of Priestley, vol. ii, pp. 115 et seq.



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 various
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, and
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 of 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 brought 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 more 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 in
receiving the hotchpotch of philosophers as they did." It is
interesting to know that among the men thus contemptuously
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 the
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 if
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, by 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 and more
clearly the reign of law, steadily undermined the older
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 the
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.[283]

[283] For a reappearance of the fundamental doctrines of black
magic among theologians, see Rev. Dr. Jewett, Professor of
Pastoral Theology in the Prot. Episc. Gen. Theolog. Seminary of
New York, Diabolology: The Person and the Kingdom of Satan, New
York, 1889. For their appearance among theosophists, see Eliphas
Levi, Histoire de la Magie, especially the final chapters. For
opposition to Boyle and chemistry studies at Oxford in the latter
half of the seventeenth century, see the address of Prof. Dixon,
F. R. S., before the British Association, 1894. For the recent
progress of chemistry, and opposition to its earlier development
at Oxford, see Lord Salisbury's address as President of the
British Association, in 1894. For the Protestant survival of the
mediaeval assertion that the universe was created out of nothing,
see the Westminster Catechism, question 15.


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 university
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 Spanish 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 Popes Gregory XVI and
Pius IX discouraged, if they did not forbid, the 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 in science ever known. It was kept under lay control
and became one of the glories of France; but, emboldened by the
restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, the Church began to
undermine this hated system, and in 1868 had made such progress
that all was ready for the final assault.

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