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 The warfare of science 
 XVIII. From magic to chem- 
 istry and physics.
 
 UNIVERSITYOF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, IRVINE 
 NKW CHAFTEKS IN 
 
 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDKKW D1CKSOX WHITE, LI.. I)., L. II. U 
 
 KX-PKKKI1IENT nK IOKNKI.I. CMVKKSITY 
 
 XVIII. FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND 
 PHYSICS 
 
 HKl'HL\Th:i> rilOM T11K I'Ul'l'l.Ai; .sT/A'.VrA' M <>\ Till.) 
 FOll DKCKMHKH, JW.; A.\l> ./.l.Vr.l // }' ;s:-.; 
 
 NEW VOHK 
 
 I). A PPL ETON A N I) CUM PA N V 
 181)8
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN 
 
 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L.H.D. 
 
 KX-I'l'.ESIUENT OP COBNBLL CN1VEE8ITT 
 
 XVIII. F,ROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND 
 PHYSICS 
 
 REPRINTED FROM TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
 FOR DECEMBER, 1892, AND JANUARY 1893 
 
 NEW YORK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
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 Br D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN 
 
 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 FBOM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY 
 AOT) PHYSICS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 IN all the earliest developments of human thought we find a 
 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, here 
 and there, popular beliefs, observances, or sayings, drawn from 
 this earlier phase of thought. 
 
 Between the prehistoric savage developing this theory, and 
 therefore endeavoring 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 hiero- 
 glyphs, cuneiform inscriptions, and various other records of an- 
 tiquity are read, the development of this belief can be studied in 
 Egypt, India, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, and Phoenicia. From 
 these countries 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, sorcery, 
 and soothsaying constantly referred to as realities.* 
 
 * For magic in prehistoric times and survivals of it since, with abundant citation of 
 authorities, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap, iv ; also the Early History of Mankind, by 
 the same author, third edition, pp. 115 et seq., also p. 380 ; also Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual, 
 and Religion, vol. i, chap. iv. For magic in Egypt, see Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, chaps, 
 vi-viii ; also Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de 1'Orient ; and especially the citations 
 from Chabas, Le Papyrus Magique Harris, in chap, vii ; also Maurv, La Magie et 1'Astrologie dans 
 1' Antiquite et au Moyen Age. For magic in Chaldea, see Lenormant as above. For examples of
 
 4 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 The first distinct impulse which lifted mankind toward a 
 higher view of research into natural laws was given by the philos- 
 ophers 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 had 
 little if any real reason for existing ; Aristotle, a world in which 
 the same sciences were developed not so much by observation of 
 what is, as of speculation on what ought to be. From the former 
 of these two great men came into Christian theology many germs 
 of mediaeval magic, and from the latter sundry modes of reason- 
 ing 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 legacy from them was especially 
 precious ; the idea that a science of Nature is possible, and that 
 the highest occupation of man is the discovery of its laws. Still 
 another gift from them was greatest of all, for they gave scien- 
 tific freedom : they laid no interdict upon new paths ; they inter- 
 posed 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 pur- 
 suits, and of freedom in scientific research, was especially re- 
 ceived 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.* 
 
 magical powers in India, see Max Miiller's Sacred Books of the East, vol. xvii, pp. 121 et seq. 
 For a legendary view of magic in Media, see the Zend Avesta, Part I, p. 14, translated by 
 Darmsteter ; and for a more highly developed view, see the Zend Avesta, Part III, p. 239, 
 translated by Mill. For magic in Greece and Rome, and especially in the Xeoplatonic school 
 as well as in the middle ages, see especially Maun-, La Magie et 1'Astrologie, chaps, iii-v. 
 For various sorts of magic recognized and condemned in our sacred books, see Deuteronomy, 
 xviii, 10, 11 ; and for the burning of magical books at Ephesus under the influence of St. 
 Paul, see Acts, xix, 14. See also Ewald, History of Israel, Martineau's translation, fourth 
 edition, ii, 55-63 ; iii, 45-51. For a very elaborate summing up of the passages in our 
 sacred books, recognizing magic as a fact, see De Uaen, "De Magia," Lips., 1775, chaps, i, 
 ii, and iii, of first part. For general subject of magic, see Ennemoser, History of Magic, 
 translated by Howitt, which, however, constantly mixes sorcery with magic proper. 
 
 * As to the beginnings of physical science in Greece, and of the theological opposition to 
 physical science, also Socrates's view regarding certain branches as interdicted to human
 
 XEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 5 
 
 The establishment of Christianity, though it began a new 
 evolution of religion, 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 at- 
 mosphere in which all seeking for truth in Nature as truth was re- 
 garded as futile. The general belief derived from the New Testa- 
 ment Scriptures was, that the end of the world was at hand ; that 
 the last judgment was approaching; that all existing physical 
 Nature was soon to be destroyed : hence, the greatest thinkers in 
 the Church generally poured contempt upon all investigators into 
 a science of Nature, and insisted that 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 Damiaii, the noted chancellor of Pope Gregory VII, in the 
 eleventh century, declaring all worldly sciences to be " absurdities " 
 and " fooleries/' it becomes the atmosphere of thought.* 
 
 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 favored magic rather than science, 
 for it was a standard of rigid dogmatism obtained from literal 
 readings in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The most care- 
 ful 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 hap- 
 pened to be preserved in the literature which had come to be held 
 as sacred. 
 
 For twelve centuries, then, the physical sciences were thus dis- 
 couraged 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, Rabanus Maurus, accepted 
 
 study, see Grote's Greece, vol. i, pp. 495 and 504, 505 ; also Jowett's introduction to his 
 translation of the Thnaeus, and Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences. For examples 
 showing the incompatibility of Plato's methods in physical science with that pursued in mod- 
 ern times, see Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, English translation by Alleyne and Good- 
 win, pp. 375 et seq. The supposed opposition to freedom of opinion in the " Laws " of Plato, 
 toward the end of his life, ran hardly make against the whole spirit of Greek thought. 
 
 * For the view of Peter Damian and others through the middle ages as to the futility of 
 scientific investigation, see citations in Eicken, Geschichte und System der niitteliilterlichen 
 Weltanschauung, chap. vi.
 
 6 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 the scriptural standard of science, and used it as a means of 
 Christian edification. The views of Bede and Isidor 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 in- 
 directly to recognize even the beginnings of a real philosophy of 
 Nature. A multitude of less-known men found warrant in Script- 
 ure for magic applied to less worthy purposes.* 
 
 But after the thousand years to which the Church, upon sup- 
 posed scriptural warrant, had lengthened out the term of the 
 earth's existence had passed, " the end of all things" seemed fur- 
 ther off than ever ; and in the thirteenth century, owing to causes 
 which need not be dwelt upon here, came a great revival of 
 thought, so that the forces of theology and of science seemed ar- 
 rayed for a contest. On one side came a revival of religious fer- 
 vor, and to this day the works of the cathedral-builders mark its 
 depth and strength ; on the other side came a new spirit of in- 
 quiry 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. Fet- 
 tered though he was by the methods sanctioned in the Church, 
 dark as was all about him, he had conceived ideas of better 
 methods and 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 prod- 
 ucts, 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 script- 
 ural texts was renewed in the development of scholastic theology, 
 and ecclesiastical power acting through thousands of subtle chan- 
 nels was made to aid this development. The old idea of the vast 
 superiority of theology was revived. Though Albert's main 
 effort was to Christianize science, he was dealt with by the 
 authorities of the Dominican order, subjected to suspicion and 
 
 * As typical examples, see the utterances of Eusebius and Lactantius regarding astrono- 
 mers given in the chapter on Astronomy. For a summary of Rabanus Maurus's doctrine of 
 physics, see Heller, Gescbichte der Physik, vol. i, pp. 172 et seq. For Bede and Isidore, see 
 the earlier chapters of this work. For an excellent statement regarding the application of 
 scriptural standards to scientific research in the middle ages, see Kretschmer, Die physische 
 Erdkunde im Christlichen Mittelalter, pp. 5 et seq. For the distinctions in magic recognized 
 in the mediaeval Church, see the long catalogue of various sorts given in the Abbe Migne's 
 Encyclopedic Thologique, third series, article " Magie."
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 7 
 
 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 organiza- 
 tions that have reason to lament the pressure of ecclesiasticism 
 which turned Albert the Great from natural philosophy to theol- 
 ogy, 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 com- 
 peers 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.* 
 
 The next great man of that age whom the theological and eccle- 
 siastical forces of the time turned from the right path was Vin- 
 cent of Beauvais. During the first half of the twelfth century he 
 devoted himself to the study of Nature in several of her most in- 
 teresting 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 com- 
 mentary on the account of creation given 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 ; 
 
 * For a very careful discussion of Albert's strength in investigation and weakness in 
 yielding to scholastic authority, see Kopp, Ansichten iiber die Aufgabe der Ghemie von 
 Geber bis Stahl, Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 64 et seq. For a very extended and enthusiastic 
 biographical sketch, see Pouchet. For comparison of his work with that of Thomas Aquinas, 
 see Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol. vi, p. 461. " H etait aussi tres-habile dans 
 les arts mecaniques, ce que le fit soup9onner d'etre sorcier" (Sprengel, Histoire de la 
 Medecine, vol. ii, p. 389). For Albert's biography treated strictly in accordance with ecclesi- 
 astical methods, see Albert the Great, by Joachim Sighart, translated by the Rev. T. A. 
 Dickson, of the Order of Preachers, published under the sanction of the Dominican censor 
 and of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, London, 1876. How an Englishman like 
 Cardinal Manning could tolerate among Englishmen such an unctuous glossing over of his- 
 torical truth is one of the wonders of contemporary history. For choice specimens see 
 chapters ii and iv. For one of the best and most recent summaries, see Heller, Geschichte 
 der Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, pp. 179 et seq.
 
 8 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 but the force which had given wrong direction to Albert of Boll- 
 stadt, backed as it was by the whole ecclesiastical power of his 
 time, was too strong, and in all the life labor of Vincent nothing 
 appears of any permanent value. He 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.* 
 
 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 yielded 
 somewhat at one period to love of natural science, it was he who 
 finally made that great treaty or compromise which for ages sub- 
 jected science entirely to theology. He it was who reared the most 
 enduring barrier against those who in that age and in succeeding 
 ages labored to open for science the path by its own legitimate 
 methods toward its own noble ends. 
 
 He had been the pupil of Albert the Great, and had gained 
 much from him. Through the earlier systems of philosophy, as 
 they were then known, and through the earlier theologic thought, 
 he had gone with great labor and vigor ; and all his mighty pow- 
 ers, thus disciplined and cultured, he brought to bear in making a 
 treaty or truce which was to give theology permanent supremacy 
 over science. 
 
 The experimental method had already been practically initi- 
 ated ; 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 Aris- 
 totle'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 per- 
 verted by theology, f 
 
 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 labors ; and among the legends 
 embodying this claim is that given by the Bollandists and immor- 
 talized by a renowned painter. The great philosopher and saint is 
 represented in the habit of his order, with book and pen in hand, 
 kneeling before the image of Christ crucified, and as he kneels the 
 
 * For Vincent de Beauvais, see Etudes sur Vincent de Beauvais, par l'Abb6 Bourgeat, 
 chaps, xii, xiii, and xiv ; also Pouchet, Histoire des Sciences Xaturelles au Moyen Age, Paris, 
 1863, pp. 470 et seq.; also other histories cited hereafter. 
 
 f For citations showing this sulwrdinatiou of science to theology, see Eicken, chap. vi.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 9 
 
 image thus addresses him : " Thomas, thou hast written well con- 
 cerning me; what price wilt thou receive for thy labor?" The 
 myth-making faculty of the people at large was also brought into 
 play. According to a wide-spread and circumstantial legend, Al- 
 bert, by magical means, created an android an artificial man. liv- 
 ing, speaking, and answering all questions with such subtlety that 
 St. Thomas, unable to answer its reasoning, broke it to pieces with 
 his staff. 
 
 To this day historians of the Roman Church like Rohrbacher, 
 and historians of science like Pouchet, find it convenient to pro- 
 pitiate the Church by dilating upon the glories of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas in thus making an alliance between religious and scien- 
 tific thought, and laying the foundations for a " sanctified science " ; 
 but the unprejudiced historian can not indulge in this 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 
 com promise 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 of mixed theology and science 
 which, as Hallam declares, "after three or four hundred years 
 had not untied a single knot or added one unequivocal truth to 
 the domain of philosophy " the path which, as all modern his- 
 tory proves, has ever since led only to delusion and evil.* 
 
 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. 
 
 * For the work of Aquinas, see his Liber de Coelo et Mundo, section xx ; also, Life and 
 Labors of St. Thomas of Aquin, by Archbishop Vaughan, pp. 459 et seq. For his labors in 
 natural science, see Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, Paris, 1843, vol. i, p. 381. For theological 
 views of science in the middle ages, and rejoicing thereat, see Pouchet, Hist, des Sci. Nat 
 au Moyen Age, ubi supra. Pouchet says : " En general an milieu du moyen age les sciences 
 sont essentiellement chretiennes, leur but est tout-a-fait religieux, et elles semblent beaucoup 
 moins s'inquieter de 1'avancement intellectual de Phomme que de son salut eternel." Pouchet 
 calls this " conciliation " into a " harmonieux ensemble " " la plus glorieuse des conqufi tes 
 intellectuelles du moyen age." Pouchet belongs to Rouen, and the shadow of Rouen 
 Cathedral seems thrown over all his history. See, also, 1'Abbe" Rohrbacher, Hist de 
 1'Eglise Catholique, Paris, 1858, vol. xviii, pp. 421 et seq. The abbe" dilates upon the fact 
 that " the Church organizes the agreement of all the sciences by the labors of St. Thomas 
 of Aquin and his contemporaries." For the complete subordination of science to theology 
 by St. Thomas, see Eicken, chap. vi. For the theological character of science in the middle 
 ages, recognized by a Protestant philosophic historian, see the well-known passage in Guizot, 
 History of Civilization in Europe ; and by a noted Protestant ecclesiastic, see Bishop Hamp- 
 den's Life of Thomas Aquinas, chaps, xxxvi, xxxvii ; see also Hallam, Middle Ages, chap, 
 ix. For dealings of Pope John XXII, of the Kings of France and England, and of the Re- 
 public of Venice, see Figuier, L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes, pp. 140, 141, where, in a note, 
 the text of the bull Spondent Pariter is given. For popular legends regarding Albert and 
 St. Thomas, see Elephas Levi, Hist, de la Magie, chap. v.
 
 10 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 Roger Bacon's investigations already begun were discredited; 
 worthless mixtures of scriptural legends with imperfectly au- 
 thenticated 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. As we have seen in other 
 chapters, there was evolved more and more a vivid sense of the 
 interference of Satan with human affairs, and especially of the 
 interference of the ancient gods whom St. Paul had explicitly 
 declared to be devils, and who were naturally indignant at their 
 dethronement. More and more suspicion attached to all men 
 who attempted anything in the development of science. The 
 old scriptural warrrant for the existence of sorcery and magic 
 was brought in as a powerful argument against such men. 
 The conscience of th time, therefore, acting in obedience to 
 the highest authorities in the Church, and, as was supposed, in 
 defense of religion, brought out a missile which it hurled against 
 scientific investigators with deadly effect ; the mediaeval battle- 
 fields of thought were strewn with such ; it was the charge of sor- 
 cery and magic of unlawful compact with the devil. This mis- 
 sile was effective. We find it used against every great investi- 
 gator of Nature in those times and for ages after. The list of 
 great men in those centuries charged with magic, as given by 
 Naudd, is astounding ; it includes every man of real mark, and in 
 the midst of them stands one of the most thoughtful popes, Syl- 
 vester 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.* 
 
 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 gen- 
 erally 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 sound historical 
 judgment seems likely to bring the fame of the two who bear 
 the name of Bacon nearer to equality. Bacon of the chancellor- 
 
 * For the charge of magic against scholars and others, see Naude, Apologie pour \es 
 grands hommes soupconn^s de Magie, passim ; also, Maury, Hist, de la Magie, troisieme 
 edit, pp. 214, 215 ; also, Cuvier, Hist des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 396. For a circum- 
 stantial account of this charge of magic against Pope Boniface VIII, see Milman, Latin 
 Christianity, Book XII, chap. iii.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 11 
 
 ship and of the Novum Organum may not wane, but Bacon of 
 the prison-cell and the Opus Major steadily approaches him in 
 brightness. 
 
 More than three centuries before Francis Bacon advocated the 
 experimental method, Roger Bacon practiced 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, burning specula, telescopes, which were given 
 by him to the world, directly or indirectly. In his writings are 
 found formulae for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bis- 
 muth. It is even claimed, with much appearance of justice, that 
 he investigated the power of steam, and he seems to have very 
 nearly reached some of the principal doctrines of modern chem- 
 istry. But it should be borne in mind that his method of investi- 
 gation was even greater than its results. *' In an age when theo- 
 logical 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 read the sketch given by Whewell of Bacon's pro- 
 cess of reasoning regarding the refraction of light, he seems di- 
 vinely inspired. 
 
 On this man came the brunt of the battle. The most con- 
 scientious 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 con- 
 demned 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 sus- 
 pectas" % 
 
 Upon his return to Oxford, about 1250, the forces of unreason 
 beset him on all sides. Greatest of all his enemies was Bonaven- 
 tura. This enemy was the theologic idol of the period : the 
 learned world knew him as the " seraphic Doctor " ; Dante gave 
 him an honored 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,
 
 12 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 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 authori- 
 ties. 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. Typical 
 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 
 time-honored legend regarding the origin of the rainbow, sup- 
 posed 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 should not be 
 another universal deluge. 
 
 But this was not the worst : another theological idea was ar- 
 rayed against him, the idea of satanic intervention in science ; 
 hence he was attacked with that goodly missile which with the 
 epithets " infidel " and " atheist " has decided the fate of so many 
 battles the charge of magic and compact with Satan. 
 
 He defended himself with a most unfortunate weapon a 
 weapon which exploded in his hands and injured him more than 
 the enemy. For he argued against the idea of compacts with 
 Satan, and showed that much which is ascribed to demons results 
 from natural means. This added fuel to the flame ; to limit the 
 power of Satan was deemed hardly less impious than to limit the 
 power of God. 
 
 The most powerful protectors availed him little. His friend 
 Guy Foulkes, having in 1265 been made pope under the name of 
 Clement IV, shielded Bacon for a time; but the fury of the 
 enemy was too strong, and when he made ready to perform a few 
 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 
 with the magician ! " resounded from cell to cell, and from hall 
 to hall. 
 
 Another weapon was also used upon the battle-fields of science 
 in that time with much effect. The Arabs had made many noble 
 discoveries in science, and Averroes had, in the opinion of many, 
 divided the honors with St. Thomas Aquinas; these facts gave
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 13 
 
 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 vigor 
 of their youth, vied with each other in fighting the new thought 
 in chemistry and physics. St. Dominic solemnly condemned re- 
 search by experiment and observation ; the general of the Fran- 
 ciscan order took similar ground. In 1243 the Dominicans inter- 
 dicted 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 d'Ascoli, afterward Pope, threw him into 
 prison, where he remained for fourteen years. Though Pope 
 Clement VI 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 ene- 
 mies. How deeply the struggle had racked his mind may be 
 gathered from that last affecting declaration of his, "Would 
 that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of 
 science ! " 
 
 The attempt has been made by sundry champions of the 
 Church to show that some of Bacon's utterances against eccle- 
 siastical 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, 
 but 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, were 
 "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 
 as a guide, what might not the world have gained! Nor was 
 the wrong done to that age alone ; it was done to this age also. 
 The nineteenth century was robbed at the same time with the 
 thirteenth. But for that interference with science the nine- 
 teenth century would be enjoying discoveries which will not 
 be reached before th,e twentieth century. Thousands of precious 
 lives shall be lost in this century, tens of thousands shall suffer 
 discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of 
 discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken dealing
 
 14 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 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 experimental 
 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 endeavors of their persecutors. 
 
 In 1317 Pope John XXII issued his bull, Spondent pariter, 
 leveled 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 per- 
 tains 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 sorcerers ; he declares 
 that such sorcerers can send devils into mirrors and finger- 
 rings, and kill men and women by a magic word ; that they had 
 tried to kill him by piercing his waxen image 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." 
 
 These declarations of Pope John were echoed for generation 
 after generation, until nearly three hundred years later there 
 came the yet more terrible bull of Pope Innocent VIII, known as 
 Summis Desideranies, which let inquisitors loose upon Germany, 
 and armed them with the malleus maleficarum, to torture and 
 destroy men and women by tens of thousands for sorcery and 
 magic.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 15 
 
 Under such guidance the secular rulers were naturally vigor- 
 ous in the same policy. In 1380 Charles V of France forbade the 
 possession of furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical pro- 
 cesses. 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 1404 Henry IV of England issued a similar decree, 
 and in 1418 the Republic of Venice followed these examples. 
 
 But champions of science still pressed on. The judicial tor- 
 ture and murder of Antonio de Dominis were not simply for 
 heresy ; his investigations in the phenomena of light were an 
 additional crime. Pierre de la Rame'e fell in the massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew as a heretic, but his teachings had previously been 
 1 - J: ^ ""!>* Vrn- t.Tie Church on account of his 
 ~> \ 5 I P 'al methods.* 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 te Magiae, see Hoefer. For the uproar 
 Seschichte der Chemie, Braunschweig, 
 .-y discussion of Bacon's relation to the 
 me author, Ansichten iiber die Aufgabe 
 , for an excellent summary, see Hoefer, 
 bly the most thorough study of Bacon's 
 universe, see Prof. Werner, Die Kosmo- 
 Wien, 1879. For summaries of his work 
 )raper, p. 438 ; Saisset, Descartes et see 
 "arrisson, Progr&s de la Pensee humaine, 
 e, Paris, 1865, vol. ii, p. 397; Cuvier, 
 3 to Bacon's orthodoxy, see Saisset, pp. 
 m's condemnation, see Waddington, cited 
 herstonhaugh's article in North American 
 Bacon's relation to the world in his 
 been thwarted by theology, see Dollinger, 
 London, 1890, pp. 178, 179. For a good 
 f Satan, even in much more recent times 
 ent of Bekker's Monde Enchante by the- 
 Livres Populates, vol. i, pp. 172, 173. 
 some skepticism as to Roger Bacon being 
 ributed to him ; but, after all deductions 
 con the greatest benefactor to humanity 
 devotion to religion and the Church, see 
 >n, Augsburg, 1873, p. 112; also, citation 
 .on as a " Mohammedan," see Saisset, p. 17. 
 j by the Dominicans and Franciscans, see 
 For the suppression of chemical teaching 
 stoire de France, vol. xii, pp. 14, 15. For 
 great discoveries as to the cause and pre- 
 jation, see Beale's Disease Germs, Baldwin 
 raite d'Hygiene Publique et Privde. For 
 for an example of injury done by it, see 
 and for a studiously moderate statement, 
 For character and general efforts of John 
 seq. For the character of the two pupal
 
 i 4 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 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 wliiafc"*"" 1 "'" * * ' ' 
 
 But despite the persecutic 
 who ought to have followed 
 method rose from time to tii 
 We know little of them pers( 
 efforts is derived from the en 
 
 In 1317 Pope John XXI 
 leveled at the alchemists, bi 
 the beginnings of chemical sc 
 knavish is no doubt true, bi 
 evil from the good was shov 
 this and in sundry other bull; 
 virtue of -his infallibility as tl 
 tains to faith and morals, co 
 science alike. In two of these 
 by wisdom from on high, he c 
 are in danger of their lives fr 
 that such sorcerers can sen 
 rings, and kill men and wome 
 tried to kill him by piercing h 
 name of the devil. He, theref 
 ecclesiastical, to hunt down th 
 faithful, and he especially incr 
 various parts of Europe for th 
 
 The impulse thus given to c 
 investigation of Nature was f 
 chemistry came to be known a 
 
 These declarations of Pope 
 after generation, until nearly 
 came the yet more terrible bull 
 Summis Desiderantes, which k 
 and armed them with the me 
 destroy men and women by t 
 magic.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 15 
 
 Under such, guidance the secular rulers were naturally vigor- 
 ous in the same policy. In 1380 Charles V of France forbade the 
 possession of furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical pro- 
 cesses. 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 1404 Henry IV of England issued a similar decree, 
 and in 1418 the Republic of Venice followed these examples. 
 
 But champions of science still pressed on. The judicial tor- 
 ture and murder of Antonio de Domiuis were not simply for 
 heresy; his investigations in the phenomena of light were an 
 additional crime. Pierre de la Rame'e fell in the massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew as a heretic, but his teachings had previously been 
 stopped by a royal edict, sought by the Church on account of his 
 breaking away from the old theological methods.* 
 
 * For an account of Bacon's treatise, De Nullitate Magise, see Hoefer. For the uproar 
 caused by Bacon's teaching at Oxford, see Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, Braunschweig, 
 1343, vol. i, p. 63 ; and for a somewhat reactionary discussion of Bacon's relation to the 
 progress of chemistry, see a recent work by the same author, Ansichten iiber die Aufgabe 
 der Chemie, Braunschweig, 1874, pp. 85 et seq. ; also, for an excellent summary, see Hoefer, 
 Hist, de la Chimie, vol. i, pp. 368 et seq. For probably the most thorough study of Bacon's 
 general works in science, and for his views of the universe, see Prof. Werner, Die Kosmo- 
 logie und allgemeine Naturlehre des Roger Baco, Wien, 1879. For summaries of his work 
 in other fields, see Whewell, vol. i, pp. 367, 368 ; Draper, p. 438 ; Saisset, Descartes et see 
 Precurseurs, deuxieme edition, pp. 397 et seq. ; Nourrisson, Progres de la Pense'e humaine, 
 pp. 271, 272; Sprengel, Histoire de la Mddecine, Paris, 1865, vol. ii, p. 397; Cuvier, 
 Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 417. As to Bacon's orthodoxy, see Saisset, pp. 
 53, 55. For special examination of causes of Bacon's condemnation, see Waddington, cited 
 by Saisset, p. 14. On Bacon as a sorcerer, see Featherstonhaugh's article in North American 
 Review. For a brief but admirable statement of Roger Bacon's relation to the world in his 
 time, and of what he might have done had he not been thwarted by theology, see Dollinger, 
 Studies in European History, English translation, London, 1890, pp. 178, 179. For a good 
 example of the danger of denying the full power of Satan, even in much more recent times 
 and in a Protestant country, see account of treatment of Bekker's Monde Enchante by the- 
 theologians of Holland, in Nisard, Histoire des Livres Populaires, vol. i, pp. 172, 173. 
 Kopp, in his Ansichten, pushes criticism even to some skepticism as to Roger Bacon being 
 the discoverer of many of the tilings generally attributed to him ; but, after all deductions 
 are carefully made, enough remains to make Bacon the greatest benefactor to humanity 
 during the middle ages. For Roger Bacon's deep devotion to religion and the Church, see 
 citation and remarks in Schneider, Roger Bacon, Augsburg, 1873, p. 112; also, citation 
 from the Opus Majus in Eicken, chap. vi. On Bacon as a " Mohammedan," see Saisset, p. 17. 
 For the interdiction of studies in physical science by the Dominicans and Franciscans, see 
 Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol. iv, p. 283. For the suppression of chemical teaching 
 by the Parliament of Paris, see Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol. xii, pp. 14, 15. For 
 proofs that the world is steadily working toward great discoveries as to the cause and pre- 
 vention of zymotic diseases and of their propagation, see Beale's Disease Germs, Baldwin 
 Latham's Sanitary Engineering, Michel Levy's Traite d'Hygi&ne Publique et Priv6e. For 
 a summary of the bull Spondent pariter, and for an example of injury done by it, see 
 Schneider, Geschichte der Alchemie, p. 160 ; and for a studiously moderate statement, 
 Milman, Latin Christianity, Book XII, chap. vi. For character and general efforts of John 
 XXII, see Lea, Inquisition, iii, 436, also 452 et seq. For the character of the two papal
 
 16 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 To question the theological view of physical science was, even 
 long after the close of the middle ages, exceedingly perilous. We 
 have seen in this chapter how one of Roger Bacon's unpardonable 
 offenses was his argument against the efficacy of magic, and in 
 chapters preceding how centuries afterward Wyer, Flade, Bekker, 
 and a multitude of other investigators and thinkers suffered con- 
 fiscation of property, loss of position, and even torture and death, 
 for similar views. I will refer, then, to but one more case as 
 typical. 
 
 In the last year of the sixteenth century the persecutions for 
 witchcraft and magic were especially cruel in the western districts 
 of Germany, the main instrument in them being Binsfeld, Suf- 
 fragan Bishop of Treves. 
 
 At that time Cornelius Loos was a professor at the university 
 of 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 evil 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 of 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 Del Rio, declared that but for his death by 
 plague he would have been finally sent to the stake. His manu- 
 script, hidden away in the archives at Treves, was supposed to 
 be lost until within the present decade. After three centuries 
 what remains of it has been brought to light by an American 
 scholar.* 
 
 briefs, see Rydberg, p. 177. For the Bull Summit Desiderantes, see previous chapters of this 
 work. For Antonio de Dominis, see Montucla, Hist, des Math6matiques, vol. i, p. 705, Hum. 
 boldt, Cosmos, Libri, vol. iv, pp. 145 et seg. 
 
 * Prof. George Lincoln Burr, of Cornell University, whose copy of Loos's MS. is now in 
 the library of that institution. For a full account of the discovery and its significance, see 
 the New York Evening Post for November 13, 1886. The facts regarding the after-life of 
 Loos, were discovered by Prof. Burr in the archives at Brussels. For Weyer, Flade, Bekker, 
 and others, see the chapters of this work on Demoniacal Possession and Insanity, and Dia- 
 bolism and Hysteria.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 17 
 
 PART II. 
 
 WE have seen thus far, first, how such men as Eusebius, Lac- 
 taiitius, and their compeers, discouraged scientific investi- 
 gation as futile; next, how such men as Albert the Great, St. 
 Thomas Aquinas, and the multitude who followed them, turned 
 the main current of mediaeval thought from science to theology ; 
 and, finally, how such Church authorities as Popes John XXII 
 and Innocent VIII, and the heads of the great religious orders, 
 endeavored to crush what was left of scientific research as dan- 
 gerous. 
 
 Yet, injurious as all this was to the evolution of science, there 
 was developed something far more destructive ; and this was the 
 influence of mystic theology, penetrating, permeating, 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 script- 
 ural letters in various abstruse ways, new words of prodigious sig- 
 nificance 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 opened such 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 mediaeval science. The sacred power of the number three 
 was seen in the Trinity ; in the three main divisions of the uni- 
 verse 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 th.e 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 of 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 flesh, the world, and the devil ; with the 
 2
 
 i8 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 three kingdoms in Nature mineral, vegetable, and animal ; with 
 " the three colors " 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 Apoca- 
 lypse ; in the seven cardinal 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 in the electrum magicum. 
 The twelve apostles were connected with the twelve signs in the 
 zodiac, and with much in physical science. The seventy-two dis- 
 ciples, the seventy-two interpreters of the Old Testament, the 
 seventy-two mystical names of God, were connected with the sup- 
 posed fact in anatomy that there were seventy- two joints in the 
 human frame. 
 
 Then, too, there were revived such theologic and metaphysical 
 substitutes for scientific thought as the declaration that the per- 
 fect line is a circle, and hence that the planets must move in abso- 
 lute circles a statement which led astronomy astray even 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. 
 
 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 the field of physical investigation 
 for ages. That debased Platonism which had been such an im- 
 portant factor in the evolution of Christian theology from the 
 earliest days of 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 argu- 
 ment in behalf of the philosophers 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 
 seem 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 aided in developing the fetichism in 
 which much of this pseudo-science was grounded. 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 an-
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 19 
 
 swered that it was not ; that God might have taken the form of a 
 stone, or of a log, or of a beast. The possibilities opened to wild 
 substitutes for science by this sort of reasoning were infinite. 
 Men have often wondered how it was that the Arabians accom- 
 plished so much in scientific discovery as compared with Christian 
 investigators: the reason is not far to seek; the Arabians were 
 comparatively free from these mystic allurements, these theologic 
 modes of thought which in Christian Europe flickered in the air 
 on all sides, luring men into paths which led no-whither. 
 
 Strong investigators like Arnold de Villanova, Raimond 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 Arnold of Villanova, the student is told that 
 in mixing his chemicals he must repeat the psalm Exsurge Do- 
 mine, and that on certain chemical vessels must be placed the last 
 words of Jesus on the cross. Vincent de Beauvais insists 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 later Dickinson insists that the 
 patriarchs generally must have owed their long lives to such 
 means. It was loudly declared that the reality of the philoso- 
 pher's stone was proved by the words of St. John in the Revela- 
 tion, " To the victor I will give a white stone/' The reasonable- 
 ness of seeking to develop gold out of the baser metals was for 
 many generations based upon the 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 Bible 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 Script- 
 ure. 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 Co- 
 rinthians, " This treasure have we in earthen vessels." 
 
 The greatest thinkers devoted themselves to adding new in- 
 gredients to this strange mixture of scientific and theologic 
 thought ; the Catholic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the Prot- 
 estant 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,
 
 20 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven 
 and earth; but King Solomon knew nothing about alchemy (or 
 chemistry in the form which then existed), 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 labors, and obliged 
 to devote himself to proving that Solomon used more money than 
 he possibly could have obtained from Ophir or his subjects, and 
 therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical 
 methods and the philosopher's stone as the result of them.* 
 
 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 I present these 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 mediaeval theology seemed broken. 
 
 The first of these examples is Melanchthon. He was the scholar 
 of the Reformation, and justly won the title " Preceptor of Ger- 
 many " ; his mind was singularly open, his sympathies broad, and 
 his 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 death-bed. During his career at 
 the University of Wittenberg he gave a course of lectures on 
 physics. In this he dwells upon scriptural texts as affording sci- 
 
 * 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 Alchemic, vol. i, p. 211. For a very curious Catholic treatise on 
 sacred numbers, see the Abb6 Auber, Symbolisme Religieux, Paris, 1870 ; 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, count- 
 ing 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 Hartmun's Life of Paracelsus, London, 1887, pp. 169 et seq. For Basil Valen- 
 tine's view, see Hoefer, vol. i. pp. 453-465; Schmieder, Geschichte der Alchemic, pp. 197- 
 209 ; Allgemeine deutsche Biographic, article Basiling. For the discussions referred to on 
 possibilities of God assuming forms of stone, or log, or beast, see Lippert, Christenthum, 
 Volk.-glaube, und Volksbrauch, pp. 372, 373, where citations are given, etc. For the syllo- 
 gism regarding Solomon, see Figuier, L' Alchemic et les Alchemistes, pp. 106, 107. For 
 careful appreciation of Becher's position in the history of chemistry, see Kopp, Ansichten 
 tiber 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 Revela- 
 tion, see Figuier, p. 22.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 21 
 
 entific proofs, accepts the interference of the devil in physical 
 phenomena as in other directions, and applies the mediaeval theo- 
 logical method throughout his whole work.* 
 
 Yet far more remarkable was the example, a century later, of 
 the man who more than any other led the modern world out of 
 the path opened by Aquinas, and into that which Roger Bacon 
 had sought to open and which has led modern thought 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 endeavored 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, " 77< is 
 is nothing more nor 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 
 
 * For Melanchthon's ideas on physio, so*- his luitia Doctrine Ph\>ir;i-, Wittenberg, 1557, 
 specially pp. '243 and 274; also in vol. xiiiof BretsclineHer's edition of the collected works, 
 and especially pp. 339-343.
 
 22 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 most free from the unfortunate bias he condemns ; that he, cer- 
 tainly, 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 cent- 
 ury. For only a few chapters beyond those containing the cita- 
 tions 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 circumnaviga- 
 tion of the world and the increase of science should happen in the 
 same age." * 
 
 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 excel- 
 lent book of Job, if it be revolved with diligence, will be found 
 pregnant and swelling with natural philosophy," and he endeav- 
 ors 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 min- 
 erals " 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." f 
 
 We have now seen how powerless were the strongest men in 
 physical science, singly, in this struggle against theology and 
 ecclesiasticism, and it may be well to study briefly their efforts 
 after they had learned to combine in societies and academies 
 against the common enemy. In the latter half of the sixteenth 
 century, John Baptist Porta began his investigations, and despite 
 much absurdity they were fruitful. His was not " black magic," 
 claiming the aid of Satan, but " white magic " bringing into serv- 
 ice the laws of Nature the precursor of applied science. His 
 
 * See the Novum Organon, translated by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, Oxford, 1855, chaps. 
 Ixv and Ixxxix. 
 
 f 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 than 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 dea 
 Materialismus, Leipsic, 1874, vol. i, p. 219. For a more just statement, see Brewster, Life 
 of Sir Isaac Newton. See, also Jevons, Principles of Science, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 298.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 23 
 
 book on Meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were 
 broached on that 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 all those indus- 
 tries based upon the coloring and staining of glass and enamels; 
 he did much to change natural philosophy from a " black art " to 
 a vigorous open science. He encountered the old policy of con- 
 scientious men ; 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. 
 
 In 1624 some young chemists of Paris, having taught the ex- 
 perimental method and cut loose from Aristotle, the Faculty of 
 Theology beset the Parliament of Paris, and the Parliament pro- 
 hibited this new chemical teaching, under penalty of death. 
 
 The same war continued in Italy. In 1657 occurred the first 
 sitting of the Accademia del Cimento at Florence, under the 
 presidency of Prince Leopold dei Medici. This Academy prom- 
 ised great things for science ; it was open to all talent ; its only 
 fundamental law was " the repudiation of any favorite system or 
 sect of philosophy, and the obligation to investigate Nature by 
 the pure light of experiment"; it entered into scientific inves- 
 tigations with energy. Borelli in mathematics, Redi in natural 
 history, and many others pushed on the boundaries of knowledge. 
 Heat, light, magnetism, electricity, projectiles, digestion, the in- 
 compressibility 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 the 
 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 asso- 
 ciations were discouraged and thwarted by Pope Pius IX.* 
 
 * For Porta, see the English translation of his main summary, " Natural Magick," Lon- 
 don, 1658. The first chapters are especially interesting, as showing what the word " magic " 
 had come to mean in the mind of a man in whom mediaeval and modern ideas were curiously 
 mixed ; see also Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. ii, pp. 102-106 ; also Kopp ; also Sprengel, 
 Histoire de la Medecine, iii, p. 239 ; also Musset-Pathay. For the Accademia del Cimento, 
 see Napier, Florentine History, vol. v, p. 485 ; T iraboschi, Storia della Litteratura ; Henri 
 Martin, Histoire de France ; Jevons, Principles of Science, vol. ii, pp. 36-40. For value
 
 24 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 Such was tlie 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, the beginning, continuance, and end of 
 theological interference with the evolution of 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 espe- 
 cially of carbonic acid. Although in antiquity we see men form- 
 ing 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. Evi- 
 dences of this view abound through the mediaeval period, and 
 even as late as the Reformation period a great authority, Agri- 
 cola, one of the most earnest and truthful of investigators, still 
 adheres to the belief that these gases in mines are manifestations 
 of devils, and specifies 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 goes so far as to 
 tell us 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 min- 
 eralogy 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." 
 
 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 came a great 
 genius laden with important truths in chemistry, but for whom 
 
 attached to Borelli's investigations by Newton and Huygens, see Brewster's Life of Sir 
 Isaac Newton, London, 1876, pp. 128, 129. Libri, in his Essai sur Galilee, p. 37, says that 
 Oliva was summoned to Rome and so tortured by the Inquisition that, to escape further 
 cruelty, he ended his life by throwing himself from a window. For interference by Pope 
 Gregory XVI with the Academy of the Lincei, and with public instruction generally, see 
 Carutti, Storia della Accademia dei Lincei, p. 126. Pius IX, with all his geniality, seems to 
 have allowed his hostility to voluntary associations to carry him very far at times. For his 
 answer to an application made through Lord Odo Russell regarding a society for the pre- 
 vention of cruelty to animals and his answer that " such an association could not be sanc- 
 tioned by the Holy See, being founded on a theological error, to wit, that Christians owed 
 any duties to animals," see Frances Power Cobbe, Hopes of the Human Race, p. 20*7.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 25 
 
 the world was not ready Basil Valentine. His discoveries an- 
 ticipated 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 work- 
 ers in mines is similar to that which is produced by fermen- 
 tation 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, laying stress especially 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 linger- 
 ing, 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 sol- 
 emn 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." * But de- 
 nunciations of this kind could not hold back the little army of 
 science. In the last half of the eighteenth century Black, Priestley, 
 and especially Bergmann, rooted out the very foundations of the 
 whole theologic theory, and one more phantom which had long 
 troubled the earth was at last driven forth forever, f 
 
 Thus, in spite of adverse influences, the evolution of the physi- 
 cal sciences went on. More and more there rose men bold enough 
 to break away from the theological method, and strong enough to 
 resist the enticements or threats of ecclesiasticism. Alchemy in 
 
 * For Loescher's protest, see Julian Schmidt, Geschichte des geistigen Lebens, etc., 
 vol. i, p. 319. 
 
 f 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. Ecclea 
 on The Evolution of Chemistry, New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1891.
 
 26 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 its first form, seeking for the philosopher's stone and the trans- 
 mutation of metals, gave way to alchemy in its second form, seek- 
 ing for the elixir of life and remedies more or less magical for 
 disease ; and this in turn yielded to the search for truth as truth. 
 More and more the "solemnly constituted impostors" were re- 
 sisted in every field. A great line of physicists and chemists began 
 to appear. Though theological modes of reasoning continued to 
 sterilize much effort in chemistry down to our own century, more 
 and more the old influence was thrown off ; more and more truth 
 was sought as truth ; less and less science was bent to aid in the 
 alleged " saving of souls." " Black magic " with its satanic appa- 
 ratus vanished, only reappearing occasionally among miracle- 
 mongers and belated theologians. " White magic " became leger- 
 demain.* 
 
 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, lik- 
 ening them to fire good when confined and dangerous when scat- 
 tered 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 re- 
 ligion upon men. 
 
 In Catholic countries the effort has been of late years mainly 
 confined to excluding science or diluting it in university teach- 
 ings. Early in the present century a great effort was made by 
 Ferdinand VII of Spain. He simply dismissed the scientific pro- 
 fessors from the University of Salamanca, and until a recent 
 period there has been general exclusion from Spanish universi- 
 ties 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 smoldering, 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 
 
 * For a reappearance of the fundamental doctrine of black magic among theologians, 
 see Rev. Dr. Jewett, Professor of Pastoral Theology in the Prot. Episc. Gen. Theolog. Semi- 
 nary of New York, Diabolology : The Person and Kingdom of Satan, New York, 1889. For 
 their reappearance among theosophists, see Elephas Levi, Histoire de la Magie, especially 
 the final chapters.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 27 
 
 in natural science, thrown its weight against Newton in the phys- 
 ical 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 1808 had made such progress that all was 
 ready for the final assault. 
 
 Foremost among the leaders of the besieging party was the 
 Bishop of Orleans, Dupanloup, a man of many winning charac- 
 teristics and 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 leveled at Profs. 
 Vulpian and S^e, and the Minister of Public Instruction, Duruy, a 
 man of great merit, whose only crime was devotion to the im- 
 provement of education, and to the promotion of the highest re- 
 search in science.* 
 
 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 conscien- 
 tious prelate, Cardinal de Bonnechose, Archbishop of Rouen. It 
 was charged by him and his party that the tendencies of the 
 higher scientific teaching at Paris were fatal to religion and mo- 
 rality. Heavy missiles were hurled such phrases as " sapping 
 the foundations," etc., " breaking down the bulwarks," etc., 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. 
 SeX the chief offender, was crowded to suffocation. 
 
 A siege was begun in due form. A young physician was sent 
 by the cardinal's party into the heterodox camp as a spy. Having 
 heard one lecture of Prof. See, he returned with information that 
 seemed to promise easy victory to the besieging party; he 
 brought a terrible statement one that seemed enough to over- 
 whelm Sde, Vulpian, Duruy, and the whole hated system of 
 public instruction in France the statement that Se had denied 
 the existence of the human soul. 
 
 Good Cardinal Bonnechose seized the tremendous weapon. 
 Rising in his place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent 
 invective against the Minister of State who could protect such a 
 
 * For Dupanloup, Lettre a un Cardinal, see the Revue de Therapeutique of 1868, p. 221.
 
 28 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 fortress of impiety as the College of Medicine ; and, as a climax, 
 he asserted, on the evidence of his spy fresh from Prof. See's 
 lecture-room, that the professor had declared, in his lecture of the 
 day before, that so long as he had the honor to hold his professor- 
 ship 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 docu- 
 mentary proofs that Prof. Se*e never made such a declaration. 
 He held the notes used by Prof. Sde in his lecture. Prof. S^e, it 
 appeared, belonged to a school in medical science which combated 
 certain ideas regarding medicine as an art. The inflamed im- 
 agination of the cardinal's heresy-hunting emissary had, as the 
 lecture notes proved, led him to mistake the word "art" for 
 " dine " and to exhibit Prof. Se"e 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 re- 
 treated 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 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.* 
 
 But justice forbids raising an outcry against Roman Cathol- 
 icism alone for this. In 1864 a number of excellent men in Eng- 
 land 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, castiga- 
 tions 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.f 
 
 * For a general account of the Vulpian and S6e matter, see Revue des Deux Mondes, 31 
 mai, 1868 ; Chronique de la Quinzaine, pp. 763-765. As to the result on popular thought, 
 may be noted the following comment on the affair by the Revue, which is as free a? possible 
 from anything like rabid anti-ecclesiastical ideas : " Elle a ete vraiment curieuse, instruc- 
 tive, assez triste et meme un peu amusante." For Wurtz's statement, see Revue de Thera- 
 peutique for 1868, p. 303. 
 
 f De Morgan, Paradoxes, pp. 421-428 ; also, Daubeny's Essays.
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 29 
 
 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 so 
 called." Two results followed : upon the great majority of these 
 really self-sacrificing men whose first utterances showed com- 
 plete ignorance of the theories they attacked there came quiet 
 and wide-spread contempt ; upon Pastor Knak, who stood forth 
 and proclaimed views of the universe which he thought scriptural, 
 but which most school-boys knew to be childish, came a burst of 
 good-natured derision from every quarter of the German na- 
 tion.* 
 
 Warfare of this sort against science seems petty indeed ; but 
 it is to be guarded against in Protestant countries not less than in 
 Catholic ; it breaks out in America not less than in Europe. Do 
 conscientious Roman bishops in France labor to keep all advanced 
 scientific instruction under their own control in their own uni- 
 versities and colleges ; so do many not less conscientious Protes- 
 tant clergymen in our own country insist that advanced education 
 in science and literature shall be kept under control in their own 
 sectarian universities and colleges, wretchedly one-sided in their 
 development, and miserably inadequate in their equipment: did 
 a leading Spanish university, until a recent period, exclude pro- 
 fessors holding the Newtonian theory; so have many leading 
 American colleges excluded professors holding the Darwinian 
 theory : have Catholic colleges in Italy rejected excellent candi- 
 dates for professorships on account of " unsafe " views regarding 
 the immaculate conception ; so have Protestant colleges in Amer- 
 ica frequently rejected excellent candidates on account of "un- 
 safe " views regarding the apostolic succession, or the incarnation, 
 or baptism, or the perseverance of the saints. 
 
 And how has all this system resulted? In the older nations, 
 by natural reaction, these colleges, under strict ecclesiastical con- 
 trol, have sent forth the most bitter enemies the Christian Church 
 has ever known of whom Voltaire and Renan and Saint-Beuve 
 are types ; and there are many signs that the same causes are to 
 produce the same results in our own country. 
 
 I might allude to other battle-fields in our own land and time. 
 I might show how, twenty years ago, attempts to meet the want 
 in a great American State of an institution providing higher sci- 
 entific instruction, were met with loud outcries from many excel- 
 lent men, who feared injury thereby to religion ; and how in 
 various other States, at various times since, the same feeling has 
 been shown. Happily, leading men at the centers of Christian 
 thought in many countries are now taking a larger and better 
 
 * See the Berlin newspapers for the summer of 1868, especially Kladderadatsch.
 
 30 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 view: but I again point to the recent driving out of the Dar- 
 winian professors from the American college at Beirut, under the 
 direction of American Protestants, as an evidence that the old 
 spirit still exists ; no longer, indeed, seriously injurious to science, 
 but deeply injurious to religion.* 
 
 * It is an interesting fact that one of the men thus driven out of the American college 
 at Beirut, for supposed adhesion to the doctrines of Darwin, has since become one of the 
 most influential editors at Cairo, carrying on a daily journal and two periodicals, and exer- 
 cising a far greater and wider influence upon thought in the East than ever before. What- 
 ever may be thought of the system of philosophy advocated by President McCosh at Prince- 
 ton, every thinking man must honor him for the large way in which he, at least, broke away 
 from the traditions of that center of thought ; prevented, so far as he was able, persecution 
 of scholars for holding to the Darwinian view ; and paved the way for the highest researches 
 in physical science in that university. For a most eloquent statement of the opposition of 
 modern physical science to mediaeval theological views, as shown in the case of Sir Isaac 
 Newton, see Dr. Thomas Chalmers, cited in Gore, Art of Scientific Discovery, London, 1878, 
 p. 247.
 
 I
 
 University 
 
 Souther: 
 
 Librar