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THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.
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#2
º HISTORY
THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.
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, a.
* . . . . .
THE CON FLICT
BETWEEN
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
BY
JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK; AUTHOR OF A “TREATISE ON HUMAN
PIIYSIology;” “IIISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT of EUROPE;”
“IIISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR ; ” AND OF MANY EXPERI-
MENTAL MEMOIRS ON CHEMICAL AND OTHER SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS.
FourTH EDITION.
* NEW YORK:
D. A PPLET ON AND COMPANY.,
549 & 5 51 B. R O A D W A Y.
1875.
ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
T R E E A C E .
WHOEVER has had an opportunity of becoming ac-
quainted with the mental condition of the intelligent
classes in Europe and America, must have perceived
that there is a great and rapidly-increasing departure
from the public religious faith, and that, while among
the more frank this divergence is not concealed, there
is a far more extensive and far more dangerous seces-
sion, private and unacknowledged.
So wide-spread and so powerful is this secession,
that it can neither be treated with contempt nor with
punishment. It cannot be extinguished by derision,
by vituperation, or by force. The time is rapidly
approaching when it will give rise to serious political
results.
Ecclesiastical spirit no longer inspires the policy of
the world. Military fervor in behalf of faith has dis.
appeared. Its only souvenirs are the marble effigies
of crusading knights, reposing in the silent crypts of
churches on their tombs.
That a crisis is impending is shown by the attitude
of the great powers toward the papacy. The papacy
vi PREFACE.
represents the ideas and aspirations of two-thirds of the
population of Europe. It insists on a political suprem-
acy in accordance with its claims to a divine origin
and mission, and a restoration of the mediaeval Order
of things, loudly declaring that it will accept no recon-
ciliation with modern civilization.
The antagonism we thus witness between Religion
and Science is the continuation of a struggle that com-
menced when Christianity began to attain political pow-
er. A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant
of contradiction; it must repudiate all improvement in
itself, and view with disdain that arising from the pro-
gressive intellectual development of man. Put our
Opinions on every subject are continually liable to mod-
ification, from the irresistible advance of human knowl-
edge.
Can we exaggerate the importance of a contention in
which every thoughtful person must take part whether
he will or not ? In a matter so solemn as that of reli-
gion, all men, whose temporal interests are not involved
in existing institutions, earnestly desire to find the
truth. They seek information as to the subjects in
dispute, and as to the conduct of the disputants. -
The history of Science is not a mere record of iso-
lated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two
contending powers, the expansive force of the human
intellect on one side, and the compression arising from
traditionary faith and human interests on the other.
No one has hitherto treated the subject from this
PREFACE. vii
point of view. Yet from this point it presents itself
to us as a living issue—in fact, as the most important
of all living issues.
A few years ago, it was the politic and therefore
the proper course to abstain from all allusion to this
controversy, and to keep it as far as possible in the
background. The tranquillity of Society depends so
much on the stability of its religious convictions, that l
no one can be justified in wantonly disturbing them.
3ut faith is in its nature unchangeable, stationary;
Science is in its nature progressive; and eventually a
divergence between them, impossible to conceal, must
take place. It then becomes the duty of those whose
lives have made them familiar with both modes of
thought, to present modestly, but firmly, their views;
to compare the antagonistic pretensions calmly, impar-
tially, philosophically. History shows that, if this be
not done, social misfortunes, disastrous and enduring,
will ensue. When the old mythological religion of
Europe broke down under the weight of its own incon-
sistencies, neither the Toman emperors nor the phi-
losophers of those times did any thing adequate for the
guidance of public opinion. They left religious affairs
to take their chance, and accordingly those affairs fell
into the hands of ignorant and infuriated ecclesiastics,
parasites, eunuchs, and slaves.
The intellectual night which settled on Europe, in
consequence of that great neglect of duty, is passing
in the daybreak of better things. So.
away; we live
Viii PREFACE.
ciety is anxiously expecting light, to see in what direc-
tion it is drifting. It plainly discerns that the track
along which the voyage of civilization has thus far been
made, has been left; and that a new departure, on an
unknown Sea, has been taken.
Though deeply impressed with such thoughts, I
should not have presumed to write this book, or to
intrude on the public the ideas it presents, had I not
made the facts with which it deals a subject of long
and earnest meditation. And I have gathered a strong
incentive to undertake this duty from the circumstance
that a “History of the Intellectual Development of Eu-
rope,” published by me several years ago, which has
passed through many editions in America, and has been
reprinted in numerous European languages, English,
French, German, Tºussian, Polish, Servian, etc., is every-
where received with favor.
In collecting and arranging the materials for the
volumes I published under the title of “A History of
the American Civil War,” a work of very great labor,
I had become accustomed to the comparison of con-
ficting statements, the adjustment of conflicting claims.
The approval with which that book has been received
by the American public, a critical judge of the events
considered, has inspired me with additional confidence.
I had also devoted much attention to the experimental
investigation of natural phenomena, and had published
many well-known memoirs on such subjects. And per-
haps no one can give himself to these pursuits, and spend
PREFACE. ix
a large part of his life in the public teaching of science,
without partaking of that love of impartiality and truth
which Philosophy incites. She inspires us with a desire
to dedicate our days to the good of our race, so that in
the fading light of life's evening we may not, on look-
ing back, be forced to acknowledge how unsubstantial
and useless are the objects that we have pursued.
Though I have spared no pains in the composition
of this book, I am very sensible how unequal it is to
the subject, to do justice to which a knowledge of sci-
ence, history, theology, politics, is required; every page
should be alive with intelligence and glistening with
facts. But then I have remembered that this is only as
it were the preface, or forerunner, of a body of litera-
ture, which the events and wants of our times will call
forth. We have come to the brink of a great intel-
lectual change. Much of the frivolous reading of the
present will be supplanted by a thoughtful and austere
literature, vivified by endangered interests, and made
fervid by ecclesiastical passion.
What I have sought to do is, to present a clear and
impartial statement of the views and acts of the two
contending parties. In one sense I have tried to iden-
tify myself with each, so as to comprehend thoroughly
their motives; but in another and higher sense I have
endeavored to stand aloof, and relate with impartiality
their actions.
I therefore trust that those, who may be disposed to
criticise this book, will bear in mind that its object is
X PREFACE.
not to advocate the views and pretensions of either
party, but to explain clearly, and without shrinking,
those of both. In the management of each chapter
I have usually set forth the Orthodox view first, and
then followed it with that of its opponents.
In thus treating the subject it has not been necessary
to pay much regard to more moderate or intermediate
opinions, for, though they may be intrinsically of great
value, in conflicts of this kind it is not with the mod-
erates but with the extremists that the impartial reader
is mainly concerned. Their movements determine the
issue. -
For this reason I have had little to say respecting
the two great Christian confessions, the Protestant and
Greek Churches. As to the latter, it has never, since
the restoration of science, arrayed itself in opposition to
the advancement of knowledge. On the contrary, it
has always met it with welcome. It has observed a
reverential attitude to truth, from whatever quarter it
might come. Recognizing the apparent discrepancies
between its interpretations of revealed truth and the
discoveries of Science, it has always expected that Sat-
isfactory explanations and reconciliations would ensue,
and in this it has not been disappointed. It would
have been well for modern civilization if the Roman
Church had done the same.
In speaking of Christianity, reference is generally
made to the Roman Church, partly because its adherents
compose the majority of Christendom, partly because
PREFACE. xi
its demands are the most pretentious, and partly because
it has commonly sought to enforce those demands by
the civil power. None of the Protestant Churches has
ever occupied a position so imperious—none has ever
had such wide-spread political influence. For the most
part they have been averse to constraint, and except in
very few instances their opposition has not passed be-
yond the exciting of theological odium.
As to Science; she has never sought to ally herself to
civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium
or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has
never subjected any one to mental torment, physical
torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of uphold-
ing or promoting her ideas. She presents herself un-
stained by cruelties and crimes. Put in the Vatican—
we have only to recall the Inquisition—the hands that
are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are
crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!
There are two modes of historical composition, the
artistic and the scientific. The former implies that men
give origin to events; it therefore selects some promi-
ment individual, pictures him under a fanciful form,
and makes him the hero of a romance. The latter, in-
sisting that human affairs present an unbroken chain, in
which each fact is the offspring of some preceding fact,
and the parent of some subsequent fact, declares that
men do not control events, but that events control men. .
The former gives origin to compositions, which, however
much they may interest or delight us, are but a grade
xii PRERACE,
above novels; the latter is austere, perhaps even repul-
sive, for it sternly impresses us with a conviction of the
irresistible dominion of law, and the insignificance of
human exertions. In a subject so solemn as that to
which this book is devoted, the romantic and the popu-
lar are altogether out of place. He who presumes to
treat of it must fix his eyes steadfastly on that chain of
destiny which universal history displays; he must turn
with disdain from the phantom impostures of pontiffs
and statesmen and kings. -
If any thing were needed to show us the untrust-
worthiness of artistic historical compositions, Our per-
sonal experience would furnish it. How often do our
most intimate friends fail to perceive the real motives
of our every-day actions; how frequently they misin-
terpret our intentions! If this be the case in what is
passing before our eyes, may we not be satisfied that it
is impossible to comprehend justly the doings of persons
who lived many years ago, and whom we have never seen.
In selecting and arranging the topics now to be pre-
sented, I have been guided in part by “the Confession”
of the late Vatican Council, and in part by the Order of
events in history. Not without interest will the reader
remark that the subjects offer themselves to us now
as they did to the old philosophers of Greece. We
still deal with the same questions about which they dis-
puted. What is God? What is the soul? What is
the world? How is it governed? Have we any stand-
ard or criterion of truth? And the thoughtful reader
PREFACE. * xiii
will earnestly ask, “Are our solutions of these prob-
lems any better than theirs?” -
The general argument of this book, then, is as fol-
lows: -
I first direct attention to the origin of modern sci-
ence as distinguished from ancient, by depending on
observation, experiment, and mathematical discussion,
instead of mere speculation, and shall show that it was
3. consequence of the Macedonian campaigns, which
brought Asia and Europe into contact. A brief sketch
of those campaigns, and of the Museum of Alexandria,
illustrates its character.
Then with brevity I recall the well-known origin
of Christianity, and show its advance to the attainment
of imperial power, the transformation it underwent by
its incorporation with paganism, the existing religion
of the Roman Empire. A clear conception of its in-
compatibility with science caused it to suppress forcibly
the Schools of Alexandria. It was constrained to this
by the political necessities of its position. -
The parties to the conflict thus placed, I next relate
the story of their first open struggle; it is the first or
Southern Reformation. The point in dispute had re-
spect to the nature of God. It involved the rise of
Mohammedanism. Its result was, that much of Asia
and Africa, with the historic cities Jerusalem, Alex-
andria, and Carthage, were wrenched from Christendom,
and the doctrine of the Unity of God established in the
larger portion of what had been the Roman Empire.
xiv. PREFACE.
• * This political event was followed by the restoration
of Science, the establishment of colleges, Schools, libra-
ries, throughout the dominions of the Arabians. Those
conquerors, pressing forward rapidly in their intellect-
ual development, rejected the anthropomorphic ideas of
the nature of God remaining in their popular belief,
and accepted other more philosophical ones, akin to
those that had long previously been attained to in
India. The result of this was a second conflict, that
respecting the nature of the soul. Under the designa-
tion of Averroism, there came into prominence the the-
ories of Emanation and Absorption. At the close of the
middle ages the Inquisition succeeded in excluding
those doctrines from Europe, and now the Vatican
Council has formally and solemnly anathematized them.
Meantime, through the cultivation of astronomy,
geography, and other Sciences, correct views had been
gained as to the position and relations of the earth, and
as to the structure of the world; and since Teligion,
resting itself on what was assumed to be the proper
interpretation of the Scriptures, insisted that the earth
is the central and most important part of the universe,
a third conflict broke out. In this Galileo led the way
on the part of Science. Its issue was the overthrow of
the Church on the question in dispute. Subsequently a
subordinate controversy arose respecting the age of the
world, the Church insisting that it is only about six
thousand years old. In this she was again overthrown.
The light of history and of Science had been gradu-
PREFACE, XV
ally spreading over Europe. In the sixteenth century
the prestige of Roman Christianity was greatly dimin-
ished by the intellectual reverses it had experienced,
and also by its political and moral condition. It was
clearly seen by many pious men that Religion was not
ccountable for the false position in which she was
found, but that the misfortune was directly traceable to
the alliance she had of old contracted with Roman pa-
ganism. The obvious remedy, therefore, was a return
to primitive purity. Thus arose the fourth conflict,
known to us as the Reformation—the Second or North-
ern Reformation. The special form it assumed was a
contest respecting the standard or criterion of truth,
whether it is to be found in the Church or in the
Pible. The determination of this involved a settle-
ment of the rights of reason, or intellectual freedom.
Luther, who is the conspicuous man of the epoch, car-
ried into effect his intention with no inconsiderable
success; and at the close of the struggle it was found
that Northern Europe was lost to Roman Christianity.
We are now in the midst of a controversy respecting
the mode of government of the world, whether it be by
incessant divine intervention, or by the operation of pri-
mordial and unchangeable law. The intellectual move-
ment of Christendom has reached that point which
Arabism had attained to in the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies; and doctrines which were then discussed are pre-
senting themselves again for review; such are those of
Evolution, Creation, Development.
xvi PREFACE.
Offered under these general titles, I think it will be
found that all the essential points of this great contro-
versy are included. By grouping under these compre-
hensive heads the facts to be considered, and dealing
with each group separately, we shall doubtless acquire
clear views of their inter-connection and their histori-
cal succession.
I have treated of these conflicts as nearly as I con-
veniently could in their proper chronological order, and,
for the sake of completeness, have added chapters on—
An examination of what Latin Christianity has done
for modern civilization.
A corresponding examination of what Science has
done. - - -
The attitude of Roman Christianity in the impend-
ing conflict, as defined by the Vatican Council.
The attention of many truth-seeking persons has
been so exclusively given to the details of sectarian dis-
sensions, that the long strife, to the history of which
these pages are devoted, is popularly but little known.
Having tried to keep steadfastly in view the determina-
tion to write this work in an impartial spirit, to speak
with respect of the contending parties, but never to con-
ceal the truth, I commit it to the considerate judgment
of the thoughtful reader. s: - p
. . . JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER.
UNIVERSITY, NEw York, December, 1873.
C O N T E N T S.
CEIAPTER I.
THE ORIGIN OF SCIENCE.
Religious condition of the Greeks in the fourth century before Christ.—
Their invasion of the Persian Empire brings them in contact with
new aspects of Nature, and familiarizes them with new religious sys-
tems.-The military, engineering, and scientific activity, stimulated
by the Macedonian campaigns, leads to the establishment in Alex-
andria of an institute, the Museum, for the cultivation of knowledge
by experiment, observation, and mathematical discussion.—It is the
origin of Science . tº gº . . . ." . PAGE 1
CEIAPTER II.
j
TTIE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY..—ITS TRANSFORMATION ON ATTAIN-
ING IMPERIAL POWER.—ITS RELATIONS TO SCIENCE.
Religious condition of the Roman Republic.—The adoption of imperial-
ăsm leads to monotheism.— Christianity spreads over the Roman
Empire.—The circumstances under which it attained imperial power
Anake its union with Paganism a political necessity.— Tertullian's
description of its doctrines and practices.—Debasing effect of the
policy of Constantine on it—Its alliance with the civil power—ſis
incompatibility with science.—Destruction of the Alexandrian Li-
brary and prohibition of philosophy.—Exposition of the Augustinian
philosophy and Patristic science generally—The Scriptures made the
Standard of science . . . . . . . P. 34
xviii CONTENTS.
CEIAPTER III.
CONFLICT RESPIECTING THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNITY OF GOD.—
THE FIRST OR SOUTEIERN REFORMATION.
The Egyptians insist on the introduction of the worship of the Virgin
Mary.—They are resisted by Nestor, the Patriarch of Constantinople,
but eventually, through their influence with the emperor, cause Nes-
tor's exile and the dispersion of his followers.
Prelude to the Southern Reformation.—The Persian attack its moral
effects.
The Arabian Reformation.—Mohammed is brought in contact with the
Nestorians.—He adopts and extends their principles, rejecting the
worship of the Virgin, the doctrine of the Trinity, and every thing
ân opposition to the unity of God.—He extinguishes idolatry in
Arabia, by force, and prepares to make war on the Roman Empire.
—His successors conquer Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, North Africa,
Spain, and invade France. -
As the result of this conflict, the doctrine of the unity of God was estab-
lished in the greater part of the Roman Empire.—The cultivation of
Science was restored, and Christendom lost many of her most illustrious
capitals, as Alexandria, Carthage, and, above all, Jerusalem. PAGE 68
CHAPTER IV.
THE RESTORATION OF SCIENCE IN THE SOUTH,
By the influence of the Nestorians and Jews, the Arabians are turned to
the cultivation of Science—They modify their views as to the destiny
of man, and obtain true conceptions respecting the structure of the
world—They ascertain the size of the earth, and determine its shape.
—Their khalifs collect great libraries, patronize every department of
science and literature, establish astronomical observatories.— They
develop the mathematical Sciences, invent algebra, and improve geom-
etry and trigonometry.—They collect and translate the old Greek
mathematical and astronomical works, and adopt the inductive method
of Aristotle.—They establish many colleges, and, with the aid of the
Nestorians, organize a public-school system. — They introduce the
Arabic numerals and arithmetic, and catalogue and give names to
the stars.-They lay the foundation of modern astronomy, chemistry,
and physics, and introduce great improvements in agriculture and
manufactures . tº . & º † * º tº . P. T. ()2
CONTENTS. xix
CEIAPTER W.
CONFLICT RESPECTING THE NATURE OF THE SOUL.-DOCTRINE OF
f ISMAINATION AND ABSORPTION.
European ideas respecting the soul.—It resembles the form of the body.
Philosophical views of the Orientals.-The Vedic theology and Buddhism
assert the doctrine of emanation and absorption.—It is advocated by
Aristotle, who is followed by the Alexandrian school, and subsequently
by the Jews and Arabians.—It is found in the writings of Erigena.
Connection of this doctrine with the theory of conservation and corre-
lation of force—Parallel between the origin and destiny of the body
and the soul.—The necessity of founding human on comparative
psychology.
Averroism, which is based on these facts, is brought into Christendom
through Spain and Sicily.
History of the repression of Averroism.—Revolt of Islam against it.—
Antagonism of the Jewish synagogues.—ſis destruction undertaken
by the papacy.—Institution of the Inquisition in Spain.-Frightful
persecutions and their results.-Eagulsion of the Jews and Moors.-
Overthrow of Averroism in Eurcpe.—Decisive action of the late
Vatican Council . . . . . . . PAGE 119
CHAPTER WI.
CONFLICT RESPECTING THE NATURE OF THE WORLD.
Scriptural view of the world: the earth a flat surface; location of heaven
and hell. -
Scientific view : the earth a globe, its size determined ; its position in and
Telations to the Solar system.—The three great voyages.—Columbus,
De Gama, Magellan,—Circumnavigation of the earth.-Determina-
tion of its curvature by the measurement of a degree and by the pen-
dulum. -
The discoveries of Copernicus.-Invention of the telescope. — Galileo
brought before the Inquisition.—His punishment.— Victory over the
Church.
Attempts to ascertain the dimensions of the solar system.—Determination,
of the Sun's parallao, by the transits of Venus.-Insignificance of
the earth and man. te
Ideas respecting the dimensions of the universe.—Parallaz of the stars.-
The plurality of worlds asserted by Bruno.—He is seized and mur-
dered by the Inquisition . . . . . . . P. 152
XX CONTENTs.
CHAPTER WII.
CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE AGE OF THE EARTH.
Scriptural view that the earth is only six thousand years old, and that it
- was made in a week-Patristic chronology founded on the ages of the
patriarchs.-Difficulties arising from different estimates in different
versions of the Bible. t
Legend of the Deluge.—The repeopling.—The Tower of Babel; the con-
fusion of tongues.—The primitive language.
Discovery by Cassini of the oblateness of the planet Jupiter.—Discovery by
Newton of the oblateness of the Earth.-Deduction that she has been
modeled by mechanical causes.—Confirmation of this by geological
discoveries respecting aqueous rocks ; corroboration by organic re-
nains,—The necessity of admitting enormously long periods of time.
—Displacement of the doctrine of Creation by that of Evolution.—
Discoveries respecting the Antiquity of Man.
The time-scale and space-scale of the world are infinite—Moderation
with which the discussion of the Age of the World has been con-
ducted . . . . . . . . . . PAGE 182
CEIAPTER VIII.
CONFLICT RESPECTING THE CRITERION OF TRUTII.
Ancient philosophy declares that man has no means of ascertaining the
truth.
JDifferences of belief arise among the early Christians.—An ineffectual at-
tempt is made to remedy them by Councils.-Miracle and ordeal proof
introduced.
The papacy resorts to auricular confession and the Inquisition.—It per-
petrates frightful atrocities for the suppression of differences of
opinion. .*
Iject of the discovery of the Pandects of Justinian and development of the
canon law on the nature of evidence—It becomes more scientific.
The Reformation establishes the rights of individual reason.—Catholicism
asserts that the criterion of truth is in the Church. It restrains the
reading of books by the Index. Expurgatorius, and combats dissent
by such means as the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve.
Fºamination of the authenticity of the Pentateuch as the Protestant crite-
'rion.—Spurious character of those books.
For Science the criterion of truth is to be found in the revelations of Wa-
ture: for the Protestant, it is in the Scriptures ; for the Catholic, in
an infallible Pope . * & g g g & . P. 201
CONTENTS. xxi
CHAPTER IX.
CONTROWERSY RESPECTING TEIE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNIVERSE.
There are two conceptions of the government of the world: 1. By Provi.
dence; 2. By Law.—The former maintained by the priesthood.—Sketch
of the introduction of the latter.
Repler discovers the laws that preside over the solar system.—His works are
denounced by papal authority—The foundations of mechanical phi.
losophy are laid by Da Vinci.-Galileo discovers the fundamental laws
of Dynamics-Newton applies them to the movements of the celestial
bodies, and shows that the solar system is governed by mathematical
necessity.—Herschel extends that conclusion to the universe. — The
nebular hypothesis.-Theological exceptions to it.
Evidences of the control of law in the construction of the earth, and in the
development of the animal and plant Series.—They arose by Evolu-
tion, not by Creation. *: -
The reign of law is exhibited by the historic career of human societies, and
ân the case of individual man.
Partial adoption of this view by some of the Reformed Churches P. 228
CEIAPTER X.
LATIN CHIRISTIANITY IN IRELATION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.
JFor more than a thousand years Latin Christianity controlled the intelli-
gence of Europe, and is responsible for the result.
That result is manifested by the condition of the cily of Rome at the Ref.
ormation, and by the condition of the Continent of Europe in domes-
tic and social life.—European nations suffered under the coexistence
of a dual government, a Spiritual and a temporal.—They were im-
mersed in ignorance, superstition, discomfort.—Explanation of the
failure of Catholicism.–Political history of the papacy: it was
transmuted from a spiritual confederacy into an absolute monarchy.
—Action of the College of Cardinals and the Curia.--Demoraliza-
tion that ensued from the necessity of raising large revenues.
The advantages accruing to Europe during the Catholic rule arose not from
direct intention, but were incidental.
The general result is, that the political influence of Catholicism was preju.
dicial to modern civilization & g tº e & . P. 245
xxii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
SCIENCE IN RELATION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION,
Illustration of the general influences of Science from the history of America.
THE INTRODUCTION OF SCIENCE INTO EUROPE.—It passed from Moorish Spain
to Upper Italy, and was favored by the absence of the popes at Avignon.
—The effects of printing, of maritime adventure, and of the Refor-
onation.— Establishment of the Italian scientific societies.
THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE.-It changed the mode and the
direction of thought in Europe.—The transactions of the Royal So-
ciety of London, and other Scientific Societies, furnish an illustration
of this.
THE ECONOMICAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE is illustrated by the numerous me-
chanical and physical inventions, made since the fourteenth century.—
Their influence on health and domestic life, on the arts of peace and
of war.
Answer to the question, What has Science done for humanity? PAGE 286
CHAPTER XII.
T EI E IM P E N DIN G CIR IS IS .
Indications of the approach of a religious crisis.-The predominating
Christian Church, the Roman, perceives this, and makes preparation
for it.—Pius IX, convokes an OEcumenical Council.—Relations of the
different European governments to the papacy. — Relations of the
Church to Science, as indicated by the Encyclical Letter and the Syl-
labus. *
Acts of the Vatican Council in relation to the infallibility of the pope, and
to Science.—Abstract of decisions arrived at.
Controversy between the Prussian Government and the papacy.—It is a con-
test between the State and the Church for Supremacy.—Effect of dual
government in Europe.—Declaration by the Vatican Council of its
position as to Science—The dogmatic constitution of the Catholic faith.
—Its definitions respecting God, Revelation, Faith, Reason. — The
anathomas it pronounces.—Its denunciation of modern civilization.
The Protestant Evangelical Alliance and its acts. -
General review of the foregoing definitions and acts.-Present condition of
the controversy, and its future prospects & § & P. 327
HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT
BETWEEN
RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGIN OF SCIENCE.
Religious condition of the Greeks in the fourth century before Christ.—
Their invasion of the Persian Empire brings them in contact with
new aspects of Nature, and familiarizes them with new religious sys-
tems.-The military, engineering, and Scientific activity, stimulated by
the Macedonian campaigns, leads to the establishment in Alexandria.
of an institute, the Museum, for the cultivation of knowledge by ex-
periment, observation, and mathematical discussion.—It is the origin
of Science.
No spectacle can be presented to the thoughtful
mind more solemn, more mournful, than that of the
dying of an ancient religion, which in its day has given
consolation to many generations of men.
Four centuries before the birth of Christ, Greece
was fast outgrowing her ancient faith. Her philoso-
phers, in their studies of the world, had been pro-
foundly impressed with the contrast between the ma-
jesty of the operations of Nature and the worthlessness
of the divinities of Olympus. Her historians, consid-
ering the orderly course of political affairs, the manifest
1
2 GREEK MYTHOLOGY.
uniformity in the acts of men, and that there was no
event occurring before their eyes for which they could
not find an obvious cause in some preceding event,
began to suspect that the miracles and celestial inter-
ventions, with which the old annals were filled, were
only fictions. They demanded, when the age of the
supernatural had ceased, why oracles had become mute,
and why there were now no more prodigies in the
world.
Traditions, descending from immemorial antiquity,
and formerly accepted by pious men as unquestionable
truths, had filled the islands of the Mediterranean and
the conterminous countries with supernatural wonders—
enchantresses, Sorcerers, giants, ogres, harpies, gorgons,
centaurs, cyclops. The azure vault was the floor of
heaven; there Zeus, surrounded by the gods with their
wives and mistresses, held his court, engaged in pur-
suits like those of men, and not refraining from acts of
human passion and crime.
A sea-coast broken by numerous indentations, an
archipelago with some of the most lovely islands in the
world, inspired the Greeks with a taste for maritime
life, for geographical discovery, and colonization. Their
ships wandered all over the Black and Mediterranean
Seas. The time-honored wonders that had been glori-
fied in the “Odyssey,” and sacred in public faith, were
found to have no existence. As a better knowledge of
Nature was obtained, the sky was shown to be an illu-
sion; it was discovered that there is no Olympus, noth-
ing above but space and stars. With the vanishing of
their habitation, the gods disappeared, both those of the
Ionian type of Homer and those of the Doric of Hesiod.
But this did not take place without resistance. At
first, the public, and particularly its religious portion, de-
EFFECTS OF DISCOVERY AND CRITICISM. 3
nounced the rising doubts as atheism. They despoiled
some of the offenders of their goods, exiled others;
some they put to death. They asserted that what had
been believed by pious men in the old times, and had
stood the test of ages, must necessarily be true. Then,
as the opposing evidence became irresistible, they were
content to admit that these marvels were allegories
under which the wisdom of the ancients had concealed
many sacred and mysterious things. They tried to rec-
oncile, what now in their misgivings they feared might
be myths, with their advancing intellectual state. But
their efforts were in vain, for there are predestined
phases through which on such an occasion public opin-
ion must pass. What it has received with veneration it
begins to doubt, then it offers new interpretations, then
subsides into dissent, and ends with a rejection of the
whole as a mere fable.
In their secession the philosophers and historians
were followed by the poets. Euripides incurred the
odium of heresy. Aischylus narrowly escaped being
stoned to death for blasphemy. But the frantic efforts
of those who are interested in supporting delusions
must always end in defeat. The demoralization resist-
lessly extended through every branch of literature, until
at length it reached the common people.
Greek philosophical criticism had lent its aid to
Greek philosophical discovery in this destruction of the
national faith. It sustained by many arguments the
wide-spreading unbelief. It compared the doctrines of
the different schools with each other, and showed from
their contradictions that man has no criterion of truth;
that, since his ideas of what is good and what is evil
differ according to the country in which he lives, they
can have no foundation in Nature, but must be alto-
4. THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.
gether the result of education; that right and Wrong
are nothing more than fictions created by society for its
own purposes. In Athens, some of the more advanced
classes had reached such a pass that they not only denied
the unseen, the supernatural, they even affirmed that the
world is only a day-dream, a phantasm, and that nothing
at all exists.
The topographical configuration of Greece gave an
impress to her political condition. It divided her people
into distinct communities having conflicting interests,
and made them incapable of centralization. Incessant
domestic wars between the rival states checked her ad-
vangement. She was poor, her leading men had be-
come corrupt. They were ever ready to barter patriotic
considerations for foreign gold, to sell themselves for
Persian bribes. Possessing a perception of the beauti-
ful as manifested in sculpture and architecture to a
degree never attained elsewhere either before or since,
Greece had lost a practical appreciation of the Good
and the True. -
While European Greece, full of ideas of liberty and
independence, rejected the sovereignty of Persia, Asiatic
Greece acknowledged it without reluctance. At that
time the Persian Empire in territorial extent was equal
to half of modern Europe. It touched the waters of
the Mediterranean, the AEgean, the Black, the Caspian,
the Indian, the Persian, the Red Seas. Through its
territories there flowed six of the grandest rivers in the
world—the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, the Jax-
artes, the Oxus, the Nile, each more than a thousand
miles in length. Its surface reached from thirteen hun-
dred feet below the sea-level to twenty thousand feet
above. It yielded, therefore, every agricultural prod.
uct. Its mineral wealth was boundless. It inherited the
THE PERSHAN EMPIRE. 5
prestige of the Median, the Babylonian, the Assyrian,
the Chaldean Empires, whose annals reached back
through more than twenty centuries.
Persia had always looked upon European Greece
as politically insignificant, for it had scarcely half the
territorial extent of one of her Satrapies. Her expedi-
tions for compelling its obedience had, however, taught
her the military qualities of its people. In her forces
were incorporated Greek mercenaries, esteemed the very
best of her troops. She did not hesitate sometimes to
give the command of her armies to Greek generals, of
her fleets to Greek captains. In the political convul-
sions through which she had passed, Greek soldiers had
often been used by her contending chiefs. These mili-
tary operations were attended by a momentous result.
They revealed, to the quick eye of these warlike mer-
cenaries, the political weakness of the empire and the
possibility of reaching its centre. After the death of
Cyrus on the battle-field of Cunaxa, it was demonstrated,
by the immortal retreat of the ten thousand under
Xenophon, that a Greek army could force its way to
and from the heart of Persia. -
That reverence for the military abilities of Asiatic
generals, so profoundly impressed on the Greeks by
such engineering exploits as the bridging of the Helles-
pont, and the cutting of the isthmus at Mount Athos by
Xerxes, had been obliterated at Salamis, Platea, Mycale.
To plunder rich Persian provinces had become an ir-
resistible temptation. Such was the expedition of Ages-
ilaus, the Spartan king, whose brilliant successes were,
however, checked by the Persian government resorting
to its time-proved policy of bribing the neighbors of
Sparta to attack her. “I have been conquered by
thirty thousand Persian archers,” bitterly exclaimed
6 INWASION OF PERSIA. BY GREECE.
Agesilaus, as he reëmbarked, alluding to the Persian
coin, the Daric, which was stamped with the image of
an archer.
At length Philip, the King of Macedon, projected a
renewal of these attempts, under a far more formidable
organization, and with a grander object. He managed
to have himself appointed captain-general of all Greece,
not for the purpose of a mere foray into the Asiatic
satrapies, but for the overthrow of the Persian dynasty
in the very centre of its power. Assassinated while his
preparations were incomplete, he was succeeded by his
son Alexander, then a youth. A general assembly of
Greeks at Corinth had unanimously elected him in his
father's stead. There were some disturbances in Il-
lyria; Alexander had to march his army as far north as
the Danube to quell them. During his absence the
Thebans with some others conspired against him. On
his return he took Thebes by assault. He massacred
six thousand of its inhabitants, sold thirty thousand for
slaves, and utterly demolished the city. The military
wisdom of this severity was apparent in his Asiatic cam-
paign. He was not troubled by any revolt in his rear.
In the spring B. c. 334 Alexander crossed the Hel-
lespont into Asia. His army consisted of thirty-four
thousand foot and four thousand horse. He had with
him only seventy talents in money. He marched di-
rectly on the Persian army, which, vastly exceeding him
in strength, was holding the line of the Granicus. He
forced the passage of the river, routed the enemy, and
the possession of all Asia Minor, with its treasures, was
the fruit of the victory. The remainder of that year
he spent in the military organization of the conquered
provinces. Meantime Darius, the Persian king, had
THE MAGEDONIAN CAMPAIGN. 7
advanced an army of six hundred thousand men to pre-
vent the passage of the Macedonians into Syria. In a
battle that ensued among the mountain-defiles at Issus,
the Persians were again overthrown. So great was the
slaughter that Alexander, and Ptolemy, one of his gen-
erals, crossed over a ravine choked with dead bodies.
It was estimated that the Persian loss was not less than
ninety thousand foot and ten thousand horse. The
royal pavilion fell into the conqueror's hands, and with
it the wife and several of the children of Darius. Syria
was thus added to the Greek conquests. In Damascus
were found many of the concubines of Darius and his
chief officers, together with a vast treasure.
Before venturing into the plains of Mesopotamia
for the final struggle, Alexander, to secure his rear and
preserve his communications with the sea, marched
southward down the Mediterranean coast, reducing the
cities in his way. In his speech before the council of
war after Issus, he told his generals that they must not
pursue Darius with Tyre unsubdued, and Persia in pos-
session of Egypt and Cyprus, for, if Persia should regain
her seaports, she would transfer the war into Greece,
and that it was absolutely necessary for him to be sov-
ereign at sea. With Cyprus and Egypt in his posses-
sion he felt no solicitude about Greece. The siege of
Tyre cost him more than half a year. In revenge
for this delay, he crucified, it is said, two thousand of
his prisoners. Jerusalem voluntarily surrendered, and
therefore was treated leniently: but the passage of the
Macedonian army into Egypt being obstructed at Gaza,
the Persian governor of which, Betis, made a most ob-
stinate defense, that place, after a siege of two months,
was carried by assault, ten thousand of its men were
massacred, and the rest, with their wives and children,
8 CONQUEST OF EGYPT.
sold into slavery. Betis himself was dragged alive
round the city at the chariot-wheels of the conqueror.
There was now no further obstacle. The Egyptians,
who detested the Persian rule, received their invader
with open arms. He organized the country in his own
interest, intrusting all its military commands to Mace-
donian officers, and leaving the civil government in the
hands of native Egyptians.
While preparations for the final campaign were
being made, he undertook a journey to the temple of
Jupiter"Ammon, which was situated in an oasis of the
Libyan Desert, at a distance of two hundred miles. The
oracle declared him to be a son of that god who, under
the form of a serpent, had beguiled Olympias, his
mother. Immaculate conceptions and celestial descents
were so currently received in those days, that whoever
had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of men
was thought to be of Supernatural lineage. Even in
Tome, centuries later, no one could with safety have
denied that the city owed its founder, Romulus, to an
accidental meeting of the god Mars with the virgin
Rhea Sylvia, as she went with her pitcher for water to
the spring. The Egyptian disciples of Plato would
have looked with anger on those who rejected the
legend that Perictione, the mother of that great phi-
losopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate
conception through the influences of Apollo, and that
the god had declared to Ariston, to whom she was be-
trothed, the parentage of the child. When Alexander
issued his letters, orders, and decrees, styling himself
“Ring Alexander, the son of Jupiter Ammon,” they
came to the inhabitants of Egypt and Syria with an
authority that now can hardly be realized. The free-
thinking Greeks, however, put on such a supernatural
GREEK CONQUEST OF PERSIA. 9
pedigree its proper value. Olympias, who, of course,
better than all others knew the facts of the case, used
jestingly to say, that “she wished Alexander would
cease from incessantly embroiling her with Jupiter's
wife.” Arrian, the historian of the Macedonian expe-
dition, observes, “I cannot condemn him for endeavor-
ing to draw his subjects into the belief of his divine
origin, nor can I be induced to think it any great crime,
for it is very reasonable to imagine that he intended no
more by it than merely to procure the greater authority
among his soldiers.”
All things being thus secured in his rear, Alexander,
having returned into Syria, directed the march of his
army, now consisting of fifty thousand veterans, east-
ward. After crossing the Euphrates, he kept close to
the Masian hills, to avoid the intense heat of the more
southerly Mesopotamian plains; more abundant forage
could also thus be procured for the cavalry. On the
left bank of the Tigris, near Arbela, he encountered
the great army of eleven hundred thousand men brought
up by Darius from Babylon. The death of the Persian
monarch, which soon followed the defeat he suffered,
left the Macedonian general master of all the countries
from the Danube to the Indus. Eventually he extended
his conquest to the Ganges. The treasures he seized
are almost beyond belief. At Susa alone he found—so
Arrian says—fifty thousand talents in money.
The modern military student cannot look upon these
wonderful campaigns without admiration. The passage
of the Hellespont; the forcing of the Granicus; the
winter spent in a political organization of conquered Asia
Minor; the march of the right wing and centre of the
army along the Syrian Mediterranean coast; the engi-
neering difficulties overcome at the siege of Tyre; the
|0 EVENTS OF THE CAMPAIGN.S.
storming of Gaza; the isolation of Persia from Greece;
the absolute exclusion of her navy from the Mediter-
ranean; the check on all her attempts at intriguing with
or bribing Athenians or Spartans, heretofore so often
resorted to with success; the submission of Egypt;
another winter spent in the political organization of
that venerable country; the convergence of the whole
army from the Black and Red Seas toward the nitre-
covered plains of Mesopotamia in the ensuing spring;
the passage of the Euphrates fringed with its weeping-
willows at the broken bridge of Thapsacus; the crossing
of the Tigris; the nocturnal reconnaissance before the
great and memorable battle of Arbela; the oblique
movement on the field; the piercing of the enemy’s
centre—a manoeuvre destined to be repeated many cen-
turies subsequently at Austerlitz; the energetic pursuit
of the Persian monarch; these are exploits not sur-
passed by any soldier of later times.
A prodigious stimulus was thus given to Greek in-
tellectual activity. There were men who had marched
with the Macedonian army from the Danube to the
Nile, from the Nile to the Ganges. They had felt
the hyperborean blasts of the countries beyond the
Black Sea, the simooms and sand-tempests of the Egyp-
tian deserts. They had seen the Pyramids which had
already stood for twenty centuries, the hieroglyph-
covered obelisks of Luxor, avenues of silent and mys-
terious sphinxes, colossi of monarchs who reigned in
the morning of the world. In the halls of Esar-haddon
they had stood before the thrones of grim old Assyrian
kings, guarded by winged bulls. In Babylon there still
remained its walls, once more than sixty miles in com-
pass, and, after the ravages of three centuries and three
conquerórs, still more than eighty feet in height; there
EFFECTS ON THE GREEK ARMY. 11
were still the ruins of the temple of cloud-encompassed
Bel, on its top was planted the observatory wherein the
weird Chaldean astronomers had held nocturnal com-
munion with the stars; still there were vestiges of the
two palaces with their hanging gardens in which were
great trees growing in mid-air, and the wreck of the
hydraulic machinery that had supplied them with water
from the river. Into the artificial lake with its vast
apparatus of aqueducts and sluices the melted Snows of
the Armenian mountains found their way, and were
Qonfined in their course through the city by the em-
bankments of the Euphrates. Most wonderful of all,
perhaps, was the tunnel under the river-bed.
If Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, presented stupendous
and venerable antiquities reaching far back into the
right of time, Persia was not without her wonders of a
later date. The pillared halls of Persepolis were filled
with miracles of art — carvings, Sculptures, enamels,
alabaster libraries, obelisks, sphinxes, colossal bulls.
Ecbatana, the cool summer retreat of the Persian kings,
was defended by seven encircling walls of hewn and
polished blocks, the interior ones in succession of in-
creasing height, and of different colors, in astrological
accordance with the seven planets. The palace was
roofed with silver tiles, its beams were plated with gold.
At midnight, in its halls the sunlight was rivaled by
many a row of naphtha Cressets. A paradise—that lux-
ury of the monarchs of the East—was planted in the
midst of the city. The Persian Empire, from the Hel-
lespont to the Indus, was truly the garden of the world.
I have devoted a few pages to the story of these
marvelous campaigns, for the military talent they fos.
tered led to the establishment of the mathematical and
12 EFFECTS ON THE GREEK ARMY.
practical Schools of Alexandria, the true origin of sci
ence. (We trace back all our exact knowledge to the
Macedonian campaigns. Humboldt has well observed,
that an introduction to new and grand objects of Na-
ture enlarges the human mind. The soldiers of Alex-
ander and the hosts of his camp-followers encountered
at every march unexpected and picturesque scenery.
Of all men, the Greeks were the most observant, the
most readily and profoundly impressed. Here there
were interminable Sandy plains, there mountains whose
peaks were lost above the clouds. In the deserts were
mirages, on the hill-sides shadows of fleeting clouds
sweeping over the forests. They were in a land of
amber-colored date-palms and cypresses, of tamarisks,
green myrtles, and oleanders. At Arbela they had
fought against Indian elephants; in the thickets of
the Caspian they had roused from his lair the lurking
royal tiger. They had seen animals which, compared
with those of Europe, were not only strange, but co-
lossal—the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the camel,
the crocodiles of the Nile and the Ganges. They had
encountered men of many complexions and many cos-
tumes: the swarthy Syrian, the olive-colored Persian,
the black African. Even of Alexander himself it is re-
lated that on his death-bed he caused his admiral, Near-
chus, to sit by his side, and found consolation in listen-
ing to the adventures of that sailor—the story of his
voyage from the Indus up the Persian Gulf. The con-
queror had seen with astonishment the ebbing and flow-
ing of the tides. He had built ships for the exploration
of the Caspian, supposing that it and the Black Sea
might be gulfs of a great ocean, such as Nearchus had
discovered the Persian and Red Seas to be. He had
formed a resolution that his fleet should attempt the
INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF PERSIA. 13
circumnavigation of Africa, and come into the Mediter-
ranean through the Pillars of Hercules—a feat which, it
was affirmed, had once been accomplished by the Pha-
raohs.
Not only her greatest soldiers, but also her greatest
philosophers, found in the conquered empire much that
might excite the admiration of Greece. Callisthenes
obtained in Babylon a series of Chaldean astronomical
observations ranging back through 1,903 years; these
he sent to Aristotle. Perhaps, since they were on burnt
bricks, duplicates of them may be recovered by modern
research in the clay libraries of the Assyrian kings.
Ptolemy, the Egyptian astronomer, possessed a Babylo-
nian record of eclipses, going back 747 years before our
era. Long-continued and close observations were neces-
Sary, before some of these astronomical results that have
reached our times could have been ascertained. Thus
the Babylonians had fixed the length of a tropical year
within twenty-five seconds of the truth; their estimate of
the sidereal year was barely two minutes in excess. They
had detected the precession of the equinoxes. They
knew the causes of eclipses, and, by the aid of their cycle
called Saros, could predict them. Their estimate of the
value of that cycle, which is more than 6,585 days, was
within nineteen and a half minutes of the truth.
Such facts furnish incontrovertible proof of the pa-
tience and skill with which astronomy had been culti-
vated in Mesopotamia, and that, with very inadequate
instrumental means, it had reached no inconsiderable
perfection. These old observers had made a catalogue
of the stars, had divided the zodiac into twelve signs;
they had parted the day into twelve hours, the night
into twelve. They had, as Aristotle says, for a long
time devoted themselves to observations of star-occulta-
14 INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF PERSIA.
tions by the moon. They had correct views of the
structure of the solar system, and knew the order of
emplacement of the planets. They constructed Sun-
dials, clepsydras, astrolabes, gnomons.
Not without interest do we still look on specimens
of their method of printing. Upon a revolving roller
they engraved, in cuneiform letters, their records, and,
running this over plastic clay formed into blocks, pro-
duced ineffaceable proofs. From their tile-libraries.
we are still to reap a literary and historical harvest.
They were not without some knowledge of optics. The
convex lens found at Nimróud shows that they*were
not unacquainted with magnifying instruments. In
arithmetic they had detected the value of position in
the digits, though they missed the grand Indian inven-
tion of the cipher.
What a spectacle for the conquering Greeks, who,
up to this time, had neither experimented nor observed
They had contented themselves with mere meditation
and useless speculation.
But Greek intellectual development, due thus in
part to a more extended view of Nature, was powerful-
ly aided by the knowledge then acquired of the religion
of the conquered country. The idolatry of Greece had
always been a horror to Persia, who, in her invasions,
had never failed to destroy the temples and insult the
fanes of the bestial gods. The impunity with which
these sacrileges had been perpetrated had made a pro-
found impression, and did no little to undermine Hel-
lenic faith. But * the worshiper of the vile Olym-
pian divinities, whose obscene lives must have been
shocking to every pious man, was brought in contact
with a grand, a solemn, a consistent religious system,
having its foundation on a philosophical basis. Persia,
ITS RELIGIOUS CONDITION. 15
as is the case with all empires of long duration, had
passed through many changes of religion. She had fol-
lowed the Monotheism of Zoroaster; had then accepted
Dualism, and exchanged that for Magianism. At the
time of the Macedonian expedition, she recognized one
universal Intelligence, the Creator, Preserver, and Gov-
ernor of all things, the most holy essence of truth, the
giver of all good. He was not to be represented by
any image, or any graven form. And, since, in every
thing here below, we see the resultant of two opposing
forces, under him were two coequal and coeternal prin-
ciples, represented by the imagery of Light and Dark-
ness. These principles are in never-ending conflict.
The world is their battle-ground, man is their prize.
In the old legends of Dualism, the Evil Spirit was
said to have sent a serpent to ruin the paradise which
the Good Spirit had made. These legends became
known to the Jews during their Babylonian captivity.
The existence of a principle of evil is the necessary
incident of the existence of a principle of good, as a
shadow is the necessary incident of the presence of
light. In this manner could be explained the occur-
rence of evil in a world, the maker and ruler of which
is supremely good. Each of the personified principles
of light and darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, had his
subordinate angels, his counselors, his armies. It is
the duty of a good man to cultivate truth, purity, and
industry. He may look forward, when this life is over,
to a life in another world, and trust to a resurrection of
the body, the immortality of the soul, and a conscious
future existence.
In the later years of the empire, the principles of
Magianism had gradually prevailed more and more over
those of Zoroaster. Magianism was essentially a wor-
16 DEATH OF ALEXANDER.
ship of the elements. Of these, fire was considered as
the most worthy representative of the Supreme Being.
On altars erected, not in temples, but under the blue
canopy of the sky, perpetual fires were kept burning,
and the rising sun was regarded as the noblest object of
human adoration. In the Society of Asia, nothing is
visible but the monarch ; in the expanse of heaven, all
objects vanish in presence of the Sun.
Prematurely cut off in the midst of many great pro-
jects, Alexander died at Babylon before he had com-
pleted his thirty-third year (B. c. 323). There was a
suspicion that he had been poisoned. His temper had
become so unbridled, his passion so ferocious, that his
generals and even his intimate friends lived in contin-
ual dread. Clitus, one of the latter, he in a moment of
fury had stabbed to the heart. Callisthenes, the inter-
medium between himself and Aristotle, he had caused
to be hanged, or, as was positively asserted by some
who knew the facts, had had him put upon the rack and
then crucified. It may have been in Self-defense that
the conspirators resolved on his assassination. But
Surely it was a calumny to associate the name of Aris-
totle with this transaction. He would have rather borne
the worst that Alexander could inflict, than have joined
in the perpetration of so great a crime.
A scene of confusion and bloodshed lasting many
years ensued, nor did it cease even after the Macedonian
generals had divided the empire. Among its vicissi-
tudes one incident mainly claims our attention. Ptole.
my, who was a son of King Philip by Arsinoe, a beautiful
concubine, and who in his boyhood had been driven
into exile with Alexander, when they incurred their
father's displeasure, who had been Alexander's com.
FOUNDATION OF ALEXANDRIA. 17
rade in many of his battles and all his campaigns, be-
came governor and eventually king of Egypt.
At the siege of Rhodes, Ptolemy had been of such
signal service to its citizens that in gratitude they paid
divine honors to him, and saluted him with the title of
Soter (the Savior). By that designation—Ptolemy
Soter—he is distinguished from succeeding kings of the
Macedonian dynasty in Egypt.
IIe established his seat of government not in any of
the old capitals of the country, but in Alexandria. At
the time of the expedition to the temple of Jupiter
Ammon, the Macedonian conqueror had caused the
foundations of that city to be laid, foreseeing that it
might be made the commercial entrepot between Asia
and Europe. It is to be particularly remarked that not
only did Alexander himself deport many Jews from
Palestine to people the city, and not only did Ptolemy
Soter bring one hundred thousand more after his siege
of Jerusalem, but Philadelphus, his successor, redeemed
from slavery one hundred and ninety-eight thousand
of that people, paying their Egyptian owners a just
money equivalent for each. To all these Jews the
same privileges were accorded as to the Macedonians.
In consequence of this considerate treatment, vast num-
bers of their compatriots and many Syrians voluntarily
came into Egypt. To them the designation of Helle-
mistical Jews was given. In like manner, tempted by
the benign government of Soter, multitudes of Greeks
sought refuge in the country, and the invasions of
Perdiccas and Antigonus showed that Greek soldiers
would desert from other Macedonian generals to join
his armies. -
The population of Alexandria was therefore of three
distinct nationalities: 1. Native Egyptians; 2. Greeks;
18 THE ALEXANDRIAN MUSEUM.
3. Jews—a fact that has left an impress on the religious
faith of modern Europe.
Greek architects and Greek engineers had made
Alexandria the most beautiful city of the ancient world.
They had filled it with magnificent palaces, temples,
theatres. In its centre, at the intersection of its two
grand avenues, which crossed each other at right angles,
and in the midst of gardens, fountains, obelisks, stood
the mausoleum, in which, embalmed after the manner
of the Egyptians, rested the body of Alexander. In a
funereal journey of two years it had been brought with
great pomp from Babylon. At first the coffin was of
pure gold, but this having led to a violation of the
tomb, it was replaced by one of alabaster. Put not
these, not even the great light-house, Pharos, built of
blocks of white marble and so high that the fire con-
tinually burning on its top could be seen many miles off
at sea—the Pharos counted as one of the Seven wonders
of the world—it is not these magnificent achievements
of architecture that arrest our attention; the true, the
most glorious monument of the Macedonian kings of
Egypt is the Museum. Its influences will last when
even the Pyramids have passed away.
The Alexandrian Museum was commenced by Ptol-
emy Soter, and was completed by his son Ptolemy
Philadelphus. It was situated in the Bruchion, the aris-
tocratic quarter of the city, adjoining the king's palace.
Built of marble, it was surrounded with a piazza, in
which the residents might walk and converse together.
Its sculptured apartments contained the Philadelphian
library, and were crowded with the choicest statues and
pictures. This library eventually comprised four hun-
dred thousand volumes. In the course of time, probably
on account of inadequate accommodation for So many
THE ALEXANDRIAN MUSEUM. 19
books, an additional library was established in the adja-
cent quarter Rhacotis, and placed in the Serapion or
temple of Serapis. The number of volumes in this
library, which was called the Daughter of that in the
Museum, was eventually three hundred thousand. There
were, therefore, seven hundred thousand volumes in
these royal collections.
Alexandria was not merely the capital of Egypt, it
was the intellectual metropolis of the world. Here it
was truly said the Genius of the East met the Genius
of the West, and this Paris of antiquity became a focus
of fashionable dissipation and universal skepticism. In
the allurements of its bewitching society even the Jews
forgot their patriotism. They abandoned the language
of their forefathers, and adopted Greek.
In the establishment of the Museum, Ptolemy Soter
and his son Philadelphus had three objects in view: 1.
The perpetuation of such knowledge as was then in
the world; 2. Its increase; 3. Its diffusion.
1. For the perpetuation of knowledge. Orders were
given to the chief librarian to buy at the king's expense
whatever books he could. A body of transcribers was
maintained in the Museum, whose duty it was to make
correct copies of such works as their owners were not
disposed to sell. Any books brought by foreigners into
Egypt were taken at once to the Museum, and, when
correct copies had been made, the transcript was given
to the owner, and the original placed in the library.
Often a very large pecuniary indemnity was paid. Thus
it is said of Ptolemy Euergetes that, having obtained
from Athens the works of Euripides, Sophocles, and
AEschylus, he sent to their owners transcripts, together
with about fifteen thousand dollars, as an indemnity.
On his return from the Syrian expedition he carried
20 ORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM.
back in triumph all the Egyptian monuments from Ec-
batana and Susa, which Cambyses and other invaders
had removed from Egypt. These he replaced in their
original seats, or added as adornments to his museums.
When works were translated as well as transcribed,
sums which we should consider as almost incredible
were paid, as was the case with the Septuagint transla-
tion of the Bible, ordered by Ptolemy Philadelphus.
2. For the increase of knowledge. One of the chief
objects of the Museum was that of serving as the home
of a body of men who devoted themselves to study, and
were lodged and maintained at the king's expense, Oc-
casionally he himself sat at their table. Anecdotes con-
nected with those festive occasions have descended to
our times. In the original organization of the Museum
the residents were divided into four faculties—litera-
ture, mathematics, astronomy, medicine. Minor branches
were appropriately classified under one of these general
heads; thus natural history was considered to be a
branch of medicine. An officer of very great distinc-
tion presided over the establishment, and had general
charge of its interests. Demetrius Phalareus, perhaps
the most learned man of his age, who had been gov-
ernor of Athens for many years, was the first so ap-
pointed. Under him was the librarian, an office some-
times held by men whose names have descended to our
times, as Eratosthenes, and Apollonius Rhodius.
In connection with the Museum were a botanical and
a zoological garden. These gardens, as their names im-
port, were for the purpose of facilitating the study of
plants and animals. There was also an astronomical
observatory containing armillary spheres, globes, Solsti-
tial and equatorial armils, astrolabes, parallactic rules,
and other apparatus then in use, the graduation on the
ORGANIZATION OF THE MUSEUM. 21
divided instruments being into degrees and sixths. On
the floor of this observatory a meridian line was drawn.
The want of correct means of measuring time and tem-
perature was severely felt; the clepsydra of Ctesibius
answered very imperfectly for the former, the hydrom-
eter floating in a cup of water for the latter; it meas-
ured variations of temperature by variations of density.
Philadelphus, who toward the close of his life was
haunted with an intolerable dread of death, devoted
much of his time to the discovery of an elixir. For
such pursuits the Museum was provided with a chemical
laboratory. In spite of the prejudices of the age, and
especially in spite of Egyptian prejudices, there was in
connection with the medical department an anatomical
room for the dissection, not only of the dead, but actually
of the living, who for crimes had been condemned.
3. For the diffusion of knowledge. In the Museum
was given, by lectures, conversation, or other appropriate
methods, instruction in all the various departments of
human knowledge. There flocked to this great intel-
lectual centre, students from all countries. It is said
that at one time not fewer than fourteen thousand were
in attendance. Subsequently even the Christian church
received from it some of the most eminent of its Fathers,
as Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Athanasius.
The library in the Museum was burnt during the
siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar. To make amends
for this great loss, that collected by Eumenes, King of
Pergamus, was presented by Mark Antony to Queen
Cleopatra. Originally it was founded as a rival to that
of the Ptolemies. It was added to the collection in the
Serapion.
tºy
It remains now to describe briefly the philosophical
22 SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM.
basis of the Museum, and some of its contributions to
the stock of human knowledge.
In memory of the illustrious founder of this most
noble institution—an institution which antiquity de-
lighted to call “The divine school of Alexandria”—we
must mention in the first rank his “History of the
Campaigns of Alexander.” Great as a soldier and as a
sovereign, Ptolemy Soter added to his glory by being
an author. Time, which has not been able to destroy
the memory of our obligations to him, has dealt unjustly
by his work. It is not now extant. -
As might be expected from the friendship that ex-
isted between Alexander, Ptolemy, and Aristotle, the
Aristotelian philosophy was the intellectual corner-stone
on which the Museum rested. King Philip had com-
mitted the education of Alexander to Aristotle, and
during the Persian campaigns the conqueror contributed
materially, not only in money, but otherwise, toward
the “Natural History” then in preparation.
The essential principle of the Aristotelian philosophy
was, to rise from the study of particulars to a knowledge
of general principles or universals, advancing to them
by induction. The induction is the more certain as the
facts on which it is based are more numerous; its cor-
rectness is established if it should enable us to predict
other facts until then unknown. This system implies
endless toil in the collection of facts, both by experi-
ment and observation; it implies also a close meditation
on them. It is, therefore, essentially a method of labor
and of reason, not a method of imagination. The fail-
ures that Aristotle himself so often exhibits are no
proof of its unreliability, but rather of its trustworthi-
mess. They are failures arising from want of a suffi.
ciency of facts.
ETHICAL SCHOOL OF THE MUSEUM. 23
Some of the general results at which Aristotle ar-
rived are very grand. Thus, he concluded that every
t
\
thing is ready to burst into life, and that the various
organic forms presented to us by Nature are those
which existing conditions permit. Should the condi-
tions change, the forms will also change. Hence there
is an unbroken chain from the simple element through
plants and animals up to man, the different groups
merging by insensible shades into each other.
The inductive philosophy thus established by Aris-
totle is a method of great power. To it all the modern
advances in science are due. In its most improved
form it rises by inductions from phenomena to their
causes, and then, imitating the method of the Academy,
it descends by deductions from those causes to the
detail of phenomena. -
While thus the Scientific School of Alexandria was
founded on the maxims of one great Athenian philoso-
pher, the Ethical School was founded on the maxims of
another, for Zeno, though a Cypriote or Phoenician, had
for many years been established at Athens. His disci-
ples took the name of Stoics. His doctrines long sur-
vived him, and, in times when there was no other con-
solation for man, offered a Support in the hour of trial,
and an unwavering guide in the vicissitudes of life, not
only to illustrious Greeks, but also to many of the great
philosophers, statesmen, generals, and emperors of Rome.
The aim of Zeno was, to furnish a guide for the daily
practice of life, to make men virtuous. He insisted
that education is the true foundation of virtue, for, if
we know what is good, we shall incline to do it. We
must trust to sense, to furnish the data of knowledge,
and reason will suitably combine them. In this the
affinity of Zeno to Aristotle is plainly seen. Every ap-
|
24 THE PRINCIPLES OF STOICISM.
} t it. |
petite, lust, desire, springs from imperfect knowledge.
Our nature is imposed upon us by Fate, but we must
learn to control our passions, and live free, intelligent,
virtuous, in all things in accordance with reason. Our
existence should be intellectual, we should survey with
equanimity all pleasures and all pains. We should
never forget that we are freemen, not the slaves of
y society. “I possess,” said the Stoic, “a treasure which
2 not all the world can rob me of no one can deprive
me of death.” We should remember that Nature in
her operations aims at the universal, and never spares
individuals, but uses them as means for the accomplish-
ment of her ends. It is, therefore, for us to submit to
Destiny, cultivating, as the things necessary to virtue,
knowledge, temperance, fortitude, justice. We must
remember that every thing around us is in mutation;
decay follows reproduction, and reproduction decay, and
that it is useless to repine at death in a world where
every thing is dying. As a cataract shows from year
to year an invariable shape, though the water composing
it is perpetually changing, so the aspect of Nature is
nothing more than a flow of matter presenting an im-
permanent form. The universe, considered as a whole,
is unchangeable. Nothing is eternal but space, atoms,
, force. The forms of Nature that we see are essentially
transitory, they must all pass away.
We must bear in mind that the majority of men are
imperfectly educated, and hence we must not needlessly
offend the religious ideas of our age. (It is enough for
us ourselves to know that, though there is a Supreme
Power, there is no Supreme Being. There is an in-
visible principle, but not a personal God, to whom it
would be not so much blasphemy as absurdity to impute.
the form, the sentiments, the passions of man. All
!
STOICISM IN THE MUSEUM. 25
revelation is, necessarily, a mere fiction. That which
men call chance is only the effect of an unknown cause.
Even of chances there is a law. There is no such thing
as Providence, for Nature proceeds under irresistible
laws, and in this respect the universe is only a vast
automatic engine. The vital force which pervades the
world is what the illiterate call God. The modifica-
tions through which all things are running take place
in an irresistible way, and hence it may be said that the
progress of the world is, under Destiny, like a seed, it
can evolve only in a predetermined mode.
The soul of man is a spark of the vital flame, the
general vital principle. Like heat, it passes from one
to another, and is finally reabsorbed or reunited in the
universal principle from which it came. Hence we
must not expect annihilation, but reunion; and, as the
tired man looks forward to the insensibility of sleep, so
the philosopher, weary of the world, should look for-
ward to the tranquillity of extinction. Of these things,
however, we should think doubtingly, since the mind
can produce no certain knowledge from its internal re-
sources alone. It is unphilosophical to inquire into first
causes; we must deal only with phenomena. Above all,
we must never forget that man cannot ascertain absolute
truth, and that the final result of human inquiry into
the matter is, that we are incapable of perfect knowl-
edge; that, even if the truth be in our possession, we
cannot be sure of it.
What, then, remains for us? Is it not this—the ac-
quisition of knowledge, the cultivation of virtue and of
friendship, the observance of faith and truth, an unre-
pining submission to whatever befalls us, a life led in
accordance with reason 2
26 PLATONISM IN THE MUSEUM.
But, though the Alexandrian Museum was especially
intended for the cultivation of the Aristotelian philoso-
phy, it must not be supposed that other systems were
excluded. Platonism was not only carried to its full
development, but in the end it supplanted Peripateti-
cism, and through the New Academy left a permanent
impress on Christianity. The philosophical method of
Plato was the inverse of that of Aristotle. Its start-
ing-point was universals, the very existence of which
was a matter of faith, and from these it descended to
particulars, or details. Aristotle, on the contrary, pose
from particulars to universals, advancing to them by
inductions.
Plato, therefore, trusted to the imagination, Aris-
fotle to reason. The former descended from the de-
composition of a primitive idea into particulars, the lat-
ter united particulars into a general conception. Hence
the method of Plato was capable of quickly producing
what seemed to be splendid, though in reality unsub-
stantial results; that of Aristotle was more tardy in its
operation, but much more solid. It implied endless
labor in the collection of facts, a tedious resort to ex-
periment and observation, the application of demonstra-
tion. The philosophy of Plato is a gorgeous castle in
the air; that of Aristotle a solid structure, laboriously,
and with many failures, founded on the solid rock.
An appeal to the imagination is much more alluming
than the employment of reason. In the intellectual de-
cline of Alexandria, indolent methods were preferred to
laborious observation and severe mental exercise. The
schools of Neo-Platonism were crowded with specula-
tive mystics, such as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus.
These took the place of the severe geometers of the old
Museum.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MUSEUM, 27
The Alexandrian school offers the first example of
that system which, in the hands of modern physicists,
has led to such wonderful results. It rejected imagina-
tion, and made its theories the expression of facts ob-
tained by experiment and observation, aided by mathe-
matical discussion. It enforced the principle that the
true method of studying Nature is by experimental in-
terrogation. The researches of Archimedes in specific
gravity, and the works of Ptolemy on optics, resemble
our present investigations in experimental philosophy,
and stand in striking contrast with the speculative vaga-
ries of the older writers. Laplace says that the only
observation which the history of astronomy offers us,
made by the Greeks before the school of Alexandria, is
that of the summer Solstice of the year B. C. 432, by
Meton and Euctemon. We have, for the first time, in
that school, a combined system of observations made
with instruments for the measurement of angles, and cal-
culated by trigonometrical methods. Astronomy then
took a form which subsequent ages could only perfect.
"It does not accord with the compass or the intention
of this work to give a detailed account of the contribu-
tions of the Alexandrian Museum to the stock of human
knowledge. It is sufficient that the reader should ob-
tain a general impression of their character. For par-
ticulars, I may refer him to the sixth chapter of my
“History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.”
It has just been remarked that the Stoical philoso-
phy doubted whether the mind can ascertain absolute
truth. While Zeno was indulging in such doubts,
Euclid was preparing his great work, destined to chal-
lenge contradiction from the whole human race. After
more than twenty-two centuries it still survives, a model
28 EUCLID—ARCHIMEDES.
of accuracy, perspicuity, and a standard of exact demon-
stration. This great geometer not only wrote on other
mathematical topics, such as Conic Sections and Porisms,
but there are imputed to him treatises on Harmonics
and Optics, the latter subject being discussed on the
hypothesis of rays issuing from the eye to the object.
With the Alexandrian mathematicians and physi-
cists must be classed Archimedes, though he event-
ually resided in Sicily. Among his mathematical works
were two books on the Sphere and Cylinder, in which
he gave the demonstration that the solid content of a
sphere is two-thirds that of its circumscribing cylinder.
So highly did he esteem this, that he directed the dia-
gram to be engraved on his tombstone. He also treated
of the quadrature of the circle and of the parabola; he
wrote on Conoids and Spheroids, and on the spiral that
bears his name, the genesis of which was suggested to
him by his friend Conon the Alexandrian. As a mathe-
matician, Europe produced no equal to him for nearly
two thousand years. In physical science he laid the
foundation of hydrostatics; invented a method for the
determination of specific gravities; discussed the equilib-
rium of floating bodies; discovered the true theory of the
lever, and invented a screw, which still bears his name,
for raising the water of the Nile. To him also are to
be attributed the endless screw, and a peculiar form of
burning-mirror, by which, at the siege of Syracuse, it is
said that he set the Roman fleet on fire.
Eratosthenes, who at one time had charge of the
library, was the author of many important works.
Among them may be mentioned his determination of
the interval between the tropics, and an attempt to as-
certain the size of the earth. He considered the articu-
lation and expansion of continents, the position of moun-
ERATOSTIENES-APOLLONIUS—HIPPARCHUS. 29
tain-chains, the action of clouds, the geological submer-
sion of lands, the elevation of ancient sea-beds, the open-
ing of the Dardanelles and the straits of Gibraltar, and
the relations of the Euxine Sea. He composed a complete
system of the earth, in three books—physical, mathe-
matical, historical—accompanied by a map of all the
parts then known. It is only of late years that the
fragments remaining of his “Chronicles of the Theban
Kings” have been justly appreciated. For many cen-
turies they were thrown into discredit by the authority
of our existing absurd theological chronology.
It is unnecessary to adduce the arguments relied
upon by the Alexandrians to prove the globular form
of the earth. They had correct ideas respecting the
doctrine of the sphere, its poles, axis, equator, arctic and
antarctic circles, equinoctial points, solstices, the distri-
bution of climates, etc. I cannot do more than mere-
ly allude to the treatises on Conic Sections and on
Maxima and Minima by Apollonius, who is said to have
been the first to introduce the words ellipse and hyper-
bola. In like manner I must pass the astronomical
observations of Aristyllus and Timocharis. It was to
those of the latter on Spica Virginis that Hipparchus
was indebted for his great discovery of the precession
of the equinoxes. Hipparchus also determined the first
inequality of the moon, the equation of the centre. He
adopted the theory of epicycles and eccentrics, a geo-
metrical conception for the purpose of resolving the ap-
parent motions of the heavenly bodies on the principle
of circular movement. He also undertook to make a
catalogue of the stars by the method of alineations—
that is, by indicating those that are in the same ap-
parent straight line. The number of stars so catalogued
was 1,080. If he thus attempted to depict the aspect
30 THE SYNTAXIS OF PTOLEMY.
of the sky, he endeavored to do the same for the surface
of the earth, by marking the position of towns and
other places by lines of latitude and longitude. He
was the first to construct tables of the sun and moon.
In the midst of such a brilliant constellation of
geometers, astronomers, physicists, conspicuously shines
forth Ptolemy, the author of the great work, “Syn-
taxis,” “a Treatise on the Mathematical Construction
of the Heavens.” It maintained its ground for nearly
fifteen hundred years, and indeed was only displaced by
the immortal “Principia” of Newton. It commences
with the doctrine that the earth is globular and fixed in
space, it describes the construction of a table of chords,
and instruments for observing the solstices, it deduces
the obliquity of the ecliptic, it finds terrestrial latitudes
by the gnomon, describes climates, shows how ordinary
may be converted into sidereal time, gives reasons for
preferring the tropical to the sidereal year, furnishes
the solar theory on the principle of the sun’s orbit being
a simple eccentric, explains the equation of time, ad-
vances to the discussion of the motions of the moon,
treats of the first inequality, of her eclipses, and the
motion of her nodes. It then gives Ptolemy's own
great discovery—that which has made his name immor-
tal—the discovery of the moon’s evection or second in-
equality, reducing it to the epicyclic theory. It attempts
the determination of the distances of the Sun and moon
from the earth—with, however, only partial success. It
considers the precession of the equinoxes, the discovery
of Hipparchus, the full period of which is twenty-five
thousand years. It gives a catalogue of 1,022 stars,
treats of the nature of the milky-way, and discusses in
the most masterly manner the motions of the planets.
This point constitutes another of Ptolemy's claims to
INVENTION OF THE STEAM-ENGINE. 31
scientific fame. His determination of the planetary
orbits was accomplished by comparing his own observa-
tions with those of former astronomers, among them
the observations of Timocharis on the planet Venus.
In the Museum of Alexandria, Ctesibius invented
the fire-engine. His pupil, Hero, improved it by giving,
it two cylinders. There, too, the first steam-engine
worked. This also was the invention of Hero, and
was a reaction engine, on the principle of the eolipile.
The silence of the halls of Serapis was broken by the
water-clocks of Ctesibius and Apollonius, which drop by
drop measured time. When the Roman calendar had
fallen into such confusion that it had become absolutely
necessary to rectify it, Julius Cæsar brought Sosigenes
the astronomer from Alexandria. By his advice the
lunar year was abolished, the civil year regulated en-
tirely by the sun, and the Julian calendar introduced.
The Macedonian rulers of Egypt have been blamed
for the manner in which they dealt with the religious
sentiment of their time. They prostituted it to the
purpose of state-craft, finding in it a means of governing
their lower classes. To the intelligent they gave phi-
losophy. .
But doubtless they defended this policy by the ex-
perience gathered in those great campaigns which had
made the Greeks the foremost nation of the world.
They had seen the mythological conceptions of their
ancestral country dwindle into fables; the wonders with
which the old poets adorned the Mediterranean had
been discovered to be baseless illusions. From Olympus
its divinities had disappeared; indeed, Olympus itself
had proved to be a phantom of the imagination. Hades
had lost its terrors; no place could be found for it.
32 POLICY OF THE PTOLEMIES.
From the woods and grottoes and rivers of Asia Minor
the local gods and goddesses had departed; even their dev.
otees began to doubt whether they had ever been there.
If still the Syrian damsels lamented, in their amorous
ditties, the fate of Adonis, it was only as a recollection,
not as a reality. Again and again had Persia changed
her national faith. For the revelation of Zoroaster she
had substituted Dualism; then under new political in-
fluences she had adopted Magianism. She had wor-
shiped fire, and kept her altars burning on mountain-
tops. She had adored the sun. When Alexander came,
she was fast falling into pantheism,
On a country to which in its political extremity the
indigenous gods have been found unable to give any
protection, a change of faith is impending. The ven-
erable divinities of Egypt, to whose glory obelisks had
been raised and temples dedicated, had again and again
submitted to the sword of a foreign conqueror. In the
land of the Pyramids, the Colossi, the Sphinx, the
images of the gods had ceased to represent living reali-
ties. They had ceased to be objects of faith. Others of
more recent birth were needful, and Serapis confronted
Osiris. In the shops and streets of Alexandria there
were thousands of Jews who had forgotten the God that
had made his habitation behind the veil of the temple.
Tradition, revelation, time, all had lost their imflu-
ence. The traditions of European mythology, the reve-
lations of Asia, the time-consecrated dogmas of Egypt,
all had passed or were fast passing away. And the
Ptolemies recognized how ephemeral are forms of faith.
But the Ptolemies also recognized that there is some-
thing more durable than forms of faith, which, like the
organic forms of geological ages, once gone, are clean
gone forever, and have no restoration, no return. They
THE MUSEUM AND MODERN SCIENCE. 33
recognized that within this world of transient delusions
and unrealities there is a world of eternal truth.
That world is not to be discovered through the vain
traditions that have brought down to us the opinions of
men who lived in the morning of civilization, nor in
the dreams of mystics who thought that they were in-
spired. It is to be discovered by the investigations of
geometry, and by the practical interrogation of Nature.
These confer on humanity Solid, and innumerable, and
inestimable blessings. º
The day will never come when any one of the prop-
ositions of Euclid will be denied; no one henceforth
will call in question the globular shape of the earth, as
recognized by Eratosthenes; the world will not permit
the great physical inventions and discoveries made in
Alexandria and Syracuse to be forgotten. The names
of Hipparchus, of Apollonius, of Ptolemy, of Archi-
medes, will be mentioned with reverence by men of
every religious profession, as long as there are men to
Speak.
The Museum of Alexandria was thus the birthplace
of modern science. It is true that, long before its es-
tablishment, astronomical observations had been made
in China and Mesopotamia; the mathematics also had
been cultivated with a certain degree of success in In-
dia. But in none of these countries had investigation
assumed a connected and consistent form ; in none was
physical experimentation resorted to. The character-
istic feature of Alexandrian, as of modern science, is,
that it did not restrict itself to observation, but relied
on a practical interrogation of Nature.
CHAPTER II.
THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY.—ITS TRANSFORMATION ON
ATTAINING IMPERIAL POWER.—ITS RELATIONS TO SCI-
ENCE.
Religious condition of the Roman Republic.—The adoption of imperialism
leads to monotheism.—Christianity spreads over the Roman Empire.—
The circumstances under which it attained imperial power make its
wnion with Paganism a political necessity.—Tertullian's description of
its doctrines and practices.—Debasing effect of the policy of Con-
stantine on it.—Its alliance with the civil power.—Its incompatibility
with science.—Destruction of the Alexandrian Library and prohibi-
tion of philosophy.—Exposition of the Augustinian philosophy and
Patristic science generally.—The Scriptures made the standard of
SC2670,06.
IN a political sense, Christianity is the bequest of
the Roman Empire to the world.
At the epoch of the transition of Rome from the
republican to the imperial form of government, all the
independent nationalities around the Mediterranean Sea
had been brought under the control of that central
power. The conquest that had befallen them in succes-
sion had been by no means a disaster. The perpetual
wars they had maintained with each other came to an
end; the miseries their conflicts had engendered were
exchanged for universal peace.
Not only as a token of the conquest she had made,
but also as a gratification to her pride, the conquering .
MONOTEIEISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 35
republic brought the gods of the vanquished peoples to
Rome. With disdainful toleration, she permitted the
worship of them all. That paramount authority exer-
cised by each divinity in his original seat disappeared
at once in the crowd of gods and goddesses among
whom he had been brought. Already, as we have
Seen, through geographical discoveries and philosophi-
cal criticism, faith in the religion of the old days had
been profoundly shaken. It was, by this policy of
Tome, brought to an end.
The kings of all the conquered provinces had van-
ished; in their stead one emperor had come. The gods
also had disappeared. Considering the connection which
in all ages has existed between political and religious
ideas, it was then not at all strange that polytheism
should manifest a tendency to pass into monotheism.
Accordingly, divine honors were paid at first to the
deceased and at length to the living emperor.
The facility with which gods were thus called into
existence had a powerful moral effect. The manufact-
ure of a new one cast ridicule on the origin of the old.
Incarnation in the East and apotheosis in the West were
fast filling Olympus with divinities. In the East, gods
descended from heaven, and were made incarnate in
men; in the West, men ascended from earth, and took
their seat among the gods. It was not the importation
of Greek skepticism that made Rome skeptical. The
excesses of religion itself sapped the foundations of faith.
Not with equal rapidity did all classes of the popula-
tion adopt monotheistic views. The merchants and law-
yers and soldiers, who by the nature of their pursuits
are more familiar with the vicissitudes of life, and have
larger intellectual views, were the first to be affected,
the land laborers and farmers the last.
36 THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY
When the empire in a military and political sense
had reached its culmination, in a religious and social
aspect it had attained its height of immorality. It had
become thoroughly epicurean; its maxim was, that life
should be made a feast, that virtue is only the seasoning
of pleasure, and temperance the means of prolonging it.
Dining-rooms glittering with gold and incrusted with
gems, slaves in Superb apparel, the fascinations of fe-
male Society where all the women were dissolute, mag-
nificent baths, theatres, gladiators, such were the objects
of Roman desire. The conquerors of the world had
discovered that the only thing worth worshiping is
Force. By it all things might be secured, all that toil
and trade had laboriously obtained. The confiscation
of goods and lands, the taxation of provinces, were the
reward of successful warfare; and the emperor was the
symbol of force. There was a social splendor, but it
was the phosphorescent corruption of the ancient Medi-
terranean world.
In one of the Eastern provinces, Syria, Some persons
in very humble life had associated themselves together
for benevolent and religious purposes. The doctrines
they held were in harmony with that sentiment of uni-
versal brotherhood arising from the coalescence of the
conquered kingdoms. They were doctrines inculcated
by Jesus. +
The Jewish people at that time entertained a belief,
founded on old traditions, that a deliverer would arise
among them, who would restore them to their ancient
splendor. The disciples of Jesus regarded him as this
long-expected Messiah. But the priesthood, believing
that the doctrines he taught were prejudicial to their inter-
ests, denounced him to the Roman governor, who, to Sat-
isfy their clamors, reluctantly delivered him over to death.
THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY. 37
IIis doctrines of benevolence and human brother-
hood outlasted that event. The disciples, instead of
scattering, organized. They associated themselves on a
principle of communism, each throwing into the com-
mon stock whatever property he possessed, and all his
gains. The widows and orphans of the community
were thus supported, the poor and the sick Sustained.
From this germ was developed a new, and as the events
proved, all-powerful society—the Church; new, for noth-
ing of the kind had existed in antiquity; powerful, for
the local churches, at first isolated, Soon began to confed-
erate for their common interest. Through this organ-
ization Christianity achieved all her political triumphs.
As we have said, the military domination of Rome
had brought about universal peace, and had generated
a sentiment of brotherhood among the vanquished na-
tions. Things were, therefore, propitious for the rapid
diffusion of the newly-established—the Christian—prin-
ciple throughout the empire. It spread from Syria
through all Asia Minor, and successively reached Cy-
prus, Greece, Italy, eventually extending westward as
far as Gaul and Britain.
Its propagation was hastened by missionaries who
made it known in all directions. None of the ancient
classical philosophies had ever taken advantage of such
à, Iſleå.I] S.
Political conditions determined the boundaries of
the new religion. Its limits were eventually those
of the Roman Empire; Rome, doubtfully the place of
death of Peter, not Jerusalem, indisputably the place
of the death of our Savior, became the religious capital.
It was better to have possession of the imperial seven
hilled city, than of Gethsemane and Calvary with all
their holy souvenirs.
38 IT GATHERS POLITICAL POWER.
For many years Christianity manifested itself as a
system enjoining three things—toward God veneration,
in personal life purity, in social life benevolence. In
its early days of feebleness it made proselytes only by
persuasion, but, as it increased in numbers and influence,
it began to exhibit political tendencies, a disposition to
form a government within the government, an empire
within the empire. These tendencies it has never since
i lost. They are, in truth, the logical result of its de-
velopment. The Roman emperors, discovering that it
was absolutely incompatible with the imperial system,
tried to put it down by force. This was in accordance
with the spirit of their military maxims, which had
no other means but force for the establishment of con-
formity.
In the winter A. D. 302–3, the Christian soldiers in
some of the legions refused to join in the time-honored
solemnities for propitiating the gods. The mutiny
spread so quickly, the emergency became so pressing,
that the Emperor Diocletian was compelled to hold a
council for the purpose of determining what should be
done. The difficulty of the position may perhaps be
appreciated when it is understood that the wife and the
daughter of Diocletian himself were Christians. He
was a man of great capacity and large political views; he
recognized in the opposition that must be made to the
new party a political necessity, yet he expressly enjoined
that there should be no bloodshed. But who can con-
trol an infuriated civil commotion ? The church of
Nicomedia was razed to the ground; in retaliation the
imperial palace was set on fire, an edict was openly
insulted and torn down. The Christian officers in the
army were cashiered; in all directions, martyrdoms and
massacres were taking place. So resistless was the
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR 39
march of events, that not even the emperor himself
could stop the persecution.
It had now become evident that the Christians con-
stituted a powerful party in the state, animated with
indignation at the atrocities they had suffered, and de-
termined to endure them no longer. After the abdica-
tion of Diocletian (A. D. 305), Constantine, one of the
competitors for the purple, perceiving the advantages
that would accrue to him from such a policy, put him-
self forth as the head of the Christian party. This gave
him, in every part of the empire, men and women
ready to encounter fire and sword in his behalf; it gave
him unwavering adherents in every legion of the armies.
In a decisive battle, near the Milvian bridge, victory
crowned his schemes. The death of Maximin, and
subsequently that of Licinius, removed all obstacles.
He ascended the throne of the Caesars—the first Chris-
tian emperor.
Place, profit, power—these were in view of whoever
now joined the conquering sect. Crowds of worldly
persons, who cared nothing about its religious ideas, be-
came its warmest supporters. Pagans at heart, their
influence was soon manifested in the paganization of
Christianity that forthwith ensued. The emperor, no
better than they, did nothing to check their proceed-
ings. But he did not personally conform to the cere-
monial requirements of the Church until the close of
his evil life, A. D. 337.
That we may clearly appreciate the modifications
now impressed on Christianity—modifications which
eventually brought it in conflict with science—we must
have, as a means of comparison, a statement of what it
was in its purer days. Such, fortunately, we find in
the “Apology or Defense of the Christians against the
40 TERTULLIAN'S EXPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY.
Accusations of the Gentiles,” written by Tertullian, at
Rome, during the persecution of Severus. He ad-
dressed it, not to the emperor, but to the magistrates
who sat in judgment on the accused. It is a solemn
and most earnest expostulation, setting forth all that
could be said in explanation of the subject, a represen-
tation of the belief and cause of the Christians made in
the imperial city in the face of the whole world, not a
querulous or passionate ecclesiastical appeal, but a grave
historical document. It has ever been looked upon as
one of the ablest of the early Christian works. Its date
is about A. D. 200. -
With no inconsiderable skill Tertullian opens his
argument. He tells the magistrates that Christianity
is a stranger upon earth, and that she expects to meet
with enemies in a country which is not her own. She
only asks that she may not be condemned unheard, and
that Roman magistrates will permit her to defend her-
self; that the laws of the empire will gather lustre, if
judgment be passed upon her after she has been tried,
but not if she is sentenced without a hearing of her
cause; that it is unjust to hate a thing of which we are
ignorant, even though it may be a thing worthy of hate;
that the laws of Rome deal with actions, not with mere
names; but that, notwithstanding this, persons have
been punished because they were called Christians, and
that without any accusation of crime.
He then advances to an exposition of the origin, the
nature, and the effects of Christianity, stating that it is
founded on the Hebrew Scriptures, which are the most
venerable of all books. He says to the magistrates:
“The books of Moses, in which God has inclosed, as in
a treasure, all the religion of the Jews, and consequent-
ly all the Christian religion, reach far beyond the oldest
TERTULLIAN's EXPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY. 41
you have, even beyond all your public monuments, the
establishment of your state, the foundation of many
great cities—all that is most advanced by you in all
ages of history, and memory of times; the invention
of letters, which are the interpreters of sciences and the
guardians of all excellent things. I think I may say
more—beyond your gods, your temples, your Oracles and
sacrifices. The author of those books lived a thousand
years before the siege of Troy, and more than fifteen
hundred before Homer.” Time is the ally of truth,
and wise men believe nothing but what is certain, and
what has been verified by time. The principal author-
ity of these Scriptures is derived from their venerable
antiquity. The most learned of the Ptolemies, who
was surnamed Philadelphus, an accomplished prince, by
the advice of Demetrius Phalareus, obtained a copy of
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these holy books. It may be found at this day in his
library. The divinity of these Scriptures is proved by
this, that all that is done in our days may be found pre-
dicted in them ; they contain all that has since passed
in the view of men.
Is not the accomplishment of a prophecy a testimony
to its truth? Seeing that events which are past have
vindicated these prophecies, shall we be blamed for trust-
ing them in events that are to come Now, as we be-
lieve things that have been prophesied and have come
to pass, so we believe things that have been told us,
but not yet come to pass, because they have all been
foretold by the same Scriptures, as well those that are
verified every day as those that still remain to be ful.
filled. .*
These Holy Scriptures teach us that there is one
God, who made the world out of nothing, who, though
daily seen, is invisible; his infiniteness is known only
42 TERTULLIAN'S EXPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY.
to himself; his immensity conceals, but at the same
time discovers him. He has ordained for men, accord-
ing to their lives, rewards and punishments; he will
raise all the dead that have ever lived from the creation
of the world, will command them to reassume their
bodies, and thereupon adjudge them to felicity that has
no end, or to eternal flames. The fires of hell are those
hidden flames which the earth shuts up in her bosom.
He has in past times sent into the world preachers or
prophets. The prophets of those old times were Jews;
they addressed their oracles, for such they were, to the
Jews, who have stored them up in the Scriptures. On
them, as has been said, Christianity is founded, though
the Christian differs in his ceremonies from the Jew.
We are accused of worshiping a man, and not the God
of the Jews. Not so. The honor we bear to Christ .
does not derogate from the honor we bear to God.
On account of the merit of these ancient patriarchs,
the Jews were the only beloved people of God; he de-
lighted to be in communication with them by his own
mouth. By him they were raised to admirable great-
ness. But with perversity they wickedly ceased to re-
gard him; they changed his laws into a profane wor-
ship. He warned them that he would take to himself
servants more faithful than they, and, for their crime,
punished them by driving them forth from their coun-
try. They are now spread all over the world; they
wander in all parts; they cannot enjoy the air they
breathed at their birth; they have neither man nor God
for their king. As he threatened them, so he has done.
He has taken, in all nations and countries of the earth,
people more faithful than they. Through his prophets
he had declared that these should have greater favors,
and that a Messiah should come, to publish a new law
TERTULLIAN'S EXPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY. 43
among them. This Messiah was Jesus, who is also God.
For God may be derived from God, as the light of a
candle may be derived from the light of another candle.
/God and his Son are the self-same God—a light is the
same light as that from which it was taken.
The Scriptures make known two comings of the Son
of God; the first in humility, the second at the day of
judgment, in power. The Jews might have known all
this from the prophets, but their sins have so blinded
them that they did not recognize him at his first coming,
and are still vainly expecting him. They believed that
all the miracles wrought by him were the work of magic.
The doctors of the law and the chief priests were en-
vious of him ; they denounced him to Pilate. He was
crucified, died, was buried, and after three days rose
again. For forty days he remained among his disciples.
Then he was environed in a cloud, and rose up to
heaven—a truth far more certain than any human
testimonies touching the ascension of Romulus or of
any other Roman prince mounting up to the same
place.
Tertullian then describes the origin and nature of
devils, who, under Satan, their prince, produce dis-
eases, irregularities of the air, plagues, and the blighting
of the blossoms of the earth, who seduce men to offer
sacrifices, that they may have the blood of the victims,
which is their food. They are as nimble as the birds,
and hence know every thing that is passing upon earth;
they live in the air, and hence can spy what is going on
in heaven; for this reason they can impose on men
feigned prophecies, and deliver oracles. Thus they
announced in Rome that a victory would be obtained
over King Perseus, when in truth they knew that the
battle was already won. They falsely cure diseases;
44 TERTULLIAN'S EXPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY.
for, taking possession of the body of a man, they pro-
duce in him a distemper, and then ordaining some rem-
edy to be used, they cease to afflict him, and men think
that a cure has taken place.
Though Christians deny that the emperor is a god,
they nevertheless pray for his prosperity, because the
general dissolution that threatens the universe, the con-
flagration of the world, is retarded so long as the glorious
majesty of the triumphant Roman Empire shall last.
They desire not to be present at the subversion of all
Nature. They acknowledge only one republic, but it is
the whole world; they constitute one body, worship one
God, and all look forward to eternal happiness. Not
only do they pray for the emperor and the magistrates,
but also for peace. They read the Scriptures to nourish
their faith, lift up their hope, and strengthen the confi-
dence they have in God. They assemble to exhort one
another; they remove sinners from their societies; they
have bishops who preside over them, approved by the
suffrages of those whom they are to conduct. At the
end of each month every one contributes if he will, but
no one is constrained to give; the money gathered in
this manner is the pledge of piety; it is not consumed
in eating and drinking, but in feeding the poor, and
burying them, in comforting children that are destitute
of parents and goods, in helping old men who have
spent the best of their days in the service of the faith-
ful, in assisting those who have lost by shipwreck what
they had, and those who are condemned to the mines,
or have been banished to islands, or shut up in prisons,
because they professed the religion of the true God.
There is but one thing that Christians have not in com.
mon, and that one thing is their wives. They do not
feast as if they should die to-morrow, nor build as if they
TERTULLIAN'S EXPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY. 45
should never die. The objects of their life are inno-
cence, justice, patience, temperance, chastity.
To this noble exposition of Christian belief and life
in his day, Tertullian does not hesitate to add an omi-
nous warning to the magistrates he is addressing—
ominous, for it was a forecast of a great event soon to
come to pass: “Our origin is but recent, yet already we
fill all that your power acknowledges—cities, fortresses,
islands, provinces, the assemblies of the people, the
wards of Rome, the palace, the Senate, the public places,
and especially the armies. We have left you nothing
but your temples. Reflect what wars we are able to
undertake With what promptitude might we not arm
ourselves were we not restrained by our religion, which
teaches us that it is better to be killed than to kill !”
Before he closes his defense, Tertullian renews an
assertion which, carried into practice, as it subsequently
was, affected the intellectual development of all Europe.
He declares that the Holy Scriptures are a treasure from
which all the true wisdom in the world has been drawn;
that every philosopher and every poet is indebted to
them. He labors to show that they are the standard and
measure of all truth, and that whatever is inconsistent
with them must necessarily be false.
From Tertullian’s able work we see what Christi-
anity was while it was suffering persecution and strug-
gling for existence. We have now to see what it be-
came when in possession of imperial power. Great is
the difference between Christianity under Severus and
Christianity after Constantine. Many of the doctrines
which at the latter period were prečminent, in the for-
mer were unknown.
Two causes led to the amalgamation of Christianity
with paganism: 1. The political necessities of the new
46 PAGANIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
dynasty; 2. The policy adopted by the new religion to
insure its spread.
1. Though the Christian party had proved itself
sufficiently strong to give a master to the empire, it was
never sufficiently strong to destroy its antagonist, pagan-
ism. The issue of the struggle between them was an
amalgamation of the principles of both. In this, Chris-
tianity differed from Mohammedanism, which absolutely
annihilated its antagonist, and spread its own doctrines
without adulteration.
Constantine continually showed by his acts that he
felt he must be the impartial sovereign of all his people,
not merely the representative of a successful faction.
Hence, if he built Christian churches, he also restored
pagan temples; if he listened to the clergy, he also con-
sulted the haruspices; if he summoned the Council of
Nicea, he also honored the statue of Fortune; if he
accepted the rite of baptism, he also struck a medal
bearing his title of “God.” His statue, on the top of
the great porphyry pillar at Constantinople, consisted
of an ancient image of Apollo, whose features were re-
placed by those of the emperor, and its head surrounded
by the nails feigned to have been used at the cruci-
fixion of Christ, arranged so as to form a crown of
glory.
Feeling that there must be concessions to the de-
feated pagan party, in accordance with its ideas, he
looked with favor on the idolatrous movements of his
court. In fact, the leaders of these movements were
persons of his own family.
2. To the emperor—a mere worldling—a man with-
out any religious convictions, doubtless, it appeared best
for himself, best for the empire, and best for the con-
tending parties, Christian and pagan, to promote their
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CHRISTIANITY UNDER CONSTANTINE. 47
union or amalgamation as much as possible. Even sin-
cere Christians do not seem to have been averse to this;
perhaps they believed that the new doctrines would dif-
fuse most thoroughly by incorporating in themselves
ideas borrowed from the old, that Truth would assert her-
self in the end, and the impurity be cast off. In accom-
plishing this amalgamation, Helena, the empress-mother,
aided by the court ladies, led the way. For her gratifi-
cation there were discovered, in a cavern at Jerusalem,
wherein they had lain buried for more than three cen-
turies, the Savior’s cross, and those of the two thieves,
the inscription, and the nails that had been used. They
were identified by miracle. A true relic-worship set in.
The superstition of the old Greek times reappeared; the
times when the tools with which the Trojan horse was
made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of
Pelops at Chaeroneia, the spear of Achilles at Phaselis,
the sword of Memnon at Nicomedia, when the Tegeates
could show the hide of the Calydonian boar and very
many cities boasted their possession of the true palla-
dium of Troy; when there were statues of Minerva that
could brandish spears, paintings that could blush, im-
ages that could sweat, and endless shrines and sanctua-
ries at which miracle-cures could be performed.
As years passed on, the faith described by Tertul-
lian was transmuted into One more fashionable and
more debased. It was incorporated with the old Greek
mythology. Olympus was restored, but the divinities
passed under other names. The more powerful prov-
inces insisted on the adoption of their time-honored
conceptions. Views of the Trinity, in accordance with
Egyptian traditions, were established. Not only was
the adoration of Isis under a new name restored, but
even her image, standing on the crescent moon, reap-
48 PAGANIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
peared. The well-known effigy of that goddess, with
the infant Horus in her arms, has descended to our days
in the beautiful, artistic creations of the Madonna and
Child. Such restorations of old conceptions under novel
forms were everywhere received with delight. When
it was announced to the Ephesians that the Council of
that place, headed by Cyril, had decreed that the Virgin
should be called “the Mother of God,” with tears of
joy they embraced the knees of their bishop ; it was the
old instinct peeping out; their ancestors would have
done the same for Diana.
This attempt to conciliate worldly converts, by adopt-
ing their ideas and practices, did not pass without re-
monstrance from those whose intelligence discerned the
motive. “You have,” says Faustus to Augustine, “sub-
stituted your agapae for the Sacrifices of the pagans; for
their idols your martyrs, whom you serve with the very
same honors. You appease the shades of the dead with
wine and feasts; you celebrate the solemn festivities of
the Gentiles, their calends, and their solstices; and, as to
their manners, those you have retained without any al-
teration. Nothing distinguishes you from the pagans,
except that you hold your assemblies apart from them.”
Pagan observances were everywhere introduced. At
weddings it was the custom to sing hymns to Venus.
Tet us pause here a moment, and See, in anticipa-
tion, to what a depth of intellectual degradation this
policy of paganization eventually led. Heathen rites
were adopted, a pompous and splendid ritual, gorgeous
robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, processional Services,
lustrations, gold and silver vases, were introduced. The
Toman lituus, the chief ensign of the augurs, became
the crozier. Churches were built over the tombs of
martyrs, and consecrated with rites borrowed from the
INTRODUCTION OF ROMAN RITES. 49
ancient laws of the Roman pontiffs. Festivals and com-
memorations of martyrs multiplied with the numberless
fictitious discoveries of their remains. Fasting became
the grand means of repelling the devil and appeasing
God; celibacy the greatest of the virtues. Pilgrimages
were made to Palestine and the tombs of the martyrs.
Quantities of dust and earth were brought from the
Holy Land and sold at enormous prices, as antidotes
against devils. The virtues of consecrated water were
upheld. Images and relics were introduced into the
churches, and worshiped after the fashion of the heathen
gods. It was given out that prodigies and miracles were
to be seen in certain places, as in the heathen times.
The happy souls of departed Christians were invoked;
it was believed that they were wandering about the
world, or haunting their graves. There was a multi-
plication of temples, altars, and penitential garments.
The festival of the purification of the Virgin was in-
vented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on
account of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan.
The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or
bones, nails, and other relics, a true fetich worship, was
cultivated. Two arguments were relied on for the au-
thenticity of these objects—the authority of the Church,
and the working of miracles. Even the worn-out cloth-
ing of the Saints and the earth of their graves were ven-
erated. From Palestine were brought what were af.
firmed to be the skeletons of St. Mark and St. James,
and other ancient worthies. The apotheosis of the
old Roman times was replaced by canonization; tute-
lary Saints succeed to local mythological divinities.
Then came the mystery of transubstantiation, or the
conversion of bread and wine by the priest into the
flesh and blood of Christ. As centuries passed, the
3
• 50 INTRODUCTION OF ROMAN RITES.
paganization became more and more complete. Festi-
vals sacred to the memory of the lance with which the
Savior’s side was pierced, the nails that fastened him
to the cross, and the crown of thorns, were instituted.
Though there were several abbeys that possessed this
last peerless relic, no one dared to say that it was im-
possible they could all be authentic.
We may read with advantage the remarks made by
Bishop Newton on this paganization of Christianity.
He asks: “Is not the worship of Saints and angels now
in all respects the same that the worship of demons
was in former times? The name only is different, the
thing is identically the same, . . . the deified men of the
Christians are substituted for the deified men of the
heathens. The promoters of this worship were sensible
that it was the same, and that the one succeeded to the
other; and, as the worship is the same, so likewise it is
performed with the same ceremonies. The burning of
incense or perfumes on several altars at one and the
same time; the sprinkling of holy water, or a mixture
of salt and common water, at going into and coming out
of places of public worship; the lighting up of a great
number of lamps and wax-candles in broad daylight
before altars and statues of these deities; the hanging
up of votive offerings and rich presents as attestations
of so many miraculous cures and deliverances from dis-
eases and dangers; the canonization or deification of
deceased worthies; the assigning of distinct provinces or
prefectures to departed heroes and Saints; the worship-
ing and adoring of the dead in their sepulchres, shrines,
and relics; the consecrating and bowing down to im-
ages; the attributing of miraculous powers and virtues
to idols; the setting up of little oratories, altars, and
statues in the streets and highways, and on the tops of
DEBASEMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 51
mountains; the carrying of images and relics in pompous
procession, with numerous lights and with music and
singing; flagellations at Solemn seasons under the notion
of penance; a great variety of religious orders and fra-
termities of priests; the shaving of priests, or the tonsure
as it is called, on the crown of their heads; the imposing
of celibacy and vows of chastity on the religious of both
sexes—all these and many more rites and ceremonies are
equally parts of pagan and popish Superstition. Nay,
the very same temples, the very same images, which
were once consecrated to Jupiter and the other demons,
are now consecrated to the Virgin Mary and the other
Saints. The very same rites and inscriptions are as-
cribed to both, the very same prodigies and miracles
are related of these as of those. In short, almost the
whole of paganism is converted and applied to popery;
the one is manifestly formed upon the same plan and
principles as the other; so that there is not only a con-
formity, but even a uniformity, in the worship of an-
cient and modern, of heathen and Christian Rome.”
Thus far Bishop Newton; but to return to the times
of Constantine: though these concessions to old and
popular ideas were permitted and even encouraged, the
dominant religious party never for a moment hesitated
to enforce its decisions by the aid of the civil power—
an aid which was freely given. Constantine thus car-
ried into effect the acts of the Council of Nicea. In
the affair of Arius, he even ordered that whoever should
find a book of that heretic, and not burn it, should be
put to death. In like manner Nestor was by Theodo-
sius the Younger banished to an Egyptian oasis.
The pagan party included many of the old aristo-
cratic families of the empire; it counted among its ad-
herents all the disciples of the old philosophical schools.
;
52 DEBASEMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.
It looked down on its antagonist with contempt. It
asserted that knowledge is to -be obtained only by the
laborious exercise of human observation and human
I’628 SOIl. 's
The Christian party asserted that all knowledge is
to be found in the Scriptures and in the traditions of
the Church; that, in the written revelation, God had not
only given a criterion of truth, but had furnished us all
that he intended us to know. The Scriptures, there-
fore, contain the sum, the end of all knowledge. The
clergy, with the emperor at their back, would endure no
intellectual competition. 2
Thus came into prominence what were termed Sa-
cred and profane knowledge; thus came into presence of
each other two opposing parties, one relying on human
reason as its guide, the other on revelation. Paganism
leaned for support on the learning of its philosophers,
: Christianity on the inspiration of its Fathers.
The Church thus set herself forth as the depository
and arbiter of knowledge; she was ever ready to resort
to the civil power to compel obedience to her decisions.
She thus took a course which determined her whole
/future career: she became a stumbling-block in the
intellectual advancement of Europe for more than a
thousand years.
The reign of Constantine marks the epoch of the
transformation of Christianity from a religion into a
political system; and though, in One Sense, that system
was degraded into an idolatry, in another it had risen
into a development of the old Greek mythology. The
maxim holds good in the social as well as in the me-
chanical world, that, when two bodies strike, the form of
both is changed. Paganism was modified by Christi-
anity; Christianity by Paganism.
THE TRINITARIAN DISPUTE. 53
In the Trinitarian controversy, which first broke out
in Egypt—Egypt, the land of Trinities—the chief point
in discussion was to define the position of “the Son.”
There lived in Alexandria a presbyter of the name of
Arius, a disappointed candidate for the office of bishop.
He took the ground that there was a time when, from
the very nature of Sonship, the Son did not exist, and
a time at which he commenced to be, asserting that it
is the necessary condition of the filial relation that a
father must be older than his son. But this assertion
evidently denied the coeternity of the three persons of
the Trinity; it suggested a subordination or inequality
among them, and indeed implied a time when the
Trinity did not exist. Hereupon, the bishop, who had
been the successful competitor against Arius, displayed
his rhetorical powers in public debates on the question,
and, the strife spreading, the Jews and pagans, who
formed a very large portion of the population of Alex-
andria, amused themselves with theatrical representa-
tions of the contest on the stage—the point of their
burlesques being the equality of age of the Father and
his Son.
Such was the violence the controversy at length
assumed, that the matter had to be referred to the em-
peror. At first he looked upon the dispute as alto-
gether frivolous, and perhaps in truth inclined to the
assertion of Arius, that in the very nature of the thing
a father must be older than his son. So great, however,
was the pressure laid upon him, that he was eventually
compelled to summon the Council of Nicea, which, to
dispose of the conflict, set forth a formulary or creed,
and attached to it this anathema: “The Holy Catholic
and Apostolic Church anathematizes those who say that
there was a time when the Son of God was not, and
54 DISPERSION OF THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY.
that, before he was begotten, he was not, and that lie
was made out of nothing, or out of another substance
or essence, and is created, or changeable, or alterable.”
Constantine at once enforced the decision of the council
by the civil power.
A few years subsequently the Emperor Theodosius
prohibited sacrifices, made the inspection of the entrails
of animals a capital offense, and forbade any one enter-
ing a temple. He instituted Inquisitors of Faith, and
ordained that all who did not accord with the belief of
Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, and Peter, the Bishop of
Alexandria, should be driven into exile, and deprived
of civil rights. Those who presumed to celebrate Easter
on the same day as the Jews, he condemned to death.
The Greek language was now ceasing to be known in
the West, and true learning was becoming extinct.
At this time the bishopric of Alexandria was held
by one Theophilus. An ancient temple of Osiris hav-
ing been given to the Christians of the city for the site
of a church, it happened that, in digging the foundation
for the new edifice, the obscene symbols of the former
worship chanced to be found. These, with more zeal
than modesty, Theophilus exhibited in the market-place
to public derision. With less forbearance than the Chris-
tian party showed when it was insulted in the theatre
during the Trinitarian dispute, the pagans resorted to
violence, and a riot ensued. They held the Serapion as
their headquarters. Such were the disorder and blood-
shed that the emperor had to interfere. He dispatched
a rescript to Alexandria, enjoining the bishop, Theophi-
lus, to destroy the Serapion; and the great library, which
had been collected by the Ptolemies, and had escaped
the fire of Julius Caesar, was by that fanatic dispersed.
The bishopric thus held by Theophilus was in due
THE MURDER OF HYPATIA. 55
time occupied by his nephew St. Cyril, who had com-
mended himself to the approval of the Alexandrian con-
gregations as a successful and fashionable preacher. It
was he who had so much to do with the introduction of
the worship of the Virgin Mary. Iſis hold upon the
audiences of the giddy city was, however, much weak-
ened by Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, the mathe-
matician, who not only distinguished herself by her expo-
sitions of the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, but also
by her comments on the writings of Apollonius and
other geometers. Each day before her academy stood
a long train of chariots; her lecture-room was crowded
with the wealth and fashion of Alexandria. They
came to listen to her discourses on those questions
which man in all ages has asked, but which never yet
have been answered: “What am I? Where am I?
What can I know ; *
IHypatia and Cyril! Philosophy and bigotry. They
cannot exist together. So Cyril felt, and on that feel-
ing he acted. As Hypatia repaired to her academy, she
was assaulted by Cyril's mob—a mob of many monks.
Stripped naked in the street, she was dragged into a
church, and there killed by the club of Peter the
Reader. The corpse was cut to pieces, the flesh was
scraped from the bones with shells, and the remnants
cast into a fire. For this frightful crime Cyril was
never called to account. It seemed to be admitted that
the end sanctified the means. -
So ended Greek philosophy in Alexandria, so came
to an untimely close the learning that the Ptolemies
had done so much to promote. The “Daughter Li-
brary,” that of the Serapion, had been dispersed. The
fate of Hypatia was a warning to all who would culti-
vate profane knowledge. Henceforth there was to be no
56 PELAGIUS,
freedom for human thought. Every one must think as
the ecclesiastical authority ordered him, A. D. 414. In
Athens itself philosophy awaited its doom. Justinian at
length prohibited its teaching, and caused all its schools
in that city to be closed.
While these events were transpiring in the Eastern
provinces of the Roman Empire, the spirit that had
produced them was displaying itself in the West. A
British monk, who had assumed the name of Pelagius,
passed through Western Europe and Northern Africa,
teaching that death was not introduced into the world
by the sin of Adam; that on the contrary he was neces-
sarily and by nature mortal, and had he not sinned he
would nevertheless have died; that the consequences of
his sins were confined to himself, and did not affect his
posterity. From these premises Pelagius drew certain
important theological conclusions.
At Rome, Pelagius had been received with favor; at
Carthage, at the instigation of St. Augustine, he was
denounced. By a synod, held at Diospolis, he was
acquitted of heresy, but, on referring the matter to the
Dishop of Rome, Innocent I., he was, on the contrary,
condemned. It happened that at this moment Innocent
died, and his successor, Zosimus, annulled his judgment,
and declared the opinions of Pelagius to be orthodox.
These contradictory decisions are still often referred to
by the opponents of papal infallibility. Things were in
this state of confusion, when the wily African bishops,
through the influence of Count Valerius, procured from
the emperor an edict denouncing Pelagius as a heretic ;
he and his accomplices were condemned to exile and the
forfeiture of their goods. To affirm that death was in
the world before the fall of Adam, was a state crime.
It is very instructive to consider the principles on
CONDEMINATION OF PELAGIUS, 57
which this strange decision was founded. Since the
question was purely philosophical, one might suppose
that it would have been discussed on natural principles;
instead of that, theological considerations alone were ad-
duced. The attentive reader will have remarked, in
Tertullian's statement of the principles of Christianity,
a complete absence of the doctrines of original sin, total
depravity, predestination, grace, and atonement. The in-
tention of Christianity, as set forth by him, has nothing
in common with the plan of Salvation upheld two cen-
turies subsequently. It is to St. Augustine, a Cartha-
ginian, that we are indebted for the precision of our
views on these important points.
In deciding whether death had been in the world
before the fall of Adam, or whether it was the penalty
inflicted on the world for his sin, the course taken was
to ascertain whether the views of Pelagius were accord-
ant or discordant not with Nature but with the theologi
cal doctrines of St. Augustine. And the result has been
such as might be expected. The doctrine declared to
be orthodox by ecclesiastical authority is overthrown by
the unquestionable discoveries of modern Science. Long
before a human being had appeared upon earth, mill-
ions of individuals—nay, more, thousands of species
and even genera—had died; those which remain with us
are an insignificant fraction of the vast hosts that have
passed away.
A consequence of great importance issued from the
decision of the Pelagian controversy. The book of
Genesis had been made the basis of Christianity. If,
in a theological point of view, to its account of the sin
in the garden of Eden, and the transgression and pun-
ishment of Adam, so much weight had been attached, it
also in a philosophical point of view became the grand
|
58 ST. AUGUSTINE,
authority of Patristic Science. Astronomy, geology, ge-
ography, anthropology, chronology, and indeed all the
various departments of human knowledge, were made
to conform to it. -
As the doctrines of St. Augustine have had the
effect of thus placing theology in antagonism with sci-
ence, it may be interesting to examine briefly some of
the more purely philosophical views of that great man.
For this purpose, we may appropriately select portions
of his study of the first chapter of Genesis, as contained
in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books of his
“Confessions.” -
These consist of philosophical discussions, largely in-
terspersed with rhapsodies. He prays that God will
give him to understand the Scriptures, and will open
their meaning to him ; he declares that in them there is
nothing superfluous, but that the words have a manifold
meaning.
The face of creation testifies that there has been a
Creator; but at once arises the question, “How and when
did he make heaven and earth? They could not have
been made in heaven and earth, the world could not
have been made in the world, nor could they have been
made when there was nothing to make them of.” The
solution of this fundamental inquiry St. Augustine
finds in saying, “Thou spakest, and they were made.”
But the difficulty does not end here. St. Augustine
goes on to remark that the syllables thus uttered by
God came forth in succession, and there must have been
some created thing to express the words. This created
thing must, therefore, have existed before heaven and
earth, and yet there could have been no corporeal thing
before heaven and earth. It must have been a creature,
because the words passed away and came to an end;
CRITICISM ON ST. AUGUSTINE. 59
but we know that “the word of the Lord endureth
forever.” - - - *
Moreover, it is plain that the words thus spoken
could not have been spoken successively, but simulta-
neously, else there would have been time and change—
succession in its nature implying time; whereas there
was then nothing but eternity and immortality. God
knows and says eternally what takes place in time.
St. Augustine then defines, not without much mys-
ticism, what is meant by the opening words of Genesis:
“In the beginning.” He is guided to his conclusion by
another scriptural passage: “How wonderful are thy
works, O Lord in wisdom hast thou made them all.”
This “wisdom” is “the beginning,” and in that begin-
ning the Lord created the heaven and the earth.
“But,” he adds, “some one may ask, ‘What was God
doing before he made the heaven and the earth? for, if
at any particular moment he began to employ himself,
that means time, not eternity. In eternity nothing
transpires—the whole is present.’” In answering this
question, he cannot forbear one of those touches of
rhetoric for which he was so celebrated: “I will not
answer this question by saying that he was preparing
hell for priers into his mysteries. I say that, before
God made heaven and earth, he did not make anything,
for no creature could be made before any creature was
made. Time itself is a creature, and hence it could not
possibly exist before creation.
“What, then, is time? The past is not, the future
is not, the present—who can tell what it is, unless it be
that which has no duration between two nonentities?
There is no such thing as ‘a long time,” or ‘a short
time, for there are no such things as the past and the
future. They have no existence, except in the soul.”
60 CRITICISM ON ST. AUGUSTINE.
The style in which St. Augustine conveyed lis ideas
is that of a rhapsodical conversation with God. His
works are an incoherent dream. That the reader may
appreciate this remark, I might copy almost at random
any of his paragraphs. The following is from the
twelfth book:
“This, then, is what I conceive, O my God, when I
hear thy Scripture saying, In the beginning God made
heaven and earth: and the earth was invisible and with-
out form, and darkness was upon the deep, and not men-
tioning what day thou createdst them; this is what I con-
ceive, that because of the heaven of heavens—that in-
tellectual heaven, whose intelligences know all at once,
not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a
whole, in manifestation, face to face; not this thing
now, and that thing anon; but (as I said) know all at
once, without any succession of times; and because of
the earth, invisible and without form, without any suc-
cession of times, which succession presents “this thing
now, that thing anon;’ because, where there is no form,
there is no distinction of things; it is, then, on account
of these two, a primitive formed, and a primitive form-
less; the one, heaven, but the heaven of heavens; the
other, earth, but the earth movable and without form;
because of these two do I conceive, did thy Scripture
say without mention of days, In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth. For, forthwith it
subjoined what earth it spake of; and also in that the
firmament is recorded to be created the second day, and
called heaven, it conveys to us of which heaven he be
fore spake, without mention of days.
“Wondrous depth of thy words! whose surface,
behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are
they a wondrous depth, O my God, a wondrous depth
CRITICISM ON ST. AUGUSTINE. 61
It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honor, and
a trembling of love. The enemies thereof I hateve-
hemently; O that thou wouldst slay them with thy
two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies
to it: for so do I love to have them slain unto them-
selves, that they may live unto thee.”
As an example of the hermeneutical manner in
which St. Augustine unfolded the concealed facts of
the Scriptures, I may cite the following from the thir-
teenth book of the “Confessions;” his object is to show
that the doctrine of the Trinity is contained in the
Mosaic narrative of the creation :
“Lo, now the Trinity appears unto me in a glass
darkly, which is thou my God, because thou, O Father,
in him who is the beginning of our wisdom, which is
thy wisdom, born of thyself, equal unto thee and co-
eternal, that is, in thy Son, createdst heaven and earth.
IMuch now have we said of the heaven of heavens, and
of the earth invisible and without form, and of the dark-
some deep, in reference to the wandering instability of
its spiritual deformity, unless it had been converted
unto him, from whom it had its then degree of life,
and by his enlightening became a beauteous life, and
the heaven of that heaven, which was afterward set be-,
tween water and water. And under the name of God,
I now held the Father, who made these things; and
under the name of the beginning, the Son, in whom he
made these things; and believing, as I did, my God as
the Trinity, I searched further in his holy words, and
lo! thy Spirit moved upon the waters. Behold the
Trinity, my God!—Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost,
Creator of all creation.”
That I might convey to my reader a just impres
sion of the character of St. Augustine's philosophical
62 CRITICISM ON ST. AlJGUSTINE.
Writings, I have, in the two quotations here given, Sub-
stituted for my own translation that of the Rev. Dr.
Pusey, as contained in Vol. I. of the “Library of Fa-
thers of the Holy Catholic Church,” published at Ox-
ford, 1840. 2? , - . .
Considering the eminent authority which has been
attributed to the writings of St. Augustine by the re-
ligious world for nearly fifteen centuries, it is proper
to speak of them with respect. And indeed it is not
necessary to do otherwise. The paragraphs here quoted
criticise themselves. No one did more than this Father
to bring science and religion into antagonism ; it was
mainly he who diverted the Bible from its true office—
a guide to purity of life—and placed it in the perilousy
position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an
audacious tyranny over the mind of man. The ex-
ample once set, there was no want of followers; the
works of the great Greek philosophers were stigmatized
as profane; the transcendently glorious achievements of
the Museum of Alexandria were hidden from sight by
a cloud of ignorance, mysticism, and unintelligible jar-
gon, out of which there too often flashed the destroying
lightnings of ecclesiastical vengeance.
A divine revelation of Science admits of no improve-
ment, no change, no advance. It discourages as need-
less, and indeed as presumptuous, all new discovery,
considering it as an unlawful prying into things which
it was the intention of God to conceal.
What, then, is that sacred, that revealed science, de.
clared by the Fathers to be the sum of all knowledge?
It likened all phenomena, natural and spiritual, to
human acts. It saw in the Almighty, the Eternal, only
a gigantic man.
THE PATRISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 63
As to the earth, it affirmed that it is a flat surface,
over which the sky is spread like a dome, or, as St.
Augustine tells us, is stretched like a skin. In this the
sun and moon and stars move, so that they may give
light by day and by night to man. The earth was
made of matter created by God out of nothing, and,
with all the tribes of animals and plants inhabiting it,
was finished in six days. Above the sky or firmament
is heaven; in the dark and fiery space beneath the earth
is hell. The earth is the central and most important
body of the universe, all other things being intended
for and subservient to it. -
As to man, he was made out of the dust of the
earth. At first he was alone, but subsequently woman
was formed from one of his ribs. He is the greatest
and choicest of the works of God. He was placed in a
paradise near the banks of the Euphrates, and was very
wise and very pure; but, having tasted of the forbidden
fruit, and thereby broken the commandment given to
him, he was condemned to labor and to death.
The descendants of the first man, undeterred by his
punishment, pursued such a career of wickedness that
it became necessary to destroy them. A deluge, there-
fore, flooded the face of the earth, and rose over the
tops of the mountains. Having accomplished its pur-
pose, the water was dried up by a wind.
From this catastrophe Noah and his three sons, with
their wives, were saved in an ark. Of these sons, Shem
remained in Asia and repeopled it. Ham peopled Af.
rica; Japhet, Europe. As the Fathers were not ac.
quainted with the existence of America, they did not
provide an ancestor for its people.
Let us listen to what some of these authorities say
in support of their assertions. Thus Lactantius, refer.
64 THE PATRISTIC PIHILOSOPHY.
ring to the heretical doctrine of the globular form of
the earth, remarks: “Is it possible that men can be so
absurd as to believe that the crops and the trees on the
other side of the earth hang downward, and that men
have their feet higher than their heads ' If you ask
them how they defend these monstrosities, how things
do not fall away from the earth on that side, they re-
ply that the nature of things is such that heavy bodies
tend toward the centre, like the spokes of a wheel, while
light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from the centre
to the heavens on all sides. Now, I am really at a loss
what to say of those who, when they have once gone
wrong, steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one
, absurd opinion by another.” On the question of the
antipodes, St. Augustine asserts that “it is impossible
there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the
earth, since no such race is recorded by Scripture among
the descendants of Adam.” Perhaps, however, the most
unanswerable argument against the sphericity of the
earth was this, that “in the day of judgment, men on
the other side of a globe could not see the Lord de-
scending through the air.”
It is unnecessary for me to say any thing respect-
ing the introduction of death into the world, the con-
tinual interventions of spiritual agencies in the course
of events, the offices of angels and devils, the expected
conflagration of the earth, the tower of Babel, the con-
fusion of tongues, the dispersion of mankind, the inter.
pretation of natural phenomena, as eclipses, the rain
bow, etc. Above all, I abstain from commenting on
the Patristic conceptions of the Almighty; they are too
anthropomorphic, and wanting in Sublimity.
Perhaps, however, I may quote from Cosmas Indi.
copleustes the views that were entertained in the sixth
*-*.
THE PATRISTIC PHILOSOPHY, 65
century. He wrote a work entitled “Christian Topog-
raphy,” the chief intent of which was to confute the
heretical opinion of the globular form of the earth, and
the pagan assertion that there is a temperate Zone on
the southern side of the torrid. He affirms that, ac-
cording to the true orthodox system of geography, the
earth is a quadrangular plane, extending four hundred
days’ journey east and west, and exactly half as much
north and South ; that it is inclosed by mountains,
on which the sky rests; that one on the north side,
huger than the others, by intercepting the rays of the
Sun, produces night; and that the plane of the earth is
not set exactly horizontally, but with a little inclination
from the north: hence the Euphrates, Tigris, and other
rivers, running Southward, are rapid; but the Nile,
having to run up-hill, has necessarily a very slow
Current.
The Venerable Bede, writing in the seventh century,
tells us that “the creation was accomplished in six days,
and that the earth is its centre and its primary object.
The heaven is of a fiery and subtile nature, round, and
equidistant in every part, as a canopy from the centre
of the earth. It turns round every day with ineffable
rapidity, only moderated by the resistance of the seven
planets, three above the Sun—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars—
then the Sun; three below—Venus, Mercury, the moon.
The stars go round in their fixed courses, the northern
perform the shortest circle. The highest heaven has
its proper limit; it contains the angelic virtues who de.
Scend upon earth, assume ethereal bodies, perform hu-
man functions, and return. The heaven is tempered
with glacial waters, lest it should be set on fire. The
inferior heaven is called the firmament, because it sep-
arates the Superincumbent waters from the waters be-
66 TIIE PATRISTIC PHILOSOPHY,
low. The firmamental waters are lower than the spirit-
ual heaven, higher than all corporeal beings, reserved,
some say, for a second deluge; others, more truly, to
temper the fire of the fixed stars.”
Was it for this preposterous scheme—this product
of ignorance and audacity—that the works of the Greek
philosophers were to be given up 3 It was none too
soon that the great critics who appeared at the Teforma.
tion, by comparing the works of these writers with one
another, brought them to their proper level, and taught
us to look upon them all with contempt.
Of this presumptuous system, the strangest part was
its logic, the nature of its proofs. It relied upon mira-
cle-evidence. A fact was supposed to be demonstrated
by an astounding illustration of Something else ! An
Arabian writer, referring to this, says: “If a conjurer
should say to me, ‘Three are more than ten, and in proof
of it I will change this stick into a Serpent,' I might be
surprised at his legerdemain, but I certainly should not
admit his assertion.” Yet, for more than a thousand.
years, such was the accepted logic, and all over Europe
propositions equally absurd were accepted on equally
ridiculous proof. w
Since the party that had become dominant in the
empire could not furnish works capable of intellectual
competition with those of the great pagan authors, and
since it was impossible for it to accept a position of in-
feriority, there arose a political necessity for the dis-
couragement, and even persecution, of profane learn-
ing. The persecution of the Platonists under Valen-
tinian was due to that necessity. They were accused
of magic, and many of them were put to death. The
profession of philosophy had become dangerous—it was
a state crime. In its stead there arose a passion for the
THE PATRISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 67
marvelous, a spirit of Superstition. Egypt exchanged
the great men, who had made her Museum immortal,
for bands of solitary monks and sequestered virgins,
with which she was overrun.
CHAPTER III.
CONFLICT RESPECTING THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNITY OF
GOD.—TIIE FIRST OR SOUTHERN REFORMATION.
The Egyptians insist on the introduction of the worship of the Virgin
Mary.—They are resisted by Nestor, the Patriarch of Constantinople,
but eventually, through their influence with the emperor, cause Nestor's
exile and the dispersion of his followers.
Prelude to the Southern Reformation.—The Persian attack, its moral
effects.
The Arabian Reformation.— Mohammed is brought in contact with the
Nestorians.—He adopts and extends their principles, rejecting the
worship of the Virgin, the doctrine of the Trinity, and every thing in
opposition to the unity of God.—IIe extinguishes idolatry in Arabia,
by force, and prepares to make war on the Roman Empire.—His suc-
cessors conquer Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Worth Africa, Spain, and
finvade France.
As the result of this conflict, the doctrine of the unity of God was estab-
lished in the greater part of the Roman Empire.—The cullivation of
Science was restored, and Christendom lost many of her most illustrious
capitals, as Alexandria, Carthage, and, above all, Jerusalem.
TIE policy of the Byzantine court had given to
primitive Christianity a paganized form, which it had
spread over all the idolatrous populations constituting
the empire. There had been an amalgamation of the
two parties. Christianity had modified paganism, pagan-
ism had modified Christianity. The limits of this adul-
terated religion were the confines of the Roman Empire.
With this great extension there had come to the
ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES. 69
Christian party political influence and wealth. No in-
significant portion of the vast public revenues found
their way into the treasuries of the Church. As under
such circumstances must ever be the case, there were
many competitors for the spoils—men who, under the
mask of zeal for the predominant faith, sought only the
enjoyment of its emoluments.
Under the early emperors, conquest had reached its
culmination; the empire was completed; there remained
no adequate objects for military life; the days of war-
peculation, and the plundering of provinces, were over.
For the ambitious, however, another path was open;
other objects presented. A successful career in the
Church led to results not unworthy of comparison with
those that in former days had been attained by a suc-
cessful career in the army.
The ecclesiastical, and indeed, it may be said; much
of the political history of that time, turns on the strug-
gles of the bishops of the three great metropolitan cities
—Constantinople, Alexandria, Rome—for Supremacy:
Constantinople based her claims on the fact that she
was the existing imperial city; Alexandria pointed to
her commercial and literary position; Rome, to her
souvenirs. But the Patriarch of Constantinople labored
under the disadvantage that he was too closely under
the eye, and, as he found to his cost, too often under the
hand, of the emperor. T)istance gave Security to the
episcopates of Alexandria and Rome.
Beligious disputations in the East have generally
turned on diversities of opinion respecting the nature
and attributes of God; in the West, on the relations and
life of man. This peculiarity has been strikingly mani-
fested in the transformations that Christianity has under-
gone in Asia and Europe respectively. Accordingly,
70 ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES.
at the time of which we are speaking, all the Eastern
provinces of the Roman Empire exhibited an intellect-
ual anarchy. There were fierce quarrels respecting the
Trinity, the essence of God, the position of the Son, the
nature of the Holy Spirit, the influences of the Virgin
Mary. The triumphant clamor first of one then of
another sect was confirmed, sometimes by miracle-proof,
Sometimes by bloodshed. No attempt was ever made
to submit the rival opinions to logical examination.
All parties, however, agreed in this, that the imposture
of the old classical pagan forms of faith was demon-
strated by the facility with which they had been over-
thrown. The triumphant ecclesiastics proclaimed that
the images of the gods had failed to defend themselves
when the time of trial came.
Polytheistic ideas have always been held in repute
by the southern European races, the Semitic have main-
tained the unity of God. Perhaps this is due to the fact,
as a recent author has suggested, that a diversified land-
Scape of mountains and valleys, islands, and rivers, and
gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a multitude of
divinities. A vast Sandy desert, the illimitable ocean,
impresses him with an idea of the oneness of God.
Political reasons had led the emperors to look with
favor on the admixture of Christianity and paganism,
and doubtless by this means the bitterness of the rivalry
between those antagonists was somewhat abated. The
heaven of the popular, the fashionable Christianity
was the old Olympus, from which the venerable Greek
divinities had been removed. There, on a great white
throne, sat God the Father, on his right the Son, and
then the blessed Virgin, clad in a golden robe, and
“covered with various female adornments; ” on the
left sat God the Holy Ghost. Surrounding these
EGYPTIAN DOCTRINES. 71
thrones were hosts of angels with their harps. The
vast expanse beyond was filled with tables, seated at
which the happy spirits of the just enjoyed a perpetual
banquet.
If, satisfied with this picture of happiness, illiterate
persons never inquired how the details of such a heaven
were carried out, or how much pleasure there could be
in the ennui of such an eternally unchanging, unmov-
ing scene, it was not so with the intelligent. As we are
soon to see, there were among the higher ecclesiastics
those who rejected with sentiments of horror these
carnal, these materialistic conceptions, and raised their
protesting voices in vindication of the attributes of the
Omnipresent, the Almighty God.
In the paganization of religion, now in all directions
taking place, it became the interest of every bishop to
procure an adoption of the ideas which, time out of
mind, had been current in the community under his
charge. The Egyptians had already thus forced on the
Church their peculiar Trinitarian views; and now they
were resolved that, under the form of the adoration of
the Virgin Mary, the worship of Isis should be restored.
It so happened that Nestor, the Bishop of Antioch,
who entertained the philosophical views of Theodore
of Mopsuestia, had been called by the Emperor Theo-
dosius the Younger to the Episcopate of Constantinople
(A. D. 427). Nestor rejected the base popular anthro-
pomorphism, looking upon it as little better than blas-
phemous, and pictured to himself an awful eternal Di-
vinity, who pervaded the universe, and had none of the
aspects or attributes of man. Nestor was deeply imbued
with the doctrines of Aristotle, and attempted to co-
ordinate them with what he considered to be orthodox
72 THIE NESTORIANS.
Christian tenets. Between him and Cyril, the Bishop
or Patriarch of Alexandria, a quarrel accordingly arose.
Cyril represented the paganizing, Nestor the philoso-
phizing party of the Church. This was that Cyril who
had murdered Hypatia. Cyril was determined that the
worship of the Virgin as the Mother of God should be
recognized, Nestor was determined that it should not.
In a sermon delivered in the metropolitan church at
Constantinople, he vindicated the attributes of the Eter-
nal, the Almighty God. “And can this God have a
mother?” he exclaimed. In other sermons and writ-
ings, he set forth with more precision his ideas that
the Virgin should be considered not as the Mother of
God, but as the mother of the human portion of Christ,
that portion being as essentially distinct from the divine
as is a temple from its contained deity.
Instigated by the monks of Alexandria, the monks
of Constantinople took up arms in behalf of “the
Mother of God.” The quarrel rose to such a pitch that
the emperor was constrained to summon a council to
meet at Ephesus. In the mean time Cyril had given a
bribe of many pounds of gold to the chief eunuch of
the imperial court, and had thereby obtained the influ-
ence of the emperor's sister. “The holy virgin of the
court of heaven thus found an ally of her own Sex in
the holy virgin of the emperor's court.” Cyril hastened
to the council, attended by a mob of men and women
of the baser sort. He at once assumed the presidency,
and in the midst of a tumult had the emperor's rescript
read before the Syrian bishops could arrive. A single
day served to complete his triumph. All offers of ac:
commodation on the part of Nestor were refused, his
explanations were not read, he was condemned unheard.
On the arrival of the Syrian ecclesiastics, a meeting of
PERSECUTION AND DEATH OF NESTOR. 73
protest was held by them. A riot, with much blood-
shed, ensued in the cathedral of St. John. Nestor was
abandoned by the court, and eventually exiled to an
Egyptian oasis. His persecutors tormented him as
long as he lived, by every means in their power, and at
his death gave out that “his blasphemous tongue had
been devoured by worms, and that from the heats of an
Egyptian desert he had escaped only into the hotter
torments of hell!”
The overthrow and punishment of Nestor, however,
by no means destroyed his opinions. He and his fol-
lowers, insisting on the plain inference of the last verse
of the first chapter of St. Matthew, together with the
fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth verses of the thirteenth of the
same gospel, could never be brought to an acknowledg-
ment of the perpetual virginity of the new queen of
heaven. Their philosophical tendencies were soon indi-
cated by their actions. While their leader was tormented
in an African oasis, many of them emigrated to the Eu-
phrates, and established the Chaldean Church. Under
their auspices the college of Edessa was founded. From
the college of Nisibis issued those doctors who spread
Nestor's tenets through Syria, Arabia, India, Tartary,
China, Egypt. The Nestorians, of course, adopted the
philosophy of Aristotle, and translated the works of
that great writer into Syriac and Persian. They also
made similar translations of later works, such as those
of Pliny. In connection with the Jews they founded
the medical college of Djondesabour. Their mission-
aries disseminated the Nestorian form of Christianity to
such an extent over Asia, that its worshipers eventually
outnumbered all the European Christians of the Greek
and Roman Churches combined. It may be particularly
remarked that in Arabia they had a bishop.
4 -
74 THE PERSIAN CAMPAIGN.
The dissensions between Constantinople and Alex.
andria had thus filled all Western Asia with sectaries,
ferocious in their contests with each other, and many
of them burning with hatred against the imperial power,
for the persecutions it had inflicted on them. A reli-
gious revolution, the consequences of which are felt in
our own times, was the result. It affected the whole
world.
We shall gain a clear view of this great event, if we
consider separately the two acts into which it may be
decomposed: 1. The temporary overthrow of Asiatic
Christianity by the Persians; 2. The decisive and final
reformation under the Arabians.
1. It happened (A. D. 590) that, by one of those rev-
olutions so frequent in Oriental courts, Chosroes, the
lawful heir to the Persian throne, was compelled to seek
refuge in the Byzantine Empire, and implore the aid of
the Emperor Maurice. That aid was cheerfully given.
A brief and successful campaign restored Chosroes to
the throne of his ancestors.
Rut the glories of this generous campaign could not
preserve Maurice himself. A mutiny broke out in the
Roman army, headed by Phocas, a centurion. The
statues of the emperor were overthrown. The Patriarch
of Constantinople, having declared that he had assured
himself of the orthodoxy of Phocas, consecrated him
emperor. The unfortunate Maurice was dragged from
a sanctuary, in which he had sought refuge; his five
sons were beheaded before his eyes, and then he was
put to death. His empress was inveigled from the
church of St. Sophia, tortured, and with her three young
daughters beheaded. The adherents of the massacred
family were pursued with ferocious vindictiveness; of
some the eyes were blinded, of others the tongues were
TEIE EXPEDITION OF HERACLIUS, 75
torn out, or the feet and hands cut off, some were whip-
ped to death, others were burnt.
When the news reached Rome, Pope Gregory re-
ceived it with exultation, praying that the hands of
Phocas might be strengthened against all his enemies.
As an equivalent for this subserviency, he was greeted
with the title of “Universal Bishop.” The cause of his
action, as well as of that of the Patriarch of Constanti-
nople, was doubtless the fact that Maurice was suspected
of Magian tendencies, into which he had been lured by
the Persians. The mob of Constantinople had hooted
after him in the streets, branding him as a Marcionite,
a sect which believed in the Magian doctrine of two
conflicting principles.
With very different sentiments Chosroes heard of
the murder of his friend. Phocas had sent him the
heads of Maurice and his sons. The Persian king
turned from the ghastly spectacle with horror, and at
once made ready to avenge the wrongs of his benefactor
by war.
The Exarch of Africa, Heraclius, one of the chief
officers of the state, also received the shocking tidings
with indignation. He was determined that the impe-
rial purple should not be usurped by an obscure centu-
rion of disgusting aspect. “The person of this Phocas
was diminutive and deformed ; the closeness of his
shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless chin, were
in keeping with his cheek, disfigured and discolored by
a formidable scar. Ignorant of letters, of laws, and even
of arms, he indulged in an ample privilege of lust and
drunkenness.” At first Heraclius refused tribute and
obedience to him; then, admonished by age and infirmi-
ties, he committed the dangerous enterprise of resist-
ance to his son of the same name. A prosperous voyage
76 INWASION OF CHOSROES.
from Carthage soon brought the younger Heraclius in
front of Constantinople. The inconstant clergy, Senate,
and people of the city joined him, the usurper was
seized in his palace and beheaded.
But the revolution that had taken place in Constan-
tinople did not arrest the movements of the Persian
king. His Magian priests had warned him to act inde-
pendently of the Greeks, whose superstition, they de-
clared, was devoid of all truth and justice. Chosroes,
therefore, crossed the Euphrates; his army was received
with transport by the Syrian sectaries, insurrections in
his favor everywhere breaking out. In succession,
Antioch, Caesarea, Damascus fell; Jerusalem itself was
taken by storm ; the sepulchre of Christ, the churches
of Constantine and of Helena were given to the flames;
the Savior's cross was sent as a trophy to Persia; the
churches were rifled of their riches; the sacred relics,
collected by superstition, were dispersed. Egypt was in-
vaded, conquered, and annexed to the Persian Empire;
the Patriarch of Alexandria escaped by flight to Cy-
prus; the African coast to Tripoli was seized. On the
north, Asia Minor was subdued, and for ten years the
Persian forces encamped on the shores of the Bosporus,
in front of Constantinople.
In his extremity Heraclius begged for peace. “I
will never give peace to the Emperor of Tome,” replied
the proud Persian, “till he has abjured his crucified
God, and embraced the worship of the Sun.” After a
long delay terms were, however, secured, and the Roman
Empire was ransomed at the price of “a thousand talents
of gold, a thousand talents of silver, a thousand silk
robes, a thousand horses, and a thousand virgins.”
Dut Heraclius submitted only for a moment. He
found means not only to restore his affairs but to retali.
INWASION OF CHOSROES. 77
ate on the Persian Empire. The operations by which
he achieved this result were worthy of the most brill-
iant days of Rome.
Though her military renown was thus recovered,
though her territory was regained, there was something
that the Toman Empire had irrecoverably lost. Reli-
gious faith could never be restored. In face of the
world Magianism had insulted Christianity, by profan-
ing her most sacred places—Bethlehem, Gethsemane,
Calvary—by burning the sepulchre of Christ, by rifling
and destroying the churches, by Scattering to the winds
priceless relics, by carrying off, with shouts of laughter,
the cross.
Miracles had once abounded in Syria, in Egypt, in
Asia Minor; there was not a church which had not its
long catalogue of them. Very often they were displayed
on unimportant occasions and in insignificant cases. In
this supreme moment, when such aid was most urgently
demanded, not a miracle was worked.
Amazement filled the Christian populations of the
East when they witnessed these Persian sacrileges per-
petrated with impunity. The heavens should have
rolled asunder, the earth should have opened her
abysses, the sword of the Almighty should have flashed
in the sky, the fate of Sennacherib should have been
repeated. But it was not so. In the land of miracles,
amazement was followed by consternation—consterna-
tion died out in disbelief.
2. Dut, dreadful as it was, the Persian conquest was
but a prelude to the great event, the story of which
we have now to relate—the Southern revolt against
Christianity. Its issue was the loss of nine-tenths of
her geographical possessions—Asia, Africa, and part of
Europe.
78 MOHAMMED.
In the Summer of 581 of the Christian era, there
came to Bozrah, a town on the confines of Syria, south of
Damascus, a caravan of camels. It was from Mecca,
and was laden with the costly products of South Arabia
—Arabia the Happy. The conductor of the caravan,
one AbouTaleb, and his nephew, a lad of twelve years,
were hospitably received and entertained at the Nesto-
rian convent of the town.
The monks of this convent soon found that their
young visitor, Halibi or Mohammed, was the nephew
of the guardian of the Caaba, the sacred temple of the
Arabs. One of them, by name Bahira, spared no
pains to secure his conversion from the idolatry in
which he had been brought up. He found the boy not
only precociously intelligent, but eagerly desirous of
information, especially on matters relating to religion.
In Mohammed's own country the chief object of
Meccan worship was a black meteoric stone, kept in the
Caaba, with three htundred and sixty subordinate idols,
representing the days of the year, as the year was then
counted.
At this time, as we have seen, the Christian Church,
through the ambition and wickedness of its clergy, had
been brought into a condition of anarchy. Councils
had been held on various pretenses, while the real mo-
tives were concealed. Too often they were scenes of
violence, bribery, corruption. In the West, such were
the temptations of riches, luxury, and power, presented
by the episcopates, that the election of a bishop was
often disgraced by frightful murders. In the East, in
consequence of the policy of the court of Constanti-
nople, the Church had been torn in pieces by contentions
and schisms. Among a countless host of disputants
may be mentioned Arians, Basilidians, Carpocratians,
MOHAMMED, 79
Collyridians, Eutychians, Gnostics, Jacobites, Marcion-
ites, Marionites, Nestorians, Sabellians, Valentinians.
Of these, the Marionites regarded the Trinity as consist-
ing of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Vir-
gin Mary; the Collyridians worshiped the Virgin as a
divinity, offering her sacrifices of cakes; the Nestorians,
as we have seen, denied that God had “a mother.”
They prided themselves on being the inheritors, the
possessors of the science of old Greece.
Dut, though they were irreconcilable in matters of
faith, there was one point in which all these sects agreed
—ferocious hatred and persecution of each other. Ara-
bia, an unconquered land of liberty, stretching from the
Indian Ocean to the Desert of Syria, gave them all, as
the tide of fortune successively turned, a refuge. It had
been so from the old times. Thither, after the Toman
conquest of Palestine, vast numbers of Jews escaped;
thither, immediately after his conversion, St. Paul tells
the Galatians that he retired. The deserts were now
filled with Christian anchorites, and among the chief
tribes of the Arabs many proselytes had been made.
Here and there churches had been built. The Christian
princes of Abyssinia, who were Nestorians, held the
southern province of Arabia—Yemen—in possession.
Dy the monk Bahira, in the convent at Bozrah, Mo-
hammed was taught the tenets of the Nestorians; from
them the young Arab learned the story of their perse-
cutions. It was these interviews which engendered in
him a hatred of the idolatrous practices of the Eastern
Church, and indeed of all idolatry; that taught him, in
his wonderful career, never to speak of Jesus as the Son
of God, but always as “Jesus, the son of Mary.” His
untutored but active mind could not fail to be profound-
ly impressed not only with the religious but also with
80 MOHAMMED,
the philosophical ideas of his instructors, who gloried in
being the living representatives of Aristotelian science.
His subsequent career shows how completely their reli-
gious thoughts had taken possession of him, and repeated
acts manifest his affectionate regard for them. His
own life was devoted to the expansion and extension
of their theological doctrine, and, that once effectually
established, his successors energetically adopted and dif-
fused their scientific, their Aristotelian opinions.
As Mohammed grew to manhood, he made other
expeditions to Syria. Perhaps, we may suppose, that
on these occasions the convent and its hospitable in-
mates were not forgotten. He had a mysterious rev-
erence for that country. A wealthy Meccan widow,
Chadizah, had intrusted him with the care of her Syrian
trade. She was charmed with his capacity and fidelity,
and (since he is said to have been characterized by the
possession of singular manly beauty and a most courte-
ous demeanor) charmed with his person. The female
heart in all ages and countries is the same. She caused
a slave to intimate to him what was passing in her
mind, and, for the remaining twenty-four years of her
life, Mohammed was her faithful husband. In a land
of polygamy, he never insulted her by the presence of
a rival. Many years subsequently, in the height of his
power, Ayesha, who was one of the most beautiful
women in Arabia, said to him: “Was she not old? Did
not God give you in me a better wife in her place?”
“No, by God!” exclaimed Mohammed, and with a burst
of honest gratitude, “there never can be a better. She
believed in me when men despised me, she relieved me
when I was poor and persecuted by the world.”
IHis marriage with Chadizah placed him in circum-
stances of ease, and gave him an opportunity of indul.
MOHAMMED. . 81
ging his inclination to religious meditation. It so hap-
pened that her cousin Waraka, who was a Jew, had
turned Christian. He was the first to translate the
Bible into Arabic. By his conversation Mohammed's
detestation of idolatry was confirmed.
After the example of the Christian anchorites in
their hermitages in the desert, Mohammed retired to
a grotto in Mount Hera, a few miles from Mecca, giving
himself up to meditation and prayer. In this seclusion,
contemplating the awful attributes of the Omnipotent
and Eternal God, he addressed to his conscience the
Solemn inquiry, whether he could adopt the dogmas
then held in Asiatic Christendom respecting the Trin-
ity, the Sonship of Jesus as begotten by the Almighty,
the character of Mary as at once a virgin, a mother, and
the queen of heaven, without incurring the guilt and
the peril of blasphemy.
By his solitary meditations in the grotto Mohammed
was drawn to the conclusion that, through the cloud of
dogmas and disputations around him, one great truth
might be discerned—the unity of God. Leaning against
the stem of a palm-tree, he unfolded his views on this
subject to his neighbors and friends, and announced to
them that he should dedicate his life to the preaching
of that truth. Again and again, in his sermons and in
the Koran, he declared: “I am nothing but a public
preacher. . . . I preach the Oneness of God.” Such was
his own conception of his so-called apostleship. Hence-
forth, to the day of his death, he wore on his finger a
seal-ring on which was engraved, “Mohammed, the
messenger of God.”
It is well known among physicians that prolonged
fasting and mental anxiety inevitably give rise to hal-
lucination. Perhaps there never has been any religious
82 VICTORIES OF MOHAMMED,
System introduced by Self-denying, earnest men that did
not offer examples of supernatural temptations and
Supernatural commands. Mysterious voices encouraged
the Arabian preacher to persist in his determination;
shadows of strange forms passed before him. He heard
Sounds in the air like those of a distant bell. In a
nocturnal dream he was carried by Gabriel from Mecca
to Jerusalem, and thence in Succession through the six
heavens. Into the seventh the angel feared to intrude,
and Mohammed alone passed into the dread cloud that
forever enshrouds the Almighty. “A shiver thrilled
his heart as he felt upon his shoulder the touch of the
cold hand of God.”
His public ministrations met with much resistance,
and little success at first. Expelled from Mecca by the
upholders of the prevalent idolatry, he sought refuge in
Medina, a town in which there were many Jews and
Nestorians; the latter at once became proselytes to his
faith. He had already been compelled to send his
daughter and others of his disciples to Abyssinia, the
king of which was a Nestorian Christian. At the end
of six years he had made only fifteen hundred converts.
But in three little skirmishes, magnified in subsequent
times by the designation of the battles of Beder, of
Ohud, and of the Nations, Mohammed discovered that
his most convincing argument was his sword. After.
ward, with Oriental eloquence, he said, “I’aradise will
be found in the shadow of the crossing of Swords.” By
a series of well-conducted military operations, his ene-
mies were completely overthrown. Arabian idolatry
was absolutely exterminated; the doctrine he proclaimed,
that “there is but one God,” was universally adopted
by his countrymen, and his own apostleship accepted.
Let us pass over his stormy life, and hear what he
DEATH OF MOLIAMMED. 83
says when, on the pinnacle of earthly power and glory,
he was approaching its close.
Steadfast in his declaration of the unity of God, he
departed from Medina on his last pilgrimage to Mecca,
at the head of one hundred and fourteen thousand dev-
otees, with camels decorated with garlands of flowers
and fluttering streamers. When he approached the
holy city, he uttered the solemn invocation: “Here am
I in thy service, O God! Thou hast no companion.
To thee alone belongeth worship. Thine alone is the
kingdom. There is none to share it with thee.”
With his own hand he offered up the camels in
sacrifice. He considered that primeval institution to
be equally sacred as prayer, and that no reason can be
alleged in support of the one which is not equally
strong in Support of the other.
From the pulpit of the Caaba he reiterated, “O my
hearers, I am only a man like yourselves.” They re-
membered that he had once said to one who approached
him with timid steps: “Of what dost thou standin awe ?
I am no king. I am nothing but the son of an Arab
woman, who ate flesh dried in the sun.”
He returned to Medina to die. In his farewell
to his congregation, he said: “Every thing happens
according to the will of God, and has its appointed
time, which can neither be hastened nor avoided. I re-
turn to him who sent me, and my last command to you
is, that ye love, honor, and uphold each other, that ye
exhort each other to faith and constancy in belief, and
to the performance of pious deeds. My life has been
for your good, and so will be my death.”
In his dying agony, his head was reclined on the lap
of Ayesha. From time to time he had dipped his hand
in a vase of water, and moistened his face. At last he
84 DOCTRINES OF MOHAMMED.
ceased, and, gazing steadfastly upward, said, in broken
accents: “O God—forgive my sins—be it so. I come.”
Shall we speak of this man with disrespect? His
precepts are, at this day, the religious guide of one-
third of the human race.
In Mohammed, who had already broken away from
the ancient idolatrous worship of his native country,
preparation had been made for the rejection of those
tenets which his Nestorian teachers had communicated
to him, inconsistent with reason and conscience. And,
though, in the first pages of the Koran, he declares his
belief in what was delivered to Moses and Jesus, and
his reverence for them personally, his veneration for
the Almighty is perpetually displayed. He is horror-
stricken at the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus, the
worship of Mary as the mother of God, the adoration
of images and paintings, in his eyes a base idolatry.
He absolutely rejects the Trinity, of which he seems
to have entertained the idea that it could not be in-
terpreted otherwise than as presenting three distinct
Gods.
His first and ruling idea was simply religious reform
—to overthrow Arabian idolatry, and put an end to the
wild sectarianism of Christianity. That he proposed to
set up a new religion was a calumny invented against
him in Constantinople, where he was looked upon with
detestation, like that with which in after ages Luther
was regarded in Rome.
But, though he rejected with indignation whatever
might seem to disparage the doctrine of the unity of
God, he was not able to emancipate himself from an-
thropomorphic conceptions. The God of the Koran is
altogether human, both corporeally and mentally, if such
expressions may with propriety be used. Very Soon,
THE FIRST KIIALIF. 85
however, the followers of Mohammed divested them-
selves of these base ideas and rose to nobler ones.
The view here presented of the primitive character
of Mohammedanism has long been adopted by many
competent authorities. Sir William Jones, following
Locke, regards the main point in the divergence of Mo-
hammedanism from Christianity to consist “in denying
vehemently the character of our Savior as the Son,
and his equality as God with the Father, of whose
unity and attributes the Mohammedans entertain and
express the most awful ideas.” This opinion has been
largely entertained in Italy. Dante regarded Moham-
med only as the author of a Schism, and saw in Islam-
ism only an Arian sect. In England, Whately views it
as a corruption of Christianity. It was an offshoot of
Nestorianism, and not until it had overthrown Greek
Christianity in many great battles, was spreading rapid-
ly over Asia and Africa, and had become intoxicated
with its wonderful successes, did it repudiate its primi-
tive limited intentions, and assert itself to be founded
on a separate and distinct revelation.
Mohammed's life had been almost entirely consumed
in the conversion or conquest of his native country.
Toward its close, however, he felt himself strong enough
to threaten the invasion of Syria and Persia. He had
made no provision for the perpetuation of his own do-
minion, and hence it was not without a struggle that
a successor was appointed. At length Abubeker, the
father of Ayesha, was selected. He was proclaimed
the first khalif, or successor of the Prophet.
There is a very important difference between the
spread of Mohammedanism and the spread of Christi.
anity. The latter was never sufficiently strong to over
throw and extirpate idolatry in the Roman Empire. As
86 THE MOHAMMEDAN HEAVEN.
it advanced, there was an amalgamation, a union. The
old forms of the one were vivified by the new spirit of
the other, and that paganization to which reference has
already been made was the result.
But, in Arabia, Mohammed overthrew and absolute-
ly annihilated the old idolatry. No trace of it is found
in the doctrines preached by him and his successors.
The black stone that had fallen from heaven—the me-
teorite of the Caaba—and its encircling idols, passed
totally out of view. The essential dogma of the new
faith—“There is but one God”—spread without any
adulteration. Military successes had, in a worldly sense,
made the religion of the Koran profitable; and, no mat-
ter what dogmas may be, when that is the case, there
will be plenty of converts.
As to the popular doctrines of Mohammedanism,
I shall here have nothing to say. The reader who is
interested in that matter will find an account of them
in a review of the Koran in the eleventh chapter of my
“History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.”
It is enough now to remark that their heaven was ar-
ranged in seven stories, and was only a palace of Orien-
tal carnal delight. It was filled with black-eyed concu-
bines and servants. The form of God was, perhaps,
more awful than that of paganized Christianity. An-
thropomorphism will, however, never be obliterated
from the ideas of the unintellectual. Their God, at
the best, will never be any thing more than the gigan-
tic shadow of a man—a vast phantom of humanity—
like one of those Alpine spectres seen in the midst of
the clouds by him who turns his back on the Sun.
Abubeker had scarcely seated himself in the khalif
ate, when he put forth the following proclamation:
“In the name of the most merciful God! Abubeke,
INWASIGN OF SYRIA. 87
to the rest of the true believers, health and happiness.
The mercy and blessing of God be upon you. I praise
the most high God. I pray for his prophet Moham-
med.
“This is to inform you that I intend to send the
true believers into Syria, to take it out of the hands of
the infidels. And I would have you know that the
fighting for religion is an act of obedience to God.”
On the first encounter, Khaled, the Saracen general,
hard pressed, lifted up his hands in the midst of his
army and said: “O God! these vile wretches pray with
idolatrous expressions and take to themselves another
God besides thee, but we acknowledge thy unity and
affirm that there is no other God but thee alone. Help
us, we beseech thee, for the sake of thy prophet Mo-
hammed, against these idolaters.” On the part of the
Saracens the conquest of Syria was conducted with
ferocious piety. The belief of the Syrian Christians
aroused in their antagonists sentiments of horror and
indignation. “I will cleave the skull of any blasphem-
ing idolater who says that the Most Holy God, the Al-
mighty and Eternal, has begotten a son.” The Khalif
Omar, who took Jerusalem, commences a letter to He-
raclius, the Roman emperor: “In the name of the most
merciful God! Praise be to God, the Lord of this and
of the other world, who has neither female consort nor
son.” The Saracens nicknamed the Christians “Asso-
ciators,” because they joined Mary and Jesus as part-
ners with the Almighty and Most Holy God.
It was not the intention of the khalif to command
his army; that duty was devolved on Abou Obeidah
nominally, on Khaled in reality. In a parting review
the khalif enjoined on his troops justice, mercy, and the
observance of fidelity in their engagements; he com.
88 FALL OF BOZRAEI.
manded them to abstain from all frivolous conversation
and from wine, and rigorously to observe the hours of
prayer; to be kind to the common people among whom
they passed, but to show no mercy to their priests.
Eastward of the river Jordan is Bozrah, a strong
town where Mohammed had first met his Nestorian
Christian instructors. It was one of the Roman forts
with which the country was dotted over. Before this
place the Saracen army encamped. The garrison was
strong, the ramparts were covered with holy crosses
and consecrated banners. It might have made a long
defense. But its governor, Romanus, betrayed his trust,
and stealthily opened its gates to the besiegers. His
conduct shows to what a deplorable condition the popu-
lation of Syria had come. After the surrender, in a
speech he made to the people he had betrayed, he said:
“I renounce your Society, both in this world and that
to come. And I deny him that was crucified, and
whosoever worships him. And I choose God for my
Lord, Islam for my faith, Mecca for my temple, the
Moslems for my brethren, Mohammed for my prophet,
who was sent to lead us in the right way, and to exalt
the true religion in spite of those who join partners
with God.” Since the Persian invasion, Asia Minor,
Syria, and even Palestine, were full of traitors and
apostates, ready to join the Saracens. Romanus was but
one of many thousands who had fallen into disbelief
through the victories of the Persians.
From Bozrah it was only seventy miles northward
to Damascus, the capital of Syria. Thither, without de-
lay, the Saracen army marched. The city was at once
summoned to take its option—conversion, tribute, or the
sword. In his palace at Antioch, barely one hundred
and fifty miles still farther north, the Emperor Heraclius
FALL OF DAMASCUS. 89
received tidings of the alarming advance of his assail-
ants. He at once dispatched an army of seventy thou-
sand men. The Saracens were compelled to raise the
siege. A battle took place in the plains of Aiznadin,
the Roman army was overthrown and dispersed. Kha-
led reappeared before Damascus with his standard of
the black eagle, and after a renewed investment of sev-
enty days Damascus surrendered.
From the Arabian historians of these events we may
gather that thus far the Saracen armies were little bet-
ter than a fanatic mob. Many of the men fought naked.
It was not unusual for a warrior to stand forth in front
and challenge an antagonist to mortal duel. Nay, more,
even the women engaged in the combats. Picturesque
narratives have been handed down to us relating the
gallant manner in which they acquitted themselves.
JFrom Damascus the Saracen army advanced north-
ward, guided by the snow-clad peaks of Libanus and
the beautiful river Orontes. It captured on its way
Baalbec, the capital of the Syrian valley, and Emesa,
the chief city of the eastern plain. To resist its further
progress, Heraclius collected an army of one hundred
and forty thousand men. A battle took place at Yer-
muck; the right wing of the Saracens was broken, but
the soldiers were driven back to the field by the fanatic
expostulations of their women. The conflict ended in
the complete overthrow of the Roman army. Forty
thousand were taken prisoners, and a vast number
killed. The whole country now lay open to the victors.
The advance of their army had been east of the Jordan.
It was clear that, before Asia Minor could be touched,
the strong and important cities of Palestine, which was
now in their rear, must be secured. There was a dif-
ference of opinion among the generals in the field as
90 FALL OF JERUSALEM.
to whether Caesarea or Jerusalem should be assailed
first. The matter was referred to the khalif, who, right.
ly preferring the moral advantages of the capture of
Jerusalem to the military advantages of the capture of
Caesarea, ordered the Holy City to be taken, and that
at any cost. Close siege was therefore laid to it. The
inhabitants, remembering the atrocities inflicted by the
Persians, and the indignities that had been offered to
the Savior's Sepulchre, prepared now for a vigorous
defense. Put, after an investment of four months, the
Patriarch Sophronius appeared on the wall, asking terms
of capitulation. There had been misunderstandings
among the generals at the capture of Damascus, fol-
lowed by a massacre of the fleeing inhabitants. Sophro-
nius, therefore, stipulated that the Surrender of Jeru-
salem should take place in presence of the khalif himself.
Accordingly, Omar, the khalif, came from Medina for
that purpose. He journeyed on a red Camel, carrying
a bag of corn and one of dates, a wooden dish, and a
leathern water-bottle. The Arab conqueror entered the
Holy City riding by the side of the Christian patriarch,
and the transference of the capital of Christianity to
the representative of Mohammedanism was effected
without tumult or outrage. Having ordered that a
mosque should be built on the site of the temple of
Solomon, the khalif returned to the tomb of the Proph-
et at Medina.
Heraclius saw plainly that the disasters which were
fast settling on Christianity were due to the dissensions
of its conflicting sects; and hence, while he endeavored
to defend the empire with his armies, he sedulously
tried to compose those differences. With this view he
pressed for acceptance the Monothelite doctrine of the
nature of Christ. But it was now too late. Aleppo and
FALL OF JERUSALEM. 91
Antioch were taken. Nothing could prevent the Sara-
cens from overrunning Asia Minor. Heraclius himself
had to seek safety in flight. Syria, which had been
added by Pompey the Great, the rival of Caesar, to the
provinces of Rome, seven hundred years previously—
Syria, the birthplace of Christianity, the scene of its
most sacred and precious souvenirs, the land from
which Heraclius himself had once expelled the Persian
intruder—was irretrievably lost. Apostates and traitors
had wrought this calamity. We are told that, as the
ship which bore him to Constantinople parted from the
shore, Heraclius gazed intently on the receding hills,
and in the bitterness of anguish exclaimed, “Farewell,
Syria, forever farewell!”
It is needless to dwell on the remaining details of
the Saracen conquest: how Tripoli and Tyre were be-
trayed; how Caesarea was captured; how with the trees
of Libanus and the sailors of Phoenicia a Saracen fleet
was equipped, which drove the Roman navy into the Hel-
lespont; how Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were
ravaged, and the Colossus, which was counted as one
of the wonders of the world, sold to a Jew, who loaded
nine hundred camels with its brass; how the armies of
the khalif advanced to the Black Sea, and even lay in
front of Constantinople—all this was as nothing after
the fall of Jerusalem.
The fall of Jerusalem the loss of the metropolis of
Christianity In the ideas of that age the two antago-
nistic forms of faith had submitted themselves to the
ordeal of the judgment of God. Victory had awarded
the prize of battle, Jerusalem, to the Mohammedan;
and, notwithstanding the temporary successes of the
Crusaders, after much more than a thousand years in his
hands it remains to this day. The Byzantine historians
92 OWERTHIROW OF THE PERSIANS,
are not without excuse for the course they are con-
demned for taking: “They have wholly neglected the
great topic of the ruin of the Eastern Church.” And
as for the Western Church, even the debased popes of
the middle ages—the ages of the Crusades—could not
see without indignation that they were compelled to
rest the claims of Rome as the metropolis of Christen-
dom on a false legendary story of a visit of St. Peter to
that city; while the true metropolis, the grand, the
sacred place of the birth, the life, the death of Christ
himself, was in the hands of the infidels It has not been
the Byzantine historians alone who have tried to conceal
this great catastrophe. The Christian writers of Europe
on all manner of "subjects, whether of history, religion,
or science, have followed a similar course against their
conquering antagonists. It has been their constant
practice to hide what they could not depreciate, and de-
preciate what they could not hide.
I have not space, nor indeed does it comport with
the intention of this work, to relate, in such detail as I
have given to the fall of Jerusalem, other conquests of
the Saracens—conquests which eventually established a
Mohammedan empire far exceeding in geographical ex-
tent that of Alexander, and even that of Rome. But,
devoting a few words to this subject, it may be said
that Magianism received a worse blow than that which
had been inflicted on Christianity. The fate of Persia
was settled at the battle of Cadesia. At the sack
of Ctesiphon, the treasury, the royal arms, and an un-
limited spoil, fell into the hands of the Saracens. Not
without reason do they call the battle of Nehavend
| “the victory of victories.” In one direction they ad-
vanced to the Caspian, in the other Southward along
the Tigris to Persepolis. The Persian king fled for his
INWASION OF EGYPT. 93
life over the great Salt Desert, from the columns and
statues of that city which had lain in ruins since the
night of the riotous banquet of Alexander. One di-
vision of the Arabian army forced the Persian monarch
over the Oxus. He was assassinated by the Turks.
Iſis son was driven into China, and became a captain in
the Chinese emperor's guards. The country beyond the
Oxus was reduced. It paid a tribute of two million
pieces of gold. While the emperor at Peking was de-
manding the friendship of the khalif at Medina, the
standard of the Prophet was displayed on the banks of
the Indus. -
Among the generals who had greatly distinguished
themselves in the Syrian wars was Amrou, destined to
be the conqueror of Egypt; for the khalifs, not content
with their victories on the North and East, now turned
their eyes to the West, and prepared for the annexation
of Africa. As in the former cases, so in this, sectarian
treason assisted them. The Saracen army was hailed as
the deliverer of the Jacobite Church; the Monophysite
Christians of Egypt, that is, they who, in the language of
the Athanasian Creed, confounded the substance of the
Son, proclaimed, through their leader, Mokaukas, that
they desired no communion with the Greeks, either in
this world or the next, that they abjured forever the
Byzantine tyrant and his synod of Chalcedon. They
hastened to pay tribute to the khalif, to repair the roads
and bridges, and to supply provisions and intelligence
to the invading army.
Memphis, one of the old Pharaonic capitals, soon
fell, and Alexandria was invested. The open sea behind
gave opportunity to Heraclius to reënforce the garrison
continually. On his part, Omar, who was now khalif,
sent to the Succor of the besieging army the veteran
94 & FALL OF ALEXANDRIA.
troops of Syria. There were many assaults and many
Sallies. In one Amrou himself was taken prisoner by
the besieged, but, through the dexterity of a slave, made
his escape. After a siege of fourteen months, and a loss
of twenty-three thousand men, the Saracens captured
the city. In his dispatch to the khalif, Amrou enu-
merated the splendors of the great city of the West,
“its four thyusand palaces, four thousand baths, four
hundred theatres, twelve thousand shops for the sale of
vegetable food, and forty thousand tributary Jews.”
So fell the second great city of Christendom—the
fate of Jerusalem had fallen on Alexandria, the city of
Athanasius, and Arius, and Cyril; the city that had
imposed Trinitarian ideas and Mariolatry on the Church.
In his palace at Constantinople Heraclius received the
fatal tidings. He was overwhelmed with grief. It
seemed as if his reign was to be disgraced by the down-
fall of Christianity. He lived scarcely a month after
the loss of the town.
But if Alexandria had been essential to Constanti-
nople in the Supply of Orthodox faith, she was also
essential in the supply of daily food. Egypt was the
granary of the Byzantines. For this reason two at-
tempts were made by powerful fleets and armies for the
recovery of the place, and twice had Amrou to renew
his conquest. He saw with what facility these attacks
could be made, the place being open to the sea; he saw
that there was but one and that a fatal remedy. “By
the living God, if this thing be repeated a third time,
I will make Alexandria as open to anybody as is the
house of a prostitute!” He was better than his word,
for he forthwith dismantled its fortifications, and made
it an untenable place.
It was not the intention of the khalifs to limit their
FALL OF CARTHAGE. 95
conquest to Egypt. Othman contemplated the annexa-
tion of the entire North-African coast. His general,
Abdallah, set out from Memphis with forty thousand
men, passed through the desert of Barca, and besieged
Tripoli. But, the plague breaking out in his army, he
was compelled to retreat to Egypt.
All attempts were now suspended for more than
twenty years. Then Akbah forced his way from the
Nile to the Atlantic Ocean. In front of the Canary
Islands he rode his horse into the Sea, exclaiming:
“Great God! if my course were not stopped by this
sea, I would still go on to the unknown kingdoms of
the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and
putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship
any other gods than thee.” -
These Saracen expeditions had been through the
interior of the country, for the Byzantine emperors,
controlling for the time the Mediterranean, had retained
possession of the cities on the coast. The Khalif
Abdalmalek at length resolved on the reduction of
Carthage, the most important of those cities, and in-
deed the capital of North Africa. His general, Hassan,
carried it by escalade; but reënforcements from Con-
stantinople, aided by some Sicilian and Gothic troops,
compelled him to retreat. The relief was, however,
only temporary. Hassan, in the course of a few months,
renewed his attack. It proved successful, and he de-
livered Carthage to the flames.
Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage, three out of the
five great Christian capitals, were lost. The fall of
Constantinople was only a question of time. After its
fall, Rome alone remained.
In the development of Christianity, Carthage had
played no insignificant part. It had given to Europe
96 se CONQUEST OF SPAIN.
its Latin form of faith, and some of its greatest theo-
logians. It was the home of St. Augustine.
Never in the history of the world had there been so
rapid and extensive a propagation of any religion as Mo-
hammedanism. It was now dominating from the Altai
Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, from the centre of
Asia to the western verge of Africa.
The Khalif Alwalid next authorized the invasion of
Europe, the conquest of Andalusia, or the Region of the
Evening. Musa, his general, found, as had so often been
the case elsewhere, two effective allies, sectarianism and
treason—the Archbishop of Toledo and Count Julian the
Gothic general. Under their lead, in the very crisis of
the battle of Xeres, a large portion of the army went
over to the invaders; the Spanish king was compelled
to flee from the field, and in the pursuit he was drowned
in the waters of the Guadalquivir.
With great rapidity Tarik, the lieutenant of Musa,
pushed forward from the battle-field to Toledo, and
thence northward. On the arrival of Musa the reduc-
tion of the Spanish peninsula was completed, and the
wreck of the Gothic army driven beyond the Pyrenees
into France. Considering the conquest of Spain as only
the first step in his victories, he announced his intention
of forcing his way into Italy, and preaching the unity
of God in the Vatican. Thence he would march to
Constantinople, and, having put an end to the Roman
Empire and Christianity, would pass into Asia and lay
his victorious sword on the footstool of the khalif at
Damascus.
But this was not to be. Musa, envious of his lieu-
tenant, Tarik, had treated him with great indignity.
The friends of Tarik at the court of the khalif found
means of retaliation. An envoy from Damascus ar-
INWASION OF FRANCE. 97
rested Musa in his camp; he was carried before his
sovereign, disgraced by a public whipping, and died of
a broken heart.
Under other leaders, however, the Saracen conquest
of France was attempted. In a preliminary campaign
the country from the mouth of the Garonne to that of
the Loire was secured. Then Abderahman, the Saracen
commander, dividing his forces into two columns, with
one on the east passed the Rhone, and laid siege to
Arles. A Christian army, attempting the relief of the
place, was defeated with heavy loss. His western col-
umn, equally successful, passed the Dordogne, defeated
another Christian army, inflicting on it such dreadful
loss that, according to its own fugitives, “God alone
could number the slain.” All Central France was now
overrun; the banks of the Loire were reached; the
churches and monasteries were despoiled of their treas-
ures; and the tutelar Saints, who had worked so many
miracles when there was no necessity, were found to
want the requisite power when it was so greatly needed.
The progress of the invaders was at length stopped
by Charles Martel (A. D. 732). Between Tours and
Poictiers, a great battle, which lasted seven days, was
fought. Abderahman was killed, the Saracens retreated,
and soon afterward were compelled to recross the Py-
I'êIlêeS.
The banks of the Loire, therefore, mark the bound-
ary of the Mohammedan advance in Western Europe.
Gibbon, in his narrative of these great events, makes
this remark: “A victorious line of march had been
prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of
Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire—a repetition of an
equal space would have carried the Saracens to the con-
fines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland.”
5
98 INSULT TO ROME.
It is not necessary for me to add to this sketch of
the military diffusion of Mohammedanism, the opera-
tions of the Saracens on the Mediterranean Sea, their
conquest of Crete and Sicily, their insult to Rome. It
will be found, however, that their presence in Sicily
and the south of Italy exerted a marked influence on
the intellectual development of Europe.
Their insult to Rome ! What could be more hu-
miliating than the circumstances under which it took
place (A. D. 846)? An insignificant Saracen expedition
entered the Tiber and appeared before the walls of the
city. Too weak to force an entrance, it insulted and
plundered the precincts, sacrilegiously violating the
tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul. Had the city itself
been sacked, the moral effect could not have been greater.
From the church of St. Peter its altar of silver was torn
away and sent to Africa—St. Peter's altar, the very
emblem of Roman Christianity
Constantinople had already been besieged by the Sara-
cens more than once; its fall was predestined, and only
postponed. Rome had received the direst insult, the
greatest loss that could be inflicted upon it; the venera-
ble churches of Asia Minor had passed out of existence;
no Christian could set his foot in Jerusalem without
permission; the Mosque of Omar stood on the site of
the Temple of Solomon. Among the ruins of Alexan-
dria the Mosque of Mercy marked the spot where a
Saracen general, satiated with massacre, had, in con-
temptuous compassion, spared the fugitive relics of the
enemies of Mohammed; nothing remained of Carthage
but her blackened ruins. The most powerful religious
empire that the world had ever seen had suddenly conte
into existence. It stretched frºm the Atlantic Ocean
to the Chinese Wall, from the shores of the Caspian to
DISSENSIONS OF THE ARABS, 99
those of the Indian Ocean, and yet, in one sense, it had )
not reached its culmination. The day was to come
When it was to expel the successors of the Caesars from
their capital, and hold the peninsula of Greece in sub-
jection, to dispute with Christianity the empire of Eu-
rope in the very centre of that continent, and in Africa
to extend its dogmas and faith across burning deserts
and through pestilential forests from the Mediterranean
to regions southward far beyond the equinoctial line.
But, though Mohammedanism had not reached its
culmination, the dominion of the khalifs had. Not the º
sword of Charles Martel, but the internal dissension of ;
the vast Arabian Empire, was the salvation of Europe. '
Though the Ommiade khalifs were popular in Syria,
elsewhere they were looked upon as intruders or usurp-
ers; the kindred of the apostle was considered to be the
rightful representative of his faith. Three parties, dis-
tinguished by their colors, tore the khalifate asunder
with their disputes, and disgraced it by their atroci-
ties. The color of the Ommiades was white, that of the
Fatimites green, that of the Abassides black; the last
represented the party of Abbas, the uncle of Mohammed.
The result of these discords was a tripartite division of
the Mohammedan Empire in the tenth century into the
khalifates of Bagdad, of Cairoan, and of Cordova. Uni-
ty in Mohammedan political action was at an end, and
Christendom found its safeguard, not in supernatural
help, but in the quarrels of the rival potentates. To
internal animosities foreign pressures were eventually
added; and Arabism, which had done so much for the
intellectual advancement of the world, came to an end
when the Turks and the Berbers attained to power.
The Saracens had become totally regardless of Euro-
pean opposition—they were wholly taken up with their
100 POLITICAL EFFECT OF POLY GAMY.
domestic quarrels. Ockley says with truth, in his his-
tory: “The Saracens had scarce a deputy lieutenant or
general that would not have thought it the greatest
affront, and such as ought to stigmatize him with indel-
ible disgrace, if he should have suffered himself to have
been insulted by the united forces of all Europe. And
if any one asks why the Greeks did not exert them-
selves more, in order to the extirpation of these inso-
lent invaders, it is a sufficient answer to any person that
is acquainted with the characters of those men to say
that Amrou kept his residence at Alexandria, and Moa-
wyah at Damascus.”
As to their contempt, this instance may suffice: Ni-
cephorus, the Roman emperor, had sent to the Khalif
Haroun-al-Raschid a threatening letter, and this was the
reply: “In the name of the most merciful God, Haroun-
al-Raschid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus,
the Roman dog! I have read thy letter, O thou Son
of an unbelieving mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou
shalt behold my reply l’” It was written in letters of
blood and fire on the plains of Phrygia.
A nation may recover the confiscation of its prov-
inces, the confiscation of its wealth; it may survive the
imposition of enormous war-fines; but it never can re-
cover from that most frightful of all war-acts, the con-
fiscation of its women. When Abou Obeidah sent to
Omar news of his capture of Antioch, Omar gently up-
braided him that he had not let the troops have the
women. “If they want to marry in Syria, let them;
and let them have as many female slaves as they have
occasion for.” It was the institution of polygamy, based
upon the confiscation of the women in the vanquished
countries, that secured forever the Mohammedan rule.
The children of these unions gloried in their descent
MOHAMMEDANISM. 101
from their conquering fathers. No better proof can be
given of the efficacy of this policy than that which is
furnished by North Africa. The irresistible effect of
polygamy in consolidating the new order of things was
very striking. In little more than a single generation,
the khalif was informed by his officers that the tribute
must cease, for all the children born in that region were
Mohammedans, and all spoke Arabic.
Mohammedanism, as left by its founder, was an an-
thropomorphic religion. Its God was only a gigantic
man, its heaven a mansion of carnal pleasures. From
these imperfect ideas its more intelligent classes very
soon freed themselves, substituting for them others
more philosophical, more correct. Eventually they at-
tained to an accordance with those that have been pro-
nounced in our own times by the Vatican Council as
orthodox. Thus Al-Gazzali says: “A knowledge of
God cannot be obtained by means of the knowledge a
man has of himself, or of his own Soul. The attributes
of God cannot be determined from the attributes of
man. His sovereignty and government can neither be
compared nor measured.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE RESTORATION OF SCIENCE IN THE SOUTH.
By the influence of the Nestorians and Jews, the Arabians are turned to
the cultivation of Science.—They modify their views as to the destiny
of man, and obtain true conceptions respecting the structure of the
world,—They ascertain the size of the earth, and determine its shape.
—Their khalifs collect great libraries, patronize every department of
science and literature, establish astronomical observatories. – They
develop the mathematical Sciences, invent algebra, and improve geom-
elry and trigonometry.—They collect and translate the old Greek
mathematical and astronomical works, and adopt the inductive meethod
of Aristotle.—They establish many colleges, and, with the aid of the
Mestorians, organize a public-school system.—They introduce the Ara-
bic numerals and arithmetic, and catalogue and give names to the
stars.-They lay the foundation of modern astronomy, chemistry, and
physics, and introduce great improvements in agriculture and manu-
factures.
“IN the course of my long life,” said the Khalif Ali,
“I have often observed that men are more like the times
they live in than they are like their fathers.” This pro-
foundly philosophical remark of the son-in-law of Mo-
hammed is strictly true; for, though the personal, the
bodily lineaments of a man may indicate his parentage,
the constitution of his mind, and therefore the direction
of his thoughts, is determined by the environment in
which he lives.
When Amrou, the lieutenant of the Khalif Omar,
conquered Egypt, and annexed it to the Saracenic Em-
THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY BURNT. 103
pire, he found in Alexandria a Greek grammarian, John
surnamed Philoponus, or the Labor-lover. Presuming
on the friendship which had arisen between them, the
Greek solicited as a gift the remnant of the great libra-
ry—a remnant which war and time and bigotry had
spared. Amrou, therefore, sent to the khalif to ascer-
tain his pleasure. “If,” replied the khalif, “the books)
agree with the Koran, the Word of God, they are use-
less, and need not be preserved; if they disagree with it,
they are pernicious. Let them be destroyed.” Accord-
ingly, they were distributed among the baths of Alex-
andria, and it is said that six months were barely suffi-
cient to consume them.
Although the fact has been denied, there can be little
doubt that Omar gave this order. The khalif was an
illiterate man; his environment was an environment of
fanaticism and ignorance. Omar's act was an illustra-
tion of Ali's remark.
I3ut it must not be supposed that the books which
John the Labor-lover coveted were those which con-
stituted the great library of the Ptolemies, and that of
Eumenes, King of Pergamus. Nearly a thousand years
had elapsed since Philadelphus began his collection.
Julius Caesar had burnt more than half; the Patriarchs
of Alexandria had not only permitted but superintended
the dispersion of almost all the rest. Orosius expressly
states that he saw the empty cases or shelves of the library
twenty years after Theophilus, the uncle of St. Cyril,
had procured from the Emperor Theodosius a rescript
for its destruction. Even had this once noble collection
never endured such acts of violence, the mere wear and
tear, and perhaps, I may add, the pilfering of a thousand
years, would have diminished it sadly. Though John,
as the surname he received indicates, might rejoice in
104 THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY BURNT.
a Superfluity of occupation, we may be certain that the
care of a library of half a million books would tran-
scend even his well-tried powers; and the cost of pre-
Serving and supporting it, that had demanded the ample
resources of the Ptolemies and the Caesars, was beyond
the means of a grammarian. Nor is the time required
for its combustion or destruction any indication of the
extent of the collection. Of all articles of fuel, parch-
ment is, perhaps, the most wretched. Paper and papy-
rus do excellently well as kindling-materials, but we
may be sure that the bath-men of Alexandria did not
resort to parchment so long as they could find any thing
else, and of parchment a very large portion of these
books was composed. +.
There can, then, be no more doubt that Omar did
order the destruction of this library, under an impres-
sion of its uselessness or its irreligious tendency, than
that the Crusaders burnt the library of Tripoli, fanci-
fully said to have consisted of three million volumes.
The first apartment entered being found to contain
nothing but the Koran, all the other books were sup-
posed to be the works of the Arabian impostor, and
were consequently committed to the flames. In both
cases the story contains some truth and much exaggera-
tion. Bigotry, however, has often distinguished itself
by such exploits. The Spaniards burnt in Mexico vast
piles of American picture-writings, an irretrievable loss;
and Cardinal Ximenes delivered to the flames, in the
squares of Granada, eighty thousand Arabic manu-
scripts, many of them translations of classical au-
thors.
We have seen how engineering talent, stimulated by
Alexander's Persian campaign, led to a wonderful de-
velopment of pure science under the Ptolemies; a simi
INFLUENCE OF THE NESTORIANS AND JEWS. 105
lar effect may be noted as the result of the Saracenic
military operations.
The friendship contracted by Amrou, the conqueror
of Egypt, with John the Grammarian, indicates how
much the Arabian mind was predisposed to liberal
ideas. Its step from the idolatry of the Caaba to the
monotheism of Mohammed prepared it to expatiate in
the wide and pleasing fields of literature and philosophy.
There were two influences to which it was continually ex-
posed. They conspired in determining its path. These
were-1. That of the Nestorians in Syria; 2. That of
the Jews in Egypt.
In the last chapter I have briefly related the per-
secution of Nestor and his disciples. They bore testi-
mony to the Oneness of God, through many sufferings
and martyrdoms. They utterly repudiated an Olympus
filled with gods and goddesses. “Away from us a
queen of heaven!”
Such being their special views, the Nestorians found
no difficulty in affiliating with their Saracen conquerors,
by whom they were treated not only with the highest
respect, but intrusted with some of the most important
offices of the state. Mohammed, in the strongest man-
ner, prohibited his followers from committing any in-
juries against them. Jesuiabbas, their pontiff, concluded
treaties both with the Prophet and with Omar, and sub-
sequently the Khalif Haroun-al-Raschid placed all his
public schools under the superintendence of John Masue,
a Nestorian.
To the influence of the Nestorians that of the Jews
was added. When Christianity displayed a tendency to
unite itself with paganism, the conversion of the Jews
was arrested; it totally ceased when Trinitarian ideas
were introduced. The cities of Syria and Egypt were
106 FATALISM OF THE ARABIANS.
full of Jews. In Alexandria alone, at the time of its
capture by Amrou, there were forty thousand who paid
tribute. Centuries of misfortune and persecution had
served only to confirm them in their monotheism, and
to strengthen that implacable hatred of idolatry which
they had cherished ever since the Babylonian captivity.
Associated with the Nestorians, they translated into
Syriac many Greek and Latin philosophical works, which
were retranslated into Arabic. While the Nestorian
was occupied with the education of the children of the
great Mohammedan families, the Jew found his way
into them in the character of a physician.
Under these influences the ferocious fanaticism of
the Saracens abated, their manners were polished, their
thoughts elevated. They overran the realms of Philos-
ophy and Science as quickly as they had overrun the
provinces of the Roman Empire. They abandoned the
fallacies of vulgar Mohammedanism, accepting in their
stead scientific truth.
In a world devoted to idolatry, the sword of the
Saracen had vindicated the majesty of God. The doc-
trine of fatalism, inculcated by the Koran, had power-
fully contributed to that result. “No man can antici-
pate or postpone his predetermined end. Death will
overtake us even in lofty towers. From the beginning
God hath settled the place in which each man shall die.”
In his figurative language the Arab said: “No man can
by flight escape his fate. The Destinies ride their
horses by night. . . . Whether asleep in bed or in the
storm of battle, the angel of death will find thee.” “I
am convinced,” said Ali, to whose wisdom we have al.
ready referred—“I am convinced that the affairs of men
go by divine decree, and not by our administration.”
The Mussulmen are those who submissively resign them.
EATALISM OF THE ARABIANS. 107
selves to the will of God. They reconciled fate and
free-will by saying, “The outline is given us, we color
the picture of life as we will.” They said that, if we
would overcome the laws of Nature, we must not resist,
we must balance them against each other.
This dark doctrine prepared its devotees for the ac-
complishment of great things—things such as the Sara-
cens did accomplish. It converted despair into resigna-
tion, and taught men to disdain hope. There was a
proverb among them that “Despair is a freeman, Hope
is a slave.” ---
But many of the incidents of war showed plainly
that medicines may assuage pain, that skill may close
wounds, that those who are incontestably dying may be
snatched from the grave. The Jewish physician became
a living, an accepted protest against the fatalism of the
Koran. By degrees the sternness of predestination was
mitigated, and it was admitted that in individual life
there is an effect due to free-will; that by his voluntary
acts man may within certain limits determine his own
course. But, so far as nations are concerned, since they
can yield no personal accountability to God, they are
placed under the control of immutable law.
In this respect the contrast between the Christian
and the Mohammedan nations was very striking: The
Christian was convinced of incessant providential inter-
ventions; he believed that there was no such thing as
law in the government of the world. By prayers and
entreaties he might prevail with God to change the cur-
rent of affairs, or, if that failed, he might succeed with
Christ, or perhaps with the Virgin Mary, or through
the intercession of the saints, or by the influence of
their relics or bones. If his own supplications were un-
availing, he might obtain his desire through the inter-
108 TATALISM OF THIE ARABIANS,
vention of his priest, or through that of the holy men
of the Church, and especially if oblations or gifts of
money were added. Christendom believed that she
could change the course of affairs by influencing the con-
duct of Superior beings. Islam rested in a pious resig-
nation to the unchangeable will of God. The prayer of
|. Christian was mainly an earnest intercession for
benefits hoped for, that of the Saracen a devout expres.
#sion of gratitude for the past. Both substituted prayer
for the ecstatic meditation of India. To the Christian
the progress of the world was an exhibition of discon-
nected impulses, of sudden surprises. To the Moham-
medan that progress presented a very different aspect.
Every corporeal motion was due to some preceding mo-
tion; every thought to some preceding thought; every
historical event was the offspring of some preceding
event; every human action was the result of some fore-
gone and accomplished action. In the long annals of
our race, nothing has ever been abruptly introduced.
There has been an orderly, an inevitable sequence from
event to event. There is an iron chain of destiny, of
which the links are facts; each stands in its preordained
place—not one has ever been disturbed, not one has
ever been removed. Every man came into the world
without his own knowledge, he is to depart from it per-
haps against his own wishes. Then let him calmly fold
his hands, and expect the issues of fate.
Coincidently with this change of opinion as to the
government of individual life, there came a change as
respects the mechanical construction of the world. Ac-
cording to the Koran, the earth is a square plane, edged
with vast mountains, which serve the double purpose
of balancing it in its seat, and of sustaining the dome
of the sky. Our devout admiration of the power and
THEY MEASURE THE EARTH. 109
wisdom of God should be excited by the spectacle of
this vast crystalline brittle expanse, which has been safe-
ly set in its position without so much as a crack or any
other injury. Above the sky, and resting on it, is
heaven, built in seven stories, the uppermost being the
habitation of God, who, under the form of a gigantic)
man, sits on a throne, having on either side winged
bulls, like those in the palaces of old Assyrian kings.
These ideas, which indeed are not peculiar to Mo-
hammedanism, but are entertained by all men in a
certain stage of their intellectual development as re-
ligious revelations, were very quickly exchanged by
the more advanced Mohammedans for others scientifi-
cally correct. Yet, as has been the case in Christian
countries, the advance was not made without resistance
on the part of the defenders of revealed truth. Thus
when Al-Mamun, having become acquainted with the
globular form of the earth, gave orders to his mathema-
ticians and astronomers to measure a degree of a great
circle upon it, Takyuddin, one of the most celebrated
doctors of divinity of that time, denounced the wicked
khalif, declaring that God would assuredly punish him
for presumptuously interrupting the devotions of the
faithful by encouraging and diffusing a false and atheis-
tical philosophy among them. Al-Mamun, however, per-
sisted. On the shores of the Red Sea, in the plains of
Shinar, by the aid of an astrolabe, the elevation of the
pole above the horizon was determined at two stations
on the same meridian, exactly one degree apart. The
distance between the two stations was then measured,
and found to be two hundred thousand Hashemite
cubits; this gave for the entire circumference of the
earth about twenty-four thousand of our miles, a deter
mination not far from the truth. But, since the spheri.
;
{
110 THER PASSION FOR SCIENCE.
cal form could not be positively asserted from one such
measurement, the khalif caused another to be made near
Cufa in Mesopotamia. His astronomers divided them-
Selves into two parties, and, starting from a given point,
each party measured an arc of one degree, the one
northward, the other southward. Their result is given
in cubits. If the cubit employed was that known as the
royal cubit, the length of a degree was ascertained with-
in one-third of a mile of its true value. From these
measures the khalif concluded that the globular form
was established.
It is remarkable how quickly the ferocious fanati-
cism of the Saracens was transformed into a passion for
intellectual pursuits. At first the Koran was an obstacle
to literature and science. Mohammed had extolled it as
the grandest of all compositions, and had adduced its un-
approachable excellence as a proof of his divine mission.
But, in little more than twenty years after his death, the
experience that had been acquired in Syria, Persia, Asia
Minor, Egypt, had produced a striking effect, and Ali, -
the khalif reigning at that time, avowedly encouraged
all kinds of literary pursuits. Moawyah, the founder
of the Ommiade dynasty, who followed in 661, revolu-
tionized the government. It had been elective, he made
it hereditary. He removed its seat from Medina to a
more central position at Damascus, and entered on a
career of luxury and magnificence. He broke the bonds
of a stern fanaticism, and put himself forth as a culti-
vator and patron of letters. Thirty years had wrought
a wonderful change. A Persian Satrap who had occa-
sion to pay homage to Omar, the second khalif, found
him asleep among the beggars on the steps of the
Mosque of Medina; but foreign envoys who had occasion
to scek Moawyah, the sixth khalif, were presented to him
THEIR LITERATURE. 111
In a magnificent palace, decorated with exquisite ara-
besques, and adorned with flower-gardens and fountains.
In less than a century after the death of Mohammed,
translations of the chief Greek philosophical authors had
been made into Arabic; poems such as the “Iliad” and
the “Odyssey,” being considered to have an irreligious
tendency from their mythological allusions, were ren-
dered into Syriac, to gratify the curiosity of the learned.
Almansor, during his khalifate (A. D. 753–775), trans-
ferred the seat of government to Bagdad, which he con-
verted into a splendid metropolis; he gave much of his
time to the study and promotion of astronomy, and
established schools of medicine and law. His grand-
son, Haroun-al-Raschid (A. D. 786), followed his example,
and ordered that to every mosque in his dominions a
school should be attached. But the Augustan age of
Asiatic learning was during the khalifate of Al-Mamun
(A. D. 813–832). He made Bagdad the centre of science,
collected great libraries, and surrounded himself with
learned men. *t –
The elevated taste thus cultivated continued after
the division of the Saracen Empire by internal dissen-
sions into three parts. The Abasside dynasty in Asia,
the Fatimite in Egypt, and the Ommiade in Spain, be-
came rivals not merely in politics, but also in letters
and science.
In letters the Saracens embraced every topic that
can amuse or edify the mind. In later times, it was
their boast that they had produced more poets than all
other nations combined. In science their great merit
consists in this, that they cultivated it after the manner
of the Alexandrian Greeks, not after the manner of the
European Greeks. They perceived that it can never
be advanced by mere speculation; its Only sure progress
[12 THEY ORIGINATE CIHEMISTRY.
is by the practical interrogation of Nature. The essen-
tial characteristics of their method are experiment and
observation. Geometry and the mathematical sciences
they looked upon as instruments of reasoning. In their
numerous writings on mechanics, hydrostatics, optics,
it is interesting to remark that the solution of a problem
is always obtained by performing an experiment, or by
an instrumental observation. It was this that made
them the originators of chemistry, that led them to the
invention of all kinds of apparatus for distillation, sub-
limation, fusion, filtration, etc.; that in astronomy caused
them to appeal to divided instruments, as quadrants and
astrolabes; in chemistry, to employ the balance, the
theory of which they were perfectly familiar with: to
construct tables of specific gravities and astronomical
tables, as those of Bagdad, Spain, Samarcand; that pro-
duced their great improvements in geometry, trigonom-
etry, the invention of algebra, and the adoption of the
Indian numeration in arithmetic. Such were the results
of their preference of the inductive method of Aristotle,
their declining the reveries of Plato.
For the establishment and extension of the public
libraries, books were sedulously collected. Thus the
khalif Al-Mamun is reported to have brought into
Bagdad hundreds of camel-loads of manuscripts. In a
treaty he made with the Greek emperor, Michael III.,
he stipulated that one of the Constantinople libraries
should be given up to him. Among the treasures he
thus acquired was the treatise of Ptolemy on the mathe-
matical construction of the heavens. He had it forth-
with translated into Arabic, under the title of “Al.
magest.” The collections thus acquired sometimes
became very large; thus the Fatimite Library at Cairo
contained one hundred thousand volumes, elegantly tran.
THEIR GREAT LIBRARIES. 113
scribed and bound. Among these, there were six thou-
Sand five hundred manuscripts on astronomy and medi-
cine alone. The rules of this library permitted the
lending out of books to students resident at Cairo. It
also contained two globes, one of massive silver and one
of brass; the latter was said to have been constructed by
Ptolemy, the former cost three thousand golden crowns.
The great library of the Spanish khalifs eventually
numbered six hundred thousand volumes; its catalogue
alone occupied forty-four. Besides this, there were
Seventy public libraries in Andalusia. The collections
in the possession of individuals were sometimes very
extensive. A private doctor refused the invitation of a
Sultan of Bokhara because the carriage of his books
would have required four hundred camels.
There was in every great library a department for
the copying or manufacture of translations. Such manu-
factures were also often an affair of private enterprise.
Honian, a Nestorian physician, had an establishment of
the kind at Bagdad (A. D. 850). He issued versions of
Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Galen, etc. As to ori-
ginal works, it was the custom of the authorities of col-
leges to require their professors to prepare treatises on
prescribed topics. Every khalif had his own historian.
Dooks of romances and tales, such as “The Thousand
and One Arabian Nights' Entertainments,” bear testi-
mony to the creative fancy of the Saracens. Besides
these, there were works on all kinds of subjects—his-
tory, jurisprudence, politics, philosophy, biographies not
only of illustrious men, but also of celebrated horses
and camels. These were issued without any censorship
or restraint, though, in later times, works on theology
required a license for publication. Dooks of reference
abounded, geographical, statistical, medical, historical
114 THEIR GREAT LIBRARIES.
dictionaries, and even abridgments or condensations
of them, as the “Encyclopedic Dictionary of all the
Sciences,” by Mohammed Abu Abdallah. Much pride
was taken in the purity and whiteness of the paper, in
the skillful intermixture of variously-colored inks, and
in the illumination of titles by gilding and other adorn-
mentS. M
The Saracen Empire was dotted all over with col-
leges. They were established in Mongolia, Tartary,
Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa,
Morocco, Fez, Spain. At one extremity of this vast
region, which far exceeded the Roman Empire in geo-
graphical extent, were the college and astronomical ob-
Servatory of Samarcand, at the other the Giralda in
Spain. Gibbon, referring to this patronage of learn-
ing, says: “The same royal prerogative was claimed by
the independent emirs of the provinces, and their emu-
lation diffused the taste and the rewards of science from
Samarcand and Bokhara to Fez and Cordova. The
vizier of a Sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred
thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a college
at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue
of fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction
were communicated, perhaps, at different times, to six
thousand disciples of every degree, from the son of the
noble to that of the mechanic ; a sufficient allowance
was provided for the indigent scholars, and the merit or
industry of the professors was repaid with adequate sti-
pends. In every city the productions of Arabic litera.
ture were copied and collected, by the curiosity of the
studious and the vanity of the rich.” The superintend.
ence of these schools was committed with noble liberal-
ity sometimes to Nestorians, sometimes to Jews. It
mattered not in what country a man was born, nor what
THE ARABIAN SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT. 115
were his religious opinions; his attainment in learning
was the only thing to be considered. The great Khalif
Al-Mamun had declared that “they are the elect of
God, his best and most useful servants, whose lives are
devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties;
that the teachers of wisdom are the true luminaries and
legislators of this world, which, without their aid, would
again sink into ignorance and barbarism.”
After the example of the medical college of Cairo,
other medical colleges required their students to pass a
rigid examination. The candidate then received au-
thority to enter on the practice of his profession. The
first medical college established in Europe was that
founded by the Saracens at Salerno, in Italy. The first
astronomical observatory was that erected by them at
Seville, in Spain.
It would far transcend the limits of this book to give
an adequate statement of the results of this imposing
scientific movement. The ancient sciences were greatly
extended—new ones were brought into existence. The
Indian method of arithmetic was introduced, a beautiful
invention, which expresses all numbers by ten charac-
ters, giving them an absolute value, and a value by posi-
tion, and furnishing simple rules for the easy perform-
ance of all kinds of calculations. Algebra, or universal
arithmetic—the method of calculating indeterminate
quantities, or investigating the relations that subsist
among quantities of all kinds, whether arithmetical or
geometrical—was developed from the germ that Dio-
phantus had left. Mohammed Ben Musa furnished
the solution of quadratic equations, Omar Ben Ibra-
him that of cubic equations. The Saracens also gave
to trigonometry its modern form, substituting sines for
chords, which had been previously used; they elevated
116 ARABIAN ASTRONOMY.
it into a separate Science. Musa, above mentioned, was
the author of a “Treatise on Spherical Trigonometry.”
Al-Baghadadi left one on land-surveying, so excellent,
that by some it has been declared to be a copy of Eu-
clid's lost work on that subject.
In astronomy, they not only made catalogues, but
maps of the stars visible in their skies, giving to those of
the larger magnitudes the Arabic names they still bear
On our celestial globes. They ascertained, as we have
Seen, the size of the earth by the measurement of a de-
gree on her surface, determined the obliquity of the
ecliptic, published corrected tables of the Sun and moon,
fixed the length of the year, verified the precession of
the equinoxes. The treatise of Albategnius on “The
Science of the Stars” is spoken of by Laplace with re-
spect; he also draws attention to an important fragment
of Ibn-Junis, the astronomer of Hakem, the Khalif of
Egypt, A. D. 1000, as containing a long Series of obser-
vations from the time of Almansor, of eclipses, equi-
noxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets, occultations of
stars—observations which have cast much light on the
great variations of the system of the world. The Ara-
bian astronomers also devoted themselves to the con-
struction and perfection of astronomical instruments, to
the measurement of time by clocks of various kinds, by
clepsydras and sun-dials. They were the first to intro-
duce, for this purpose, the use of the pendulum.
In the experimental Sciences, they originated chem-
istry; they discovered some of its most important re-
agents—sulphuric acid, nitric acid, alcohol. They ap-
plied that science in the practice of medicine, being the
first to publish pharmacopoeias or dispensatories, and to
include in them mineral preparations. In mechanics,
they had determined the laws of falling bodies, had
AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURES. 117
ideas, by no means indistinct, of the nature of gravity;
they were familiar with the theory of the mechanical
powers. In hydrostatics they constructed the first tables
of the specific gravities of bodies, and wrote treatises on
the flotation and sinking of bodies in water. In optics,
they corrected the Greek misconception, that a ray pro-
ceeds from the eye, and touches the object seen, intro-
ducing the hypothesis that the ray passes from the ob.
ject to the eye. They understood the phenomena of
the reflection and refraction of light. Alhazen made
the great discovery of the curvilinear path of a ray of
light through the atmosphere, and proved that we see
the sun and moon before they have risen, and after they
have set. - -
The effects of this scientific activity are plainly per-
ceived in the great improvements that took place in
many of the industrial arts. Agriculture shows it in
better methods of irrigation, the skillful employment
of manures, the raising of improved breeds of cattle,
the enactment of wise codes of rural laws, the introduc-
tion of the culture of rice, and that of sugar and coffee.
The manufactures show it in the great extension of the
industries of silk, cotton, wool; in the fabrication of
cordova and morocco leather, and paper; in mining,
casting, and various metallurgic operations; in the mak-
ing of Toledo blades.
Passionate lovers of poetry and music, they dedicated
much of their leisure time to those elegant pursuits.
They taught Europe the game of chess; they gave it its
taste for works of fiction—romances and novels. In the
graver domains of literature they took delight: they had
many admirable compositions on such subjects as the
instability of human greatness; the consequences of irre-
ligion; the reverses of fortune; the origin, duration,
118 THEIR THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT.
and end of the world. Sometimes, not without sur-
prise, we meet with ideas which we flatter ourselves
have originated in our own times. Thus our modern
doctrines of evolution and development were taught in
their schools. In fact, they carried them much farther
than we are disposed to do, extending them even to in-
organic or mineral things. The fundamental principle
of alchemy was the natural process of development of
metalline bodies. “When common people,” says Al-
Khazini, writing in the twelfth century, “hear from
natural philosophers that gold is a body which has at-
tained to perfection of maturity, to the goal of com-
pleteness, they firmly believe that it is something which
has gradually come to that perfection by passing through
the forms of all other metallic bodies, so that its gold
nature was originally lead, afterward it became tin,
then brass, then silver, and finally reached the develop-
ment of gold; not knowing that the natural philoso-
phers mean, in Saying this, only something like what
they mean when they speak of man, and attribute to
him a completeness and equilibrium in nature and con-
stitution—not that man was once a bull, and was changed
into an ass, and afterward into a horse, and after that
into an ape, and finally became a man.”
CELAPTER W.
CONFLICT RESPECTING THE NATURE OF THE SOUL. — DOO-
TRINE OF EMANATION AND ABSORPTION.
European ideas respecting the soul—It resembles the form of the body.
Philosophical views of the Orientals.-The Vedic theology and Buddhism
assert the doctrine of emanation and absorption.—It is advocated by
Aristotle, who is followed by the Alexandrian school, and subsequently
by the Jews and Arabians.—It is found in the writings of Erigena.
Connection of this doctrine with the theory of conservation and correlation
of force.—Parallel between the origin and destiny of the body and the
soul.—The necessity of founding human on comparative psychology.
Averroism, which is based on these facts, is brought into Christendom
through Spain and Sicily.
History of the repression of Averroism.—Revolt of Islam against it.—
Antagonism of the Jewish synagogues. – Its destruction undertaken
by the papacy.—Institution of the Inquisition in Spain.—Frightful
persecutions and their results.-Expulsion of the Jews and Moors.-
Overthrow of Averroism in Europe.—Decisive action of the late Vati-
can Council.
THE pagan Greeks and Romans believed that the
spirit of man resembles his bodily form, varying its
appearance with his variations, and growing with his
growth. Heroes, to whom it had been permitted to de-
scend into Hades, had therefore without difficulty recog-
nized their former friends. Not only had the corporeal
aspect been retained, but even the customary raiment.
The primitive Christians, whose conceptions of a
future life and of heaven and hell, the abodes of the
120 THE SOUL.
blessed and the sinful, were far more vivid than those
of their pagan predecessors, accepted and intensified
these ancient ideas. They did not doubt that in the
world to come they should meet their friends, and hold
converse with them, as they had done here upon earth
—an expectation that gives consolation to the human
heart, reconciling it to the most Sorrowful bereave-
ments, and restoring to it its dead.
In the uncertainty as to what becomes of the soul
in the interval between its separation from the body
and the judgment-day, many different opinions were
held. Some thought that it hovered over the grave,
some that it wandered disconsolate through the air.
In the popular belief, St. Peter sat as a door-keeper at
the gate of heaven. To him it had been given to bind
or to loose. He admitted or excluded the spirits of
men at his pleasure. Many persons, however, were dis-
posed to deny him this power, since his decisions would
be anticipatory of the judgment-day, which would thus
be rendered needless. After the time of Gregory the
Great, the doctrine of purgatory met with general ac-
ceptance. A resting-place was provided for departed
spirits.
That the spirits of the dead occasionally revisit the
living, or haunt their former abodes, has been in all
ages, in all European countries, a fixed belief, not con-
fined to rustics, but participated in by the intelligent. A
pleasing terror gathers round the winter's-evening fire-
side at the stories of apparitions, goblins, ghosts. In
the old times the Romans had their lares, or spirits of
those who had led virtuous lives; their larvae or lemures,
the spirits of the wicked; their manes, the spirits of
those of whom the merits were doubtful. If human
testimony on such subjects can be of any value, there is
ASIATIC PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEWS. 121
a body of evidence reaching from the remotest ages to
the present time, as extensive and unimpeachable as is
to be found in support of any thing whatever, that these
shades of the dead congregate near tombstones, or take
up their secret abode in the gloomy chambers of dilapi-
dated castles, or walk by moonlight in moody solitude.
While these opinions have universally found popular
acceptance in Europe, others of a very different nature
have prevailed extensively in Asia, and indeed very
generally in the higher regions of thought. Ecclesias-
tical authority succeeded in repressing them in the six-
teenth century, but they never altogether disappeared.
In our own times so silently and extensively have they
been diffused in Europe, that it was found expedient in
the papal Syllabus to draw them in a very conspicuous
manner into the open light; and the Vatican Council,
agreeing in that view of their obnoxious tendency and
secret spread, has in an equally prominent and signal
manner among its first canons anathematized all per-
sons who hold them. “Ilet him be anathema who says
that spiritual things are emanations of the divine sub-
stance, or that the divine essence by manifestation or
development becomes all things.” In view of this
authoritative action, it is necessary now to consider the
character and history of these opinions.
Ideas respecting the nature of God necessarily in-
fluence ideas respecting the nature of the soul. The
eastern Asiatics had adopted the conception of an im-
personal God, and, as regards the soul, its necessary con-
sequence, the doctrine of emanation and absorption.
Thus the Vedic theology is based on the acknowl-
edgment of a universal spirit pervading all things.
“There is in truth but one Deity, the supreme Spirit;
he is of the same nature as the Soul of man.” Both the
6
122 EMANATION AND ABSORPTION.
Vedas and the Institutes of Menu affirm that the soul
is an emanation of the all-pervading Intellect, and that
it is necessarily destined to be reabsorbed. They con-
sider it to be without form, and that visible Nature,
with all its beauties and harmonies, is only the shadow
of God.
Vedaism developed itself into Buddhism, which has
become the faith of a majority of the human race. This
system acknowledges that there is a Supreme Power, but
denies that there is a supreme Being. It contemplates
the existence of Force, giving rise as its manifestation
to matter. It adopts the theory of emanation and ab-
sorption. In a burning taper it sees an effigy of man—
an embodiment of matter, and an evolution of force.
If we interrogate it respecting the destiny of the Soul,
it demands of us what has become of the flame when it
is blown out, and in what condition it was before the
taper was lighted. Was it a nonentity ? Has it been
annihilated . It admits that the idea of personality
which has deluded us through life may not be instan-
taneously extinguished at death, but may be lost by
slow degrees. On this is founded the doctrine of trans-
migration. But at length reunion with the universal
Intellect takes place, Nirwana is reached, oblivion is
attained, a state that has no relation to matter, space, or
time, the state into which the departed flame of the ex-
tinguished taper has gone, the state in which we were
before we were born. This is the end that we ought
to hope for; it is reabsorption in the universal Force—
supreme bliss, eternal rest. -
Through Aristotle these doctrines were first intro-
duced into Eastern Europe; indeed, eventually, as we
shall see, he was regarded as the author of them. They
exerted a dominating influence in the later period of
EMANATION AND ABSORPTION. 123
the Alexandrian school. Philo, the Jew, who lived in
the time of Caligula, based his philosophy on the theory
of emanation. Plotinus not only accepted that theory
as applicable to the soul of man, but as affording an
illustration of the nature of the Trinity. For, as a beam
of light emanates from the sun, and as warmth ema-
nates from the beam when it touches material bodies,
so from the Father the Son emanates, and thence the
Holy Ghost. From these views Plotinus derived a prac-
tical religious system, teaching the devout how to pass
into a condition of ecstasy, a foretaste of absorption
into the universal mundane soul. In that condition the
Soul loses its individual consciousness. In like manner
Porphyry sought absorption in or union with God. He
was a Tyrian by birth, established a school at Rome,
and wrote against Christianity; his treatise on that sub-
ject was answered by Eusebius and St. Jerome, but the
Emperor Theodosius silenced it more effectually by
causing all the copies to be burnt. Porphyry bewails
his own unworthiness, saying that he had been united to
God in ecstasy but once in eighty-six years, whereas his
master Plotinus had been so united six times in sixty
years. A complete system of theology, based on the
theory of emanation, was constructed by Proclus, who
speculated on the manner in which absorption takes
place: whether the soul is instantly reabsorbed and re-
united in the moment of death, or whether it retains
the sentiment of personality for a time, and subsides
into complete reunion by successive steps.
From the Alexandrian Greeks these ideas passed to
the Saracen philosophers, who very soon after the
capture of the great Egyptian city abandoned to the
lower orders their anthropomorphic notions of the na-
ture of God and the simulachral form of the spirit of
124 ARABIC PSYCHOLOGY.
man. As Arabism developed itself into a distinct scien-
tific system, the theories of emanation and absorption
were among its characteristic features. In this aban-
donment of vulgar Mohammedanism, the example of
the Jews greatly assisted. They, too, had given up
the anthropomorphism of their ancestors; they had ex-
changed the God who of old lived behind the veil of
the temple for an infinite Intelligence pervading the
universe, and, avowing their inability to conceive that
any thing which had on a sudden been called into ex-
istence should be capable of immortality, they affirmed
that the soul of man is connected with a past of which
there was no beginning, and with a future to which
there is no end. *
In the intellectual history of Arabism the Jew and
the Saracen are continually seen together. It was the
same in their political history, whether we consider it in
Syria, in Egypt, or in Spain. From them conjointly
Western Europe derived its philosophical ideas, which
in the course of time culminated in Averroism ; Averro-
ism is philosophical Islamism. Europeans generally re-
garded Averroes as the author of these heresies, and the
orthodox branded him accordingly, but he was nothing
more than their collector and commentator. His works
invaded Christendom by two routes: from Spain through
Southern France they reached Upper Italy, engender-
ing numerous heresies on their way; from Sicily they
passed to Naples and South Italy, under the auspices
of Frederick II.
But, long before Europe suffered this great intel-
lectual invasion, there were what might, perhaps, be
termed sporadic instances of Orientalism. As an ex-
ample I may quote the views of John Erigena (A. D. 800).
He had adopted and taught the philosophy of Aristotle;
ERIGENA. 125
4-4
had made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of that philos-
opher, and indulged a hope of uniting philosophy and
religion in the manner proposed by the Christian eccle-
siastics who were then studying in the Mohammedan
universities of Spain. He was a native of Britain.
In a letter to Charles the Dald, Anastasius expresses
his astonishment “how such a barbarian man, coming
from the very ends of the earth, and remote from human
conversation, could comprehend things so clearly, and
transfer them into another language so well.” The
general intention of his writings was, as we have said,
to unite philosophy with religion, but his treatment of
these subjects brought him under ecclesiastical censure,
and some of his works were adjudged to the flames.
His most important book is entitled “De Divisione Na-
turae.”
Erigena's philosophy rests upon the observed and
admitted fact that every living thing comes from some-
thing that had previously lived. The visible world,
being a world of life, has therefore emanated necessarily
from some primordial existence, and that existence is
God, who is thus the originator and conservator of all.
Whatever we see maintains itself as a visible thing
through force derived from him, and, were that force
withdrawn, it must necessarily disappear. Erigena thus
conceives of the Deity as an unceasing participator in
Nature, being its preserver, maintainer, upholder, and
in that respect answering to the soul of the world of the
Greeks. The particular life of individuals is therefore
a part of general existence, that is, of the mundane soul.
If ever there were a withdrawal of the maintaining
power, all things must return to the source from which
they issued—that is, they must return to God, and be ab-
sorbed in him. All visible Nature must thus pass back
126 ERIGENA.
into “the Intellect” at last. “The death of the flesh is
the auspices of the restitution of things, and of a return
to their ancient conservation. So sounds revert back to
the air in which they were born, and by which they
were maintained, and they are heard no more; no man
knows what has become of them. In that final absorp-
tion which, after a lapse of time, must necessarily come,
God will be all in all, and nothing exist but him alone.”
“I contemplate him as the beginning and cause of all
things; all things that are and those that have been, but
now are not, were created from him, and by him, and
in him. I also view him as the end and intransgressible
term of all things. . . . There is a fourfold conception
of universal Nature—two views of divine Nature, as
origin and end; two also of framed Nature, causes and
effects. There is nothing eternal but God.”
The return of the soul to the universal Intellect is
designated by Erigena as Theosis, or Deification. In
that final absorption all remembrance of its past experi-
ences is lost. The soul reverts to the condition in which
it was before it animated the body. Necessarily, there-
fore, Erigena fell under the displeasure of the Church.
It was in India that men first recognized the fact
that force is indestructible and eternal. This implies
ideas more or less distinct of that which we now term
its “correlation and conservation.” Considerations con-
nected with the stability of the universe give strength
to this view, since it is clear that, were there either an
increase or a diminution, the order of the world must
cease. The definite and invariable amount of energy in
the universe must therefore be accepted as a scientific
fact. The changes we witness are in its distribution.
But, since the soul must be regarded as an active
principle, to call a new one into existence out of noth-
AL-GAZZALI'S PSYCHOLOGY. 127
ing is necessarily to add to the force previously in the
world. And, if this has been done in the case of every
individual who has been born, and is to be repeated for
every individual hereafter, the totality of force must
be continually increasing.
Moreover, to many devout persons there is some-
thing very revolting in the suggestion that the Al-
mighty is a servitor to the caprices and lusts of man,
and that, at a certain term after its origin, it is necessary
for him to create for the embryo a Soul.
Considering man as composed of two portions, a Soul
and a body, the obvious relations of the latter may cast
much light on the mysterious, the obscure relations of
the former. Now, the substance of which the body con-
sists is obtained from the general mass of matter around
us, and after death to that general mass it is restored.
Has Nature, then, displayed before our eyes in the ori-
gin, mutations, and destiny of the material part, the
body, a revelation that may guide us to a knowledge of
the origin and destiny of the companion, the spiritual
part, the soul?
Let us listen for a moment to one of the most pow-
erful of Mohammedan writers:
“God has created the spirit of man out of a drop
of his own light; its destiny is to return to him. Do
not deceive yourself with the vain imagination that it
will die when the body dies. The form you had on
your entrance into this world, and your present form,
are not the same; hence there is no necessity of your
perishing, on account of the perishing of your body.
Your spirit came into this world a stranger; it is only
sojourning, in a temporary home. From the trials and
tempests of this troublesome life, our refuge is in God.
In reunion with him we shall find eternal rest—a rest
| 28 ARE ANIMALS AUTOMATA 2
without sorrow, a joy without pain, a strength without
infirmity, a knowledge without doubt, a tranquil and
yet an ecstatic vision of the source of life and light and
glory, the Source from which we came.” So says the
Saracen philosopher, Al-Gazzali (A. D. 1010).
In a stone the material particles are in a state of
stable equilibrium; it may, therefore, endure forever.
An animal is in reality only a form through which a
stream of matter is incessantly flowing. It receives its
supplies, and dismisses its wastes. In this it resembles
a cataract, a river, a flame. The particles that compose
it at one instant have departed from it the next. It
depends for its continuance on exterior supplies. It has
a definite duration in time, and an inevitable moment
comes in which it must die.
In the great problem of psychology we cannot ex-
pect to reach a scientific result, if we persist in restrict-
ing ourselves to the contemplation of one fact. We
must avail ourselves of all accessible facts. Human
psychology can never be completely resolved except
through comparative psychology. With Descartes, we
must inquire whether the Souls of animals be relations
of the human soul, less perfect members in the same
series of development. We must take account of what
we discover in the intelligent principle of the ant, as
well as what we discern in the intelligent principle of
man. Where would human physiology be, if it were
not illuminated by the bright irradiations of compara-
tive physiology?
Brodie, after an exhaustive consideration of the facts,
affirms that the mind of animals is essentially the same
as that of man. Every one familiar with the dog will
admit that that creature knows right from wrong, and
is conscious when he has committed a fault. Many
ARE ANIMALS AltJTOMATA 2 129
domestic animals have reasoning powers, and employ
proper means for the attainment of ends. How numer-
ous are the anecdotes related of the intentional actions
of the elephant and the apel Nor is this apparent
intelligence due to imitation, to their association with
man, for wild animals that have no such relation exhibit
similar properties. In different species, the capacity and
character greatly vary. Thus the dog is not only more
intelligent, but has social and moral qualities that the
cat does not possess; the former loves his master, the
latter her home.
Du Bois-Reymond makes this striking remark:
“With awe and wonder must the student of Nature
regard that microscopic molecule of nervous substance
which is the seat of the laborious, constructive, orderly,
loyal, dauntless Soul of the ant. It has developed
itself to its present state through a countless series of
generations.” What an impressive inference we may
draw from the statement of Huber, who has written so
well on this subject: “If you will watch a single ant at
work, you can tell what he will next do l’’ He is con-
sidering the matter, and reasoning as you are doing.
Listen to one of the many anecdotes which Huber, at
once truthful and artless, relates: “On the visit of an
overseer ant to the works, when the laborers had begun
the roof too soon, he examined it and had it taken down,
the wall raised to the proper height, and a new ceiling
constructed with the fragments of the old one.” Surely
these insects are not automata, they show intention.
They recognize their old companions, who have been
shut up from them for many months, and exhibit senti-
ments of joy at their return. Their antennal language
is capable of manifold expression; it suits the interior
of the nest, where all is dark.
130 ARE ANIMALS AUTOMATA 3
While solitary insects do not live to raise their young,
social insects have a longer term, they exhibit moral
affections and educate their offspring. Patterns of pa-
tience and industry, some of these insignificant creat-
ures will work sixteen or eighteen hours a day. Few
men are capable of Sustained mental application more
than four or five hours.
Similarity of effects indicates similarity of causes;
similarity of actions demands similarity of organs. I
would ask the reader of these paragraphs, who is famil-
iar with the habits of animals, and especially with the
social relations of that wonderful insect to which refer-
ence has been made, to turn to the nineteenth chapter of
my work on the “Intellectual Development of Europe,”
in which he will find a description of the social system
of the Incas of Peru. Perhaps, then, in view of the
similarity of the Social institutions and personal conduct
of the insect, and the Social institutions and personal
conduct of the civilized Indian—the one an insignificant
speck, the other a man—he will not be disposed to dis-
agree with me in the opinion that “from bees, and
wasps, and ants, and birds, from all that low animal life
on which he looks with Supercilious contempt, man is
destined one day to learn what in truth he really is.”
The views of Descartes, who regarded all insects as
automata, can scarcely be accepted without modifica-
tion. Insects are automata only so far as the action of
their ventral cord, and that portion of their cephalic
ganglia which deals with contemporaneous impressions,
is concerned. - - -
It is one of the functions of vesicular-nervous mate-
rial to retain traces or relics of impressions brought to
it by the organs of sense; hence, nervous ganglia, being
composed of that material, may be considered as regis-
FUNCTIONS OF THE NERWOUS SYSTEM. 131
tering apparatus. They also introduce the element of
time into the action of the nervous mechanism. An
impression, which without them might have forthwith
ended in reflex action, is delayed, and with this duration
come all those important effects arising through the in-
teraction of many impressions, old and new, upon each
other.
There is no such thing as a spontaneous, or self-
originated, thought. Every intellectual act is the con-
sequence of some preceding act. It comes into exist-
ence in virtue of something that has gone before. Two
minds constituted precisely alike, and placed under the
influence of precisely the same environment, must give
rise to precisely the same thought. To such Sameness
of action we allude in the popular expression “common-
sense”—a term full of meaning. In the origination of
a thought there are two distinct conditions: the state of
the organism as dependent on antecedent impressions,
and on the existing physical circumstances.
In the cephalic ganglia of insects are stored up the
relics of impressions that have been made upon the
common peripheral nerves, and in them are kept those
which are brought in by the organs of special sense—
the visual, olfactive, auditory. The interaction of these
raises insects above mere mechanical automata, in which
the reaction instantly follows the impression.
In all cases the action of every nerve-centre, no mat-
ter what its stage of development may be, high or low,
depends upon an essential chemical condition—oxida-
tion. Even in man, if the supply of arterial blood be
stopped but for a moment, the nerve-mechanism loses
its power; if diminished, it correspondingly declines;
if, on the contrary, it be increased—as when nitrogen
monoxide is breathed—there is more energetic action.
132 REGISTERED IMPRESSIONS.
Hence there arises a need of repair, a necessity for rest
and sleep.
Two fundamental ideas are essentially attached to
all our perceptions of external things: they are SPACE
and TIME, and for these provision is made in the ner-
vous mechanism while it is yet in an almost rudimentary
state. The eye is the organ of space, the ear of time;
the perceptions of which by the elaborate mechanism
of these structures become infinitely more precise than
would be possible if the sense of touch alone were re-
sorted to.
There are some simple experiments which illustrate
the vestiges of ganglionic impressions. If on a cold,
polished metal, as a new razor, any object, such as a
wafer, be laid, and the metal be then breathed upon,
and, when the moisture has had time to disappear, the
wafer be thrown off, though now the most critical in-
spection of the polished surface can discover no trace of
any form, if we breathe once more upon it, a spectral
image of the wafer comes plainly into view; and this
may be done again and again. Nay, more, if the pol-
ished metal be carefully put aside where nothing can
deteriorate its surface, and be so kept for many months,
on breathing again upon it the shadowy form emerges.
Such an illustration shows how trivial an impression
may be thus registered and preserved. But, if, on such
an inorganic surface, an impression may thus be indel-
ibly marked, how much more likely in the purposely-
constructed ganglion 1 A shadow never falls upon a
wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a
trace which might be made visible by resorting to proper
processes. Photographic operations are cases in point.
The portraits of our friends, or landscape views, may
be hidden on the sensitive surface from the eye, but
REGISTERED IMPRESSIONS. 133
they are ready to make their appearance as soon as
proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is con-
cealed on a silver or glassy surface until, by our necro-
mancy, we make it come forth into the visible world.
Upon the walls of our most private apartments, where
we think the eye of intrusion is altogether shut out
and our retirement can never be profaned, there exist
the vestiges of all our acts, silhouettes of whatever we
have done.
If, after the eyelids have been closed for some time,
as when we first awake in the morning, we suddenly
and steadfastly gaze at a brightly-illuminated object
and then quickly close the lids again, a phantom image
is perceived in the indefinite darkness beyond us. We
may satisfy ourselves that this is not a fiction, but a re-
ality, for many details that we had not time to identify
in the momentary glance may be contemplated at our
leisure in the phantom. We may thus make out the pat-
tern of such an object as a lace curtain hanging in the
window, or the branches of a tree beyond. By degrees
the image becomes less and less distinct; in a minute
or two it has disappeared. It seems to have a ten-
dency to float away in the vacancy before us. If we
attempt to follow it by moving the eyeball, it suddenly
vanishes.
Such a duration of impressions on the retina proves
that the effect of external influences on nerve-vesicles
is not necessarily transitory. In this there is a corre-
spondence to the duration, the emergence, the extinction,
of impressions on photographic preparations. Thus, I
have seen landscapes and architectural views taken in
Mexico developed, as artists say, months subsequently
in New York—the images coming out, after the long
voyage, in all their proper forms and in all their proper
|34 EXPLANATION OF MEMORY.
contrast of light and shade. The photograph had for-
gotten nothing. It had equally preserved the contour
of the everlasting mountains and the passing Smoke of
a bandit-fire.
Are there, then, contained in the brain more perma-
nently, as in the retina more transiently, the vestiges
of impressions that have been gathered by the sensory
organs? Is this the explanation of memory—the
Mind contemplating such pictures of past things and
events as have been committed to her custody. In her
silent galleries are there hung micrographs of the living
and the dead, of scenes that we have visited, of inci-
dents in which we have borne a part? Are these abid-
ing impressions mere signal-marks, like the letters of a
book, which impart ideas to the mind? or are they actual
picture-images, inconceivably smaller than those made
for us by artists, in which, by the aid of a microscope,
we can See, in a space not bigger than a pinhole, a whole
family group at a glance %
The phantom images of the retina are not percep-
tible in the light of the day. Those that exist in the
sensorium in like manner do not attract our attention
So long as the Sensory organs are in vigorous operation,
and occupied in bringing new impressions in. But, when
those organs become weary or dull, or when we experi-
ence hours of great anxiety, or are in twilight reveries,
or are asleep, the latent apparitions have their vivid-
ness increased by the contrast, and obtrude themselves
on the mind. For the same reason they occupy us in
the delirium of fevers, and doubtless also in the solemn
moments of death. During a third part of our life, in
sleep, we are withdrawn from external influences; hear
ing and sight and the other senses are inactive, but the
never-sleeping Mind, that pensive, that veiled enchant
NATURE OF RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS. 135
ress, in her mysterious retirement, looks over the am-
brotypes she has collected—ambrotypes, for they are
truly unfading impressions—and, combining them to-
gether, as they chance to occur, constructs from them
the panorama of a dream.
Nature has thus implanted in the organization of
every man means which impressively suggest to him the
immortality of the soul and a future life. Even the
benighted Savage thus sees in his visions the fading
forms of landscapes, which are, perhaps, connected with
some of his most pleasant recollections; and what other
conclusion can he possibly extract from those unreal
pictures than that they are the foreshadowings of an-
other land beyond that in which his lot is cast ! At
intervals he is visited in his dreams by the resemblances
of those whom he has loved or hated while they were
alive; and these manifestations are to him incontro-
vertible proofs of the existence and immortality of the
soul. In our most refined social conditions we are
never able to shake off the impressions of these occur-
rences, and are perpetually drawing from them the same
conclusions that our uncivilized ancestors did. Our
more elevated condition of life in no respect relieves
us from the inevitable operation of our own organiza-
tion, any more than it relieves us from infirmities and
disease. In these respects, all over the globe men are
on an equality. Savage or civilized, we carry within
us a mechanism which presents us with mementoes of
the most Solemn facts with which we can be concerned.
It wants only moments of repose or sickness, when the
influence of external things is diminished, to come into
full play, and these are precisely the moments when we
are best prepared for the truths it is going to suggest.
That mechanism is no respecter of persons. It neither
136 EFFECT OF REGISTERED IMPRESSIONS.
permits the haughtiest to be free from the monitions,
nor leaves the humblest without the consolation of a
knowledge of another life. Open to no opportunities
of being tampered with by the designing or interested,
requiring no extraneous human agency for its effect,
but always present with every man wherever he may
go, it marvelously extracts from vestiges of the impres-
sions of the past overwhelming proofs of the realities of
the future, and, gathering its power from what would
seem to be a most unlikely source, it insensibly leads
us, no matter who or where we may be, to a profound
belief in the immortal and imperishable, from phantoms
which have scarcely made their appearance before they
are ready to vanish away.
The insect differs from a mere automaton in this,
that it is influenced by old, by registered impressions.
In the higher forms of animated life that registration
becomes more and more complete, memory becomes
more perfect. There is not any necessary resemblance
between an external form and its ganglionic impres-
sion, any more than there is between the words of a
message delivered in a telegraphic office and the signals
which the telegraph may give to the distant station;
any more than there is between the letters of a printed
page and the acts or scenes they describe, but the let-
ters call up with clearness to the mind of the reader
the events and scenes.
An animal without any apparatus for the retention
of impressions must be a pure automaton—it cannot
have memory. From insignificant and uncertain begin-
nings, such an apparatus is gradually evolved, and, as
its development advances, the intellectual capacity in-
creases. In man, this retention or registration reaches
perfection; he guides himself by past as well as by
COMMUNICATION OF KNOWLEDGE. 137
present impressions; he is influenced by experience;
his conduct is determined by reason.
A most important advance is made when the capa-
bility is acquired by any animal of imparting a knowl-
edge of the impressions stored up in its own nerve-cen-
tres to another of the same kind. This marks the ex-
tension of individual into social life, and indeed is essen-
tial thereto. In the higher insects it is accomplished by
antennal contacts, in man by speech. Humanity, in its
earlier, its savage stages, was limited to this: the knowl-
edge of one person could be transmitted to another by
conversation. The acts and thoughts of one generation
could be imparted to another, and influence its acts and
thoughts.
But tradition has its limit. The faculty of speech
makes Society possible—nothing more.
Not without interest do we remark the progress of
development of this function. The invention of the art
of writing gave extension and durability to the registra-
tion or record of impressions. These, which had hitherto
been stored up in the brain of one man, might now be
imparted to the whole human race, and be made to en-
dure forever. Civilization became possible—for civili-
zation cannot exist without writing, or the means of
record in some shape.
From this psychological point of view we perceive
the real significance of the invention of printing—a de-
velopment of writing which, by increasing the rapidity
of the diffusion of ideas, and insuring their permanence,
tends to promote civilization and to unify the human race.
In the foregoing paragraphs, relating to nervous im.
pressions, their registry, and the consequences that spring
from them, I have given an abstract of views presented
in my work on “Human Physiology,” published in
138 THIEORY OF EMANATION.
1856, and may, therefore, refer the reader to the chap.
ter on “Inverse Vision, or Cerebral Sight;” to Chapter
XIV., Book I. ; and to Chapter VIII., Book II.; of that
work, for other particulars.
The only path to scientific human psychology is
through comparative psychology. It is a long and
wearisome path, but it leads to truth.
Is there, then, a vast spiritual existence pervading
the universe, even as there is a vast existence of matter
pervading it—a spirit which, as a great German author
tells us, “sleeps in the stone, dreams in the animal,
awakes in man?” Does the soul arise from the one as
the body arises from the other? Do they in like man-
ner return, each to the source from which it has come
If so, we can interpret human existence, and our ideas
may still be in unison with Scientific truth, and in ac-
cord with our conception of the stability, the unchangea-
bility of the universe.
To this spiritual existence the Saracens, following
Eastern nations, gave the designation “the Active Intel-
lect.” They believed that the soul of man emanated
from it, as a rain-drop comes from the Sea, and, after a
Season, returns. So arose among them the imposing
doctrines of emanation and absorption. The active in-
tellect is God.
In one of its forms, as we have seen, this idea was
developed by Chakia Mouni, in India, in a most mas.
terly manner, and embodied in the vast practical system
of Buddhism; in another, it was with less power pre:
sented among the Saracens by Averroes.
But, perhaps we ought rather to say that Europeans
hold Averroes as the author of this doctrine, because
they saw him isolated from his antecedents. But Mo-
AWERROISM. 139
hammedans gave him little credit for originality. He
stood to them in the light of a commentator on Aris-
totle, and as presenting the opinions of the Alexandrian
and other philosophical schools up to his time. The
following excerpts from the “Historical Essay on Aver-
roism,” by M. Renan, will show how closely the Sara-
cenic ideas approached those presented above:
This system supposes that, at the death of an indi-
vidual, his intelligent principle or Soul no longer pos-
sesses a separate existence, but returns to or is absorbed
in the universal mind, the active intelligence, the mun-
dane soul, which is God; from whom, indeed, it had
originally emanated or issued forth.
The universal, or active, or objective intellect, is
uncreated, impassible, incorruptible, has neither begin-
ning nor end; nor does it increase as the number of in-
dividual souls increases. It is altogether separate from
matter. It is, as it were, a cosmic principle. This one-
ness of the active intellect, or reason, is the essential
principle of the Averroistic theory, and is in harmony
with the cardinal doctrine of Mohammedanism—the
unity of God.
The individual, or passive, or subjective intellect, is
an emanation from the universal, and constitutes what
is termed the soul of man. In one sense it is perishable
and ends with the body, but in a higher sense it en-
dures; for, after death, it returns to or is absorbed in
the universal Soul, and thus of all human Souls there
remains at last but one—the aggregate of them all.
Life is not the property of the individual, it belongs to
Nature. The end of man is to enter into union more
and more complete with the active intellect—reason.
In that the happiness of the soul consists. Our des-
tiny is quietude. It was the opinion of Averroes that
ſ40 AWERROISM.
the transition from the individual to the universal is
instantaneous at death, but the Buddhists maintain that
human personality continues in a declining manner
for a certain term before nonentity, or Nirwana, is at-
tained.
Philosophy has never proposed but two hypotheses to
explain the system of the world: first, a personal God
existing apart, and a human Soul called into existence
or created, and thenceforth immortal; second, an imper-
Sonal intelligence, or indeterminate God, and a soul emer-
ging from and returning to him. As to the origin of
beings, there are two opposite opinions: first, that they
are created from nothing; second, that they come by
development from prečxisting forms. The theory of
creation belongs to the first of the above hypotheses,
that of evolution to the last.
Philosophy among the Arabs thus took the same
direction that it had taken in China, in India, and in-
deed throughout the East. Its whole spirit depended
on the admission of the indestructibility of matter and
force. It saw an analogy between the gathering of the
material of which the body of man consists from the
vast store of matter in Nature, and its final restoration
to that store, and the emanation of the spirit of man
from the universal Intellect, the Divinity, and its final
reabsorption.
Having thus indicated in sufficient detail the philo-
sophical characteristics of the doctrine of emanation and
absorption, I have in the next place to relate its history.
It was introduced into Europe by the Spanish Arabs.
Spain was the focal point from which, issuing forth, it
affected the ranks of intelligence and fashion all over
Europe, and in Spain it had a melancholy end.
ANDALUSIAN CIVILIZATION. - 141
The Spanish khalifs had surrounded themselves with
all the luxuries of Oriental life. They had magnificent
palaces, enchanting gardens, seraglios filled with beau-
tiful women. Europe at the present day does not offer
more taste, more refinement, more elegance, than might
have been seen, at the epoch of which we are speaking,
in the capitals of the Spanish Arabs. Their streets were
lighted and solidly paved. The houses were frescoed
and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces,
and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by
underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths,
and libraries, and dining halls, fountains of quicksilver
and water. City and country were full of conviviality,
and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the
drunken and gluttonous wassail orgies of their North-
ern neighbors, the feasts of the Saracens were marked
by sobriety. Wine was prohibited. The enchanting
moonlight evenings of Andalusia were spent by the
Moors in sequestered, fairy-like gardens or in orange-
groves, listening to the romances of the story-teller, or
engaged in philosophical discourse; consoling themselves
for the disappointments of this life by such reflections
as that, if virtue were rewarded in this world, we should
be without expectations in the life to come; and recon-
ciling themselves to their daily toil by the expectation
- that rest will be found after death—a rest never to be
succeeded by labor.
In the tenth century the Khalif Hakem II. had made
beautiful Andalusia the paradise of the world. Chris-
tians, Mussulmen, Jews, mixed together without re-
straint. There, among many celebrated names that
have descended to our times, was Gerbert, destined sub-
sequently to become pope. There, too, was Peter the
Venerable, and manv Christian ecclesiastics. Peter
142 AVERROISM IN ANDALUSIA.
says that he found learned men even from Britain pur-
suing astronomy. All learned men, no matter from
what country they came, or what their religious views,
were welcomed. The khalif had in his palace a manu-
factory of books, and copyists, binders, illuminators.
He kept book-buyers in all the great cities of Asia and
Africa. His library contained four hundred thousand
volumes, superbly bound and illuminated.
Throughout the Mohammedan dominions in Asia, in
Africa, and in Spain, the lower order of Mussulmen en-
tertained a fanatical hatred against learning. Among
the more devout—those who claimed to be Orthodox—
there were painful doubts as to the Salvation of the
great Khalif Al-Mamun—the wicked khalif, as they
called him—for he had not only disturbed the people
by introducing the writings of Aristotle and other
Greek heathens, but had even struck at the existence
of heaven and hell by saying that the earth is a globe,
and pretending that he could measure its size. These
persons, from their numbers, constituted a political
power.
Almansor, who usurped the khalifate to the preju-
dice of Hakem's son, thought that his usurpation would
be sustained if he put himself at the head of the ortho-
dox party. He therefore had the library of Hakem
searched, and all works of a scientific or philosophical
nature carried into the public places and burnt, or
thrown into the cisterns of the palace. By a similar
court revolution Averroes, in his old age—he died A. D.
1198—was expelled from Spain; the religious party
had triumphed over the philosophical. He was de-
nounced as a traitor to religion. An opposition to phi-
losophy had been organized all over the Mussulman
world. There was hardly a philosopher who was not
AVERROISM AMONG THE JEWS. 143
punished. Some were put to death, and the conse-
quence was, that Islam was full of hypocrites.
Into Italy, Germany, England, Averroism had
silently made its way. It found favor in the eyes of
the Franciscans, and a focus in the University of Paris.
By very many of the leading minds it had been ac-
cepted. But at length the Dominicans, the rivals of
the Franciscans, sounded an alarm. They said it de-
stroys all personality, conducts to fatalism, and renders
inexplicable the difference and progress of individual
intelligences. The declaration that there is but one in-
tellect is an error subversive of the merits of the saints,
it is an assertion that there is no difference among men.
What! is there no difference between the holy soul of
Peter and the damned soul of Judas? are they identi-
cal ? Averroes in this his blasphemous doctrine denies
creation, providence, revelation, the Trinity, the efficacy
of prayers, of alms, and of litanies; he disbelieves in
the resurrection and immortality; he places the sum-
mum bonum in mere pleasure.
So, too, among the Jews who were then the leading
intellects of the world, Averroism had been largely prop-
agated. Their great writer Maimonides had thorough-
ly accepted it; his school was spreading it in all direc-
tions. A furious persecution arose on the part of the
orthodox Jews. Of Maimonides it had been formerly
their delight to declare that he was “the Eagle of the
Doctors, the Great Sage, the Glory of the West, the
Light of the East, second only to Moses.” Now, they
proclaimed that he had abandoned the faith of Abra-
ham; had denied the possibility of creation, believed in
the eternity of the world; had given himself up to the
manufacture of atheists; had deprived God of his attri-
butes; made a vacuum of him ; had declared him inac-
144 SUPPRESSION OF AVERROISM.
cessible to prayer, and a stranger to the government of
the world. The works of Maimonides were committed
to the flames by the synagogues of Montpellier, Barce-
lona, and Toledo. -
Scarcely had the conquering arms of Ferdinand and
Isabella overthrown the Arabian dominion in Spain,
when measures were taken by the papacy to extinguish
these opinions, which, it was believed, were undermining
European Christianity.
Until Innocent IV. (1243), there was no special tri-
bunal against heretics, distinct from those of the bishops.
The Inquisition, then introduced, in accordance with
the centralization of the times, was a general and papal
tribunal, which displaced the old local ones. The bish-
ops, therefore, viewed the innovation with great dislike,
considering it as an intrusion on their rights. It was
established in Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Southern
provinces of France.
The temporal sovereigns were only too desirous to
make use of this powerful engine for their own political
purposes. Against this the popes strongly protested.
They were not willing that its use should pass out of
the ecclesiastical hand.
The Inquisition, having already been tried in the
south of France, had there proved to be very effective
for the suppression of heresy. It had been introduced
into Aragon. Now was assigned to it the duty of deal-
ing with the Jews. w
In the old times under Visigothic rule these people
had greatly prospered, but the leniency that had been
shown to them was succeeded by atrocious persecution,
when the Visigoths abandoned their Arianism and be-
came orthodox. The most inhuman ordinances were
issued against them—a law was enacted condemning
SUPPRESSION OF AWERROISM. 145
them all to be slaves. It was not to be wondered at
that, when the Saracen invasion took place, the Jews did
whatever they could to promote its success. They, like
the Arabs, were an Oriental people, both traced their
lineage to Abraham, their common ancestor; both were
believers in the unity of God. It was their defense of
that doctrine that had brought upon them the hatred of
their Visigothic masters.
Under the Saracen rule they were treated with the
highest consideration. They became distinguished for
their wealth and their learning. For the most part they
were Aristotelians. They founded many schools and
colleges. Their mercantile interests led them to travel
all over the world. They particularly studied the science
of medicine. Throughout the middle ages they were
the physicians and bankers of Europe. Of all men they
saw the course of human affairs from the most elevated
point of view. Among the special Sciences they became
proficient in mathematics and astronomy; they com-
posed the tables of Alfonso, and were the cause of the
voyage of De Gama. They distinguished themselves
greatly in light literature. From the tenth to the four-
teenth century their literature was the first in Europe.
They were to be found in the courts of princes as phy-
sicians, or as treasurers managing the public finances.
The orthodox clergy in Navarre had excited popular
prejudices against them. To escape the persecutions
that arose, many of them feigned to turn Christians, and
of these many apostatized to their former faith. The
papal nuncio at the court of Castile raised a cry for the
establishment of the Inquisition. The poorer Jews were
accused of sacrificing Christian children at the Passover,
in mockery of the crucifixion; the richer were denounced
as Averroists. Under the influence of Torquemada, a
7
146 THE INQUISITION.
Dominican monk, the confessor of Queen Isabella, that
princess solicited a bull from the pope for the establish-
ment of the Holy Office. A bull was accordingly issued
in November, 1478, for the detection and suppression
of heresy. In the first year of the operation of the In-
quisition, 1481, two thousand victims were burnt in
Andalusia; besides these, many thousands were dug up
from their graves and burnt; seventeen thousand were
fined or imprisoned for life. Whoever of the persecuted
race could flee, escaped for his life. Torquemada, now
appointed inquisitor-general for Castile and Leon, illus-
trated his office by his ferocity. Anonymous accusa-
tions were received, the accused was not confronted by
witnesses, torture was relied upon for conviction; it was
inflicted in vaults where no one could hear the cries of
the tormented. As, in pretended mercy, it was forbid-
den to inflict torture a second time, with horrible dupli-
city it was affirmed that the torment had not been com-
pleted at first, but had only been suspended out of
charity until the following day! The families of the
convicted were plunged into irretrievable ruin. Llo-
rente, the historian of the Inquisition, computes that Tor-
quemada and his collaborators, in the course of eighteen.
years, burnt at the stake ten thousand two hundred and
twenty persons, six thousand eight hundred and sixty
in effigy, and otherwise punished ninety-seven thousand
three hundred and twenty-one. This frantic priest de-
stroyed Hebrew Bibles wherever he could find them,
and burnt six thousand volumes of Oriental literature
at Salamanca, under an imputation that they inculcated
Judaism. With unutterable disgust and indignation,
we learn that the papal government realized much
money by selling to the rich dispensations to secure
\ſ them from the Inquisition.
BANISHMENT OF THE JEWS. 147
But all these frightful atrocities proved failures.
The conversions were few. Torquemada, therefore,
insisted on the immediate banishment of every un-
baptized Jew. On March 30, 1492, the edict of expul-
sion was signed. All unbaptized Jews, of whatever age,
sex, or condition, were ordered to leave the realm by the
end of the following July. If they revisited it, they
should suffer death. They might sell their effects and
take the proceeds in merchandise or bills of exchange,
but not in gold or silver. Exiled thus suddenly from
the land of their birth, the land of their ancestors for
hundreds of years, they could not in the glutted market
that arose sell what they possessed. Nobody would
purchase what could be got for nothing after July.
The Spanish clergy occupied themselves by preaching
in the public squares sermons filled with denunciations
against their victims, who, when the time for expatria-
tion came, swarmed in the roads and filled the air with
their cries of despair. Even the Spanish onlookers
wept at the scene of agony. Torquemada, however,
enforced the ordinance that no one should afford them
any help.
Of the banished persons some made their way into
Africa, some into Italy; the latter carried with them
to Naples ship-fever, which destroyed not fewer than
twenty thousand in that city, and devastated that penin-
sula; some reached Turkey, a few England. Thou-
sands, especially mothers with nursing children, infants,
and old people, died by the way; many of them in the
agonies of thirst.
This action against the Jews was soon followed by
one against the Moors. A pragmatica was issued at
Seville, February, 1502, setting forth the obligations of
the Castilians to drive the enemies of God from the
148 EXPULSION OF THE MOORS.
land, and ordering that all unbaptized Moors in the
kingdoms of Castile and Leon above the age of infancy
should leave the country by the end of April. They
might sell their property, but not take away any gold
or silver; they were forbidden to emigrate to the Mo-
hammedan dominions; the penalty of disobedience was
death. Their condition was thus worse than that of
the Jews, who had been permitted to go where they
chose. Such was the fiendish intolerance of the Span-
iards, that they asserted the government would be justi-
fied in taking the lives of all the Moors for their shame-
less infidelity.
What an ungrateful return for the toleration that
the Moors in their day of power had given to the Chris-
tians! No faith was kept with the victims. Granada
had surrendered under the solemn guarantee of the full
enjoyment of civil and religious liberty. At the insti-
gation of Cardinal Ximenes that pledge was broken, and,
after a residence of eight centuries, the Mohammedans
were driven out of the land.
The coexistence of three religions in Andalusia—the
Christian, the Mohammedan, the Mosaic—had given
opportunity for the development of Averroism or philo-
Sophical Arabism. This was a repetition of what had
occurred at Tome, when the gods of all the conquered
countries were confronted in that capital, and universal
disbelief in them all ensued. Averroes himself was ac-
cused of having been first a Mussulman, then a Chris-
tian, then a Jew, and finally a misbeliever. It was
affirmed that he was the author of the mysterious book
“De Tribus Impostoribus.” ‘. . *
In the middle ages there were two celebrated hereti-
cal books, “The Everlasting Gospel,” and the “De
AWERROISM IN EUROPE. 149
Tribus Impostoribus.” The latter was variously imputed
to Pope Gerbert, to Frederick II., and to Averroes. In
their unrelenting hatred the Dominicans fastened all
the blasphemies current in those times on Averroes;
they never tired of recalling the celebrated and out.
rageous one respecting the eucharist. His writings had
first been generally made known to Christian Europe
by the translation of Michael Scot in the beginning of
the thirteenth century, but long before his time the
literature of the West, like that of Asia, was full of these
ideas. We have seen how broadly they were set forth
by Erigena. The Arabians, from their first cultivation
of philosophy, had been infected by them; they were
current in all the colleges of the three khalifates.
Considered not as a mode of thought, that will sponta-
neously occur to all men at a certain stage of intellectual
development, but as having originated with Aristotle,
they continually found favor with men of the highest
culture. We see them in Robert Grostete, in Roger
Bacon, and eventually in Spinoza. Averroes was not
their inventor, he merely gave them clearness and ex-
pression. Among the Jews of the thirteenth century,
he had completely supplanted his imputed master. Aris-
totle had passed away from their eyes; his great com-
mentator, Averroes, stood in his place. So numerous
were the converts to the doctrine of emanation in Chris-
tendom, that Pope Alexander IV. (1255) found it neces-
sary to interfere. By his order, Albertus Magnus com-
posed a work against the “Unity of the Intellect.”
Treating of the origin and nature of the soul, he at-
tempted to prove that the theory of “a separate intellect,
enlightening man by irradiation anterior to the individ-
ual and surviving the individual, is a detestable error.”
But the most illustrious antagonist of the great com-
|50 ST. THOMAS COMBATS AWERROISM.
mentator was St. Thomas Aquinas, the destroyer of all
such heresies as the unity of the intellect, the denial of
Providence, the impossibility of creation; the victories
of “the Angelic Doctor” were celebrated not only in
the disputations of the Dominicans, but also in the
works of art of the painters of Florence and Pisa. The
indignation of that saint knew no bounds when Chris.
tians became the disciples of an infidel, who was worse
than a Mohammedan. The wrath of the Dominicans,
the order to which St. Thomas belonged, was sharpened
by the fact that their rivals, the Franciscans, inclined
to Averroistic views; and Dante, who leaned to the
Dominicans, denounced Averroes as the author of a
most dangerous system. The theological odium of all
three dominant religions was put upon him ; he was
pointed out as the Originator of the atrocious maxim
that “all religions are false, although all are proba-
bly useful.” An attempt was made at the Council
of Vienne to have his writings absolutely suppressed,
and to forbid all Christians reading them. The Do-
minicans, armed with the weapons of the Inquisition,
terrified Christian Europe with their unrelenting perse-
cutions. They imputed all the infidelity of the times
to the Arabian philosopher. But he was not without
support. In Paris and in the cities of Northern Italy
the Franciscans sustained his views, and all Christendom
was agitated with these disputes.
|Under the inspiration of the Dominicans, Averroes
became to the Italian painters the emblem of unbelief.
Many of the Italian towns had pictures or frescoes of
the Day of Judgment and of Hell. In these Averroes
not unfrequently appears. Thus, in one at Pisa, he
figures with Arius, Mohammed, and Antichrist. In
another he is represented as overthrown by St. Thomas.
AWERROISM ANATHEMATIZED. 151
He had become an essential element in the triumphs of
the great Dominican doctor. He continued thus to be
familiar to the Italian painters until the sixteenth cen-
tury. His doctrines were maintained in the University
of Padua until the seventeenth.
Such is, in brief, the history of Averroism as it in-
vaded Europe from Spain. Under the auspices of Fred-
erick II., it, in a less imposing manner, issued from
-Sicily. That sovereign had adopted it fully. In his
“Sicilian Questions” he had demanded light on the
eternity of the world, and on the nature of the soul,
and supposed he had found it in the replies of Ibn Sabin,
an upholder of these doctrines. But in his conflict with
the papacy he was overthrown, and with him these
heresies were destroyed.
In Upper Italy, Averroism long maintained its
ground. It was So fashionable in high Venetian so-
ciety that every gentleman felt constrained to profess
it. At length the Church took decisive action against
it. The Lateran Council, A. D. 1512, condemned the
abettors of these detestable doctrines to be held as here-
tics and infidels. As we have seen, the late Vatican
Council has anathematized them. Notwithstanding
that stigma, it is to be borne in mind that these opin-
ions are held to be true by a majority of the human
I’8 CG
--
CHAPTER ºw.I.
CONFLICT RESPECTING THE NATURE OF THE WORLD.
Scriptural view of the world: the earth a flat surface ; location of heaven
and hell.
Scientific view: the earth a globe; its size determined; its position in ana
Telations to the Solar system.—The three great voyages.—Columbus,
De Gama, Magellan.—Circumnavigation of the earth.-Determina-
tion of its curvature by the measurement of a degree and by the pendu-
lum.
The discoveries of Copernicus.-Invention of the telescope.—Galileo
brought before the Inquisition.—His punishment.—Victory over the
Church.
Attempts to ascertain the dimensions of the Solar system.—Determination
of the sun's parallao, by the transits of Venºs.-Insignificance of the
earth and man. -
Ideas respecting the dimensions of the universe.—Parallaw of the stars.--
The plurality of worlds asserted by Bruno.—IIe is seized and mur-
dered by the Inquisition.
I HAVE now to present the discussions that arose
respecting the third great philosophical problem—the
nature of the world.
An uncritical observation of the aspect of Nature
persuades us that the earth is an extended level surface
which sustains the dome of the sky, a firmament divid-
ing the waters above from the waters beneath; that the
heavenly bodies—the Sun, the moon, the stars—pursue
their way, moving from east to west, their insignificant
size and motion round the motionless earth proclaiming
THE OLOGICAL VIEW OF THE EARTH. 153
their inferiority. Of the various organic forms sur-
rounding man none rival him in dignity, and hence he
seems justified in concluding that every thing has been
created for his use—the sun for the purpose of giving
him light by day, the moon and stars by night.
Comparative theology shows us that this is the con-
ception of Nature universally adopted in the early phase
of intellectual life. It is the belief of all nations in all
parts of the world in the beginning of their civilization:
geocentric, for it makes the earth the centre of the uni-
verse; anthropocentric, for it makes man the central
object of the earth. And not only is this the conclusion
spontaneously come to from inconsiderate glimpses of
the world, it is also the philosophical basis of various
religious revelations, vouchsafed to man from time to
time. These revelations, moreover, declare to him that
above the crystalline dome of the sky is a region of
eternal light and happiness—heaven—the abode of God
and the angelic hosts, perhaps also his own abode after
death; and beneath the earth a region of eternal dark-
ness and misery, the habitation of those that are evil.
In the visible world is thus seen a picture of the in-
visible.
On the basis of this view of the structure of the
world great religious systems have been founded, and
hence powerful material interests have been engaged
in its support. These have resisted, sometimes by re-
sorting to bloodshed, attempts that have been made to
correct its incontestable errors—a resistance grounded
on the suspicion that the localization of heaven and hell
and the Supreme value of man in the universe might be
affected.
That such attempts would be made was inevitable.
As soon as men began to reason on the subject at all,
154 THEORY OF COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES.
they could not fail to discredit the assertion that the
earth is an indefinite plane. No one can doubt that the
sun we see to-day is the Self-same Sun that we saw yes-
terday. His reappearance each morning irresistibly sug.
gests that he has passed on the underside of the earth.
But this is incompatible with the reign of night in those
regions. It presents more or less distinctly the idea of
the globular form of the earth.
The earth cannot extend indefinitely downward; for
the sun cannot go through it, nor through any crevice
or passage in it, since he rises and sets in different posi-
tions at different seasons of the year. The stars also
move under it in countless courses. There must, there-
fore, be a clear way beneath.
To reconcile revelation with these innovating facts,
schemes, such as that of Cosmas Indicopleustes in his
Christian Topography, were doubtless often adopted.
To this in particular we have had occasion on a former
page to refer. It asserted that in the northern parts of
the flat earth there is an immense mountain, behind
which the Sun passes, and thus produces night.
At a very remote historical period the mechanism
of eclipses had been discovered. Those of the moon
demonstrated that the shadow of the earth is always cir-
cular. The form of the earth must therefore be globu-
lar. A body which in all positions casts a circular
shadow must itself be spherical. Other considerations,
with which every one is now familiar, could not fail to
establish that such is her figure.
But the determination of the shape of the earth by
no means deposed her from her position of Superiority.
Apparently vastly larger than all other things, it was
fitting that she should be considered not merely as the
centre of the world, but, in truth, as—the world. All
ANCIENT MEASURES OF THE EARTH's SIZE. 155
other objects in their aggregate seemed utterly unim-
portant in comparison with her.
Though the consequences flowing from an admission
of the globular figure of the earth affected very pro-
foundly existing theological ideas, they were of much
less moment than those depending on a determina-
tion of her size. It needed but an elementary knowl-
edge of geometry to perceive that correct ideas on this
point could be readily obtained by measuring a degree
on her surface. Probably there were early attempts to
accomplish this object, the results of which have been
lost. But Eratosthenes executed one between Syene
and Alexandria, in Egypt, Syene being supposed to be
exactly under the tropic of Cancer. The two places
are, however, not on the same meridian, and the dis-
tance between them was estimated, not measured. Two
centuries later, Posidonius made another attempt be-
tween Alexandria and Rhodes; the bright star Canopus
just grazed the horizon at the latter place, at Alexandria
it rose 74°. In this instance, also, since the direction
lay across the sea, the distance was estimated, not meas-
ured. Finally, as we have already related, the Khalif
Al-Mamun made two sets of measures, one on the shore
of the Red Sea, the other near Cufa, in Mesopotamia.
The general result of these various observations gave for
the earth's diameter between seven and eight thousand
miles. -
This approximate determination of the size of the
earth tended to depose her from her dominating posi-
tion, and gave rise to very serious theological results. In
this the ancient investigations of Aristarchus of Samos,
one of the Alexandrian school, 280 B.C., powerfully
aided. In his treatise on the magnitudes and distances
of the sun and moon, he explains the ingenious though
156 THE PYTHAGOREAN SYSTEM.
imperfect method to which he had resorted for the solu-
tion of that problem. Many ages previously a specula-
tion had been brought from India to Europe by Pythago-
ras. It presented the Sun as the centre of the system.
Around him the planets revolved in circular orbits, their
order of position being Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, each of them being supposed to rotate
On its axis as it revolved round the sum. According to
Cicero, Nicetas suggested that, if it were admitted that
the earth revolves on her axis, the difficulty presented
by the inconceivable velocity of the heavens would be
avoided. -
There is reason to believe that the works of Aris-
tarchus, in the Alexandrian Library, were burnt at the
time of the fire of Caesar. The only treatise of his that
has come down to us is that above mentioned, on the
size and distance of the Sun and moon.
Aristarchus adopted the Pythagorean system as repre-
senting the actual facts. This was the result of a recog-
nition of the sun’s amazing distance, and therefore of his
enormous size. The heliocentric system, thus regarding
the sun as the central orb, degraded the earth to a very
subordinate rank, making her Only one of a company of
six revolving bodies.
But this is not the only contribution conferred on
astronomy by Aristarchus, for, considering that the
movement of the earth does not sensibly affect the ap-
parent position of the stars, he inferred that they are
incomparably more distant from us than the sun. He,
therefore, of all the ancients, as Laplace remarks, had
the most correct ideas of the grandeur of the universe.
He saw that the earth is of absolutely insignificant size,
when compared with the stellar distances. He saw, too,
that there is nothing above us but space and stars.
THE PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM. 157
But the views of Aristarchus, as respects the em-
placement of the planetary bodies, were not accepted
by antiquity; the system proposed by Ptolemy, and in-
corporated in his “Syntaxis,” was universally preferred.
The physical philosophy of those times was very im-
perfect—one of Ptolemy's objections to the Pytha-
gorean system being that, if the earth were in motion,
it would leave the air and other light bodies behind it.
He therefore placed the earth in the central position,
and in succession revolved round her the Moon, Mer.
cury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn; beyond
the orbit of Saturn came the firmament of the fixed
stars. As to the solid crystalline spheres, one moving
from east to west, the other from north to South, these
were a fancy of Eudoxus, to which Ptolemy does not
allude. - - - -
The Ptolemaic system is, therefore, essentially a geo-
centric system. It left the earth in her position of su-
periority, and hence gave no cause of umbrage to re-
ligious opinions, Christian or Mohammedan. The im-
mense reputation of its author, the signal ability of his
great work on the mechanism of the heavens, sustained
it for almost fourteen hundred years—that is, from the
second to the sixteenth century. *
In Christendom, the greater part of this long period
was consumed in disputes respecting the nature of God,
and in struggles for ecclesiastical power. The author-
ity of the Fathers, and the prevailing belief that the
Scriptures contain the sum of all knowledge, discour-
aged any investigation of Nature. If by chance a pass-
ing interest was taken in some astronomical question, it
was at once settled by a reference to such authorities as
the writings of Augustine or Lactantius, not by an ap-
peal to the phenomena of the heavens. So great was
i58 SARACEN INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES.
the preference given to Sacred over profane learning,
that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred
years, and had not produced a single astronomer.
The Mohammedan nations did much better. Their
cultivation of Science dates from the capture of Alexan-
dria, A. D. 638. This was only six years after the death
of the Prophet. In less than two centuries they had
not only become acquainted with, but correctly appreci-
ated, the Greek scientific writers. As we have already
mentioned, by his treaty with Michael III., the Khalif
Al-Mamun had obtained a copy of the “Syntaxis” of
Ptolemy. He had it forthwith translated into Arabic.
It became at once the great authority of Saracen astron-
omy. From this basis the Saracens had advanced to the
solution of some of the most important scientific prob-
lems. They had ascertained the dimensions of the earth;
they had registered or catalogued all the stars visible in
their heavens, giving to those of the larger magnitudes
the names they still bear on our maps and globes; they
determined the true length of the year, discovered as-
tronomical refraction, invented the pendulum-clock,
improved the photometry of the stars, ascertained the
curvilinear path of a ray of light through the air, ex-
plained the phenomena of the horizontal sun and moon,
and why we see those bodies before they have risen and
after they have set; measured the height of the atmos-
phere, determining it to be fifty-eight miles; given the
true theory of the twilight, and of the twinkling of the
stars. They had built the first observatory in Europe.
So accurate were they in their observations, that the
ablest modern mathematicians have made use of their
results. Thus Laplace, in his “Système du Monde,”
adduces the observations of Al-Batagni as affording in
contestable proof of the diminution of the eccentricity
THE THREE GREAT WOYAGES. 159
of the earth's orbit. He uses those of Ibn-Junis in his
discussion of the obliquity of the ecliptic, and also in
the case of the problems of the greater inequalities of
Jupiter and Saturn.
These represent but a part, and indeed but a small
part, of the services rendered by the Arabian astrono-
mers, in the solution of the problem of the nature of
the world. Meanwhile, such was the benighted con-
dition of Christendom, such its deplorable ignorance,
that it cared nothing about the matter. Its attention
was engrossed by image-worship, transubstantiation, the
merits of the saints, miracles, shrine-cures.
This indifference continued until the close of the
fifteenth century. Even then there was no scientific
inducement. The inciting motives were altogether of a
different kind. They originated in commercial rival-
ries, and the question of the shape of the earth was
finally settled by three sailors, Columbus, De Gama,
and, above all, by Ferdinand Magellan.
The trade of Eastern Asia has always been a source
of immense wealth to the Western nations who in suc-
cession have obtained it. In the middle ages it had
centred in Upper Italy. It was conducted along two
lines—a northern, by way of the Black and Caspian Seas,
and camel-caravans beyond—the headquarters of this
were at Genoa; and a southern, through the Syrian and
Egyptian ports, and by the Arabian Sea, the headquar-
ters of this being at Venice. The merchants engaged
in the latter traffic had also made great gains in the
transport service of the Crusade-wars.
The Venetians had managed to maintain amicable
relations with the Mohammedan powers of Syria and
Egypt; they were permitted to have consulates at Alex
andria and Damascus, and, notwithstanding the military
160 THE VOYAGE OF COLUMBUs.
commotions of which those countries had been the scene,
the trade was still maintained in a comparatively flour-
ishing condition. But the northern or Genoese line had
been completely broken up by the irruptions of the
Tartars and the Turks, and the military and political dis-
turbances of the countries through which it passed. The
Eastern trade of Genoa was not merely in a precarious
condition—it was on the brink of destruction. -
The circular visible horizon and its dip at Sea, the
gradual appearance and disappearance of ships in the
offing, cannot fail to incline intelligent sailors to a be-
lief in the globular figure of the earth. The writings
f the Mohammedan astronomers and philosophers had
given currency to that doctrine throughout Western
Europe, but, as might be expected, it was received with
disfavor by theologians. When Genoa was thus on the
very brink of ruin, it occurred to some of her mariners
that, if this view were correct, her affairs might be re-
established. A ship sailing through the straits of Gib-
raltar westward, across the Atlantic, would not fail to
reach the East Indies. There were apparently other
great advantages. Heavy cargoes might be transported
without tedious and expensive land-carriage, and with-
out breaking bulk. {
Among the Genoese sailors who entertained these
views was Christopher Columbus.
JHe tells us that his attention was drawn to this sub-
ject by the writings of Averroes, but among his friends
he numbered Toscanelli, a Florentine, who had turned
his attention to astronomy, and had become a strong
advocate of the globular form. In Genoa itself Colum-
bus met with but little encouragement. He then spent
many years in trying to interest different princes in his
proposed attempt. Its irreligious tendency was pointed
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. . 161
out by the Spanish ecclesiastics, and condemned by the
Council of Salamanca; its orthodoxy was confuted from
the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Prophecies, the Gospels,
the Epistles, and the writings of the Fathers—St. Chrys-
ostom, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Basil,
St. Ambrose.
At length, however, encouraged by the Spanish
Queen Isabella, and substantially aided by a wealthy
seafaring family, the Pinzons of Palos, some of whom
joined him personally, he sailed on August 3, 1492,
with three small ships, from Palos, carrying with him a
letter from King Ferdinand to the Grand-Khan of Tar-
tary, and also a chart, or map, constructed on the basis
of that of Toscanelli. A little before midnight, October
11, 1492, he saw from the forecastle of his ship a mov-
ing light at a distance. Two hours subsequently a sig-
nal-gun from another of the ships announced that they
had descried land. At sunrise Columbus landed in the
New World.
On his return to Europe it was universally supposed
that he had reached the eastern parts of Asia, and that
therefore his voyage had been theoretically successful.
Columbus himself died in that belief. But numerous
voyages which were soon undertaken made known the
general contour of the American coast-line, and the
discovery of the Great South Sea by Balboa revealed at
length the true facts of the case, and the mistake into
which both Toscanelli and Columbus had fallen, that in
a voyage to the West the distance from Europe to Asia
could not exceed the distance passed over in a voyage
from Italy to the Gulf of Guinea—a voyage that Colum-
bus had repeatedly made. -
In his first voyage, at nightfall on September 13,
1492, being then two and a half degrees east of Corvo,
162 THE WOYAGE OF DE GAMA.
one of the Azores, Columbus observed that the compass-
needles of the ships no longer pointed a little to the east
of north, but were varying to the west. The deviation
became more and more marked as the expedition ad-
vanced. He was not the first to detect the fact of
variation, but he was incontestably the first to discover
the line of no variation. On the return-voyage the
reverse was observed; the variation westward dimin-
ished until the meridian in question was reached, when
the needles again pointed due north. Thence, as the
coast of Europe was approached, the variation was to
the east. Columbus, therefore, came to the conclusion
that the line of no variation was a fixed geographical
line, or boundary, between the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres. In the bull of May, 1493, Pope Alexander
VI. accordingly adopted this line as the perpetual boun-
dary between the possessions of Spain and Portugal, in
his settlement of the disputes of those nations. Subse-
quently, however, it was discovered that the line was
moving eastward. It coincided with the meridian of
London in 1662.
By the papal bull the Portuguese possessions were
limited to the east of the line of no variation. Informa-
tion derived from certain Egyptian Jews had reached
that government, that it was possible to sail round the
continent of Africa, there being at its extreme south a
cape which could be easily doubled. An expedition of
three ships under Vasco de Gama set sail, July 9, 1497;
it doubled the cape on November 20th, and reached
Calicut, on the coast of India, May 19, 1498. Under the
bull, this voyage to the East gave to the Portuguese the
right to the India trade. -
Until the cape was doubled, the course of De Gama’s
ships was in a general manner southward. Very soon,
THE DOUBLING OF THE CAPE. 163
it was noticed that the elevation of the pole-star above
the horizon was diminishing, and, Soon after the equator
was reached, that star had ceased to be visible. Mean-
time other stars, some of them forming magnificent
constellations, had come into view—the stars of the
Southern Hemisphere. All this was in conformity to
theoretical expectations founded on the admission of the
globular form of the earth.
The political consequences that at once ensued placed
the Papal Government in a position of great embarrass-
ment. Its traditions and policy forbade it to admit
any other than the flat figure of the earth, as revealed
in the Scriptures. Concealment of the facts was im-
possible, Sophistry was unavailing. Commercial pros-
perity now left Venice as well as Genoa. The front of
Europe was changed. Maritime power had departed
from the Mediterranean countries, and passed to those
upon the Atlantic coast.
But the Spanish Government did not submit to the
advantage thus gained by its commercial rival without
an effort. It listened to the representations of one
Ferdinand Magellan, that India and the Spice Islands
could be reached by sailing to the west, if only a strait
or passage through what had now been recognized as
“the American Continent” could be discovered; and, if
this should be accomplished, Spain, under the papal
bull, would have as good a right to the India trade as
Portugal. Under the command of Magellan, an ex.
pedition of five ships, carrying two hundred and thirty-
Seven men, was dispatched from Seville, August 10,
1519.
Magellan at once struck boldly for the South Amer-
ican coast, hoping to find some cleft or passage through
the continent by which he might reach the great South
164 TIII) WOYAGE OF MAGELLAN.
Sea. For seventy days he was becalmed on the line;
his sailors were appalled by the apprehension that they
had drifted into a region where the winds never blew,
and that it was impossible for them to escape. Calms,
tempests, mutiny, desertion, could not shake his resolu-
tion. After more than a year he discovered the strait
which now bears his name, and, as Pigafetti, an Italian,
who was with him, relates, he shed tears of joy when he
found that it had pleased God at length to bring him
where he might grapple with the unknown dangers of
the South Sea, “the Great and Pacific Ocean.”
Driven by famine to eat Scraps of skin and leather
with which his rigging was here and there bound, to
drink water that had gone putrid, his crew dying of
hunger and scurvy, this man, firm in his belief of the
globular figure of the earth, steered steadily to the north-
west, and for nearly four months never saw inhabited
land. He estimated that he had sailed over the Pacific
not less than twelve thousand miles. He crossed the
equator, saw once more the pole-star, and at length
made land—the Ladrones. Here he met with adven-
turers from Sumatra. Among these islands he was
killed, either by the Savages or by his own men. His
lieutenant, Sebastian d'Elcano, now took command of the
ship, directing her course for the Cape of Good Hope,
and encountering frightful hardships. He doubled the
cape at last, and then for the fourth time crossed the
equator. On September 7, 1522, after a voyage of
more than three years, he brought his ship, the San Vit-
toria, to anchor in the port of St. Lucar, near Seville.
She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the
history of the human race. She had circumnavigated
the earth.
The San Vittoria, sailing westward, had come back
THE SIZE OF THE EARTH. 165
to her starting-point. Henceforth the theological doc-
trine of the flatness of the earth was irretrievably over-
thrown. - $
Five years after the completion of the voyage of
Magellan, was made the first attempt in Christendom
to ascertain the size of the earth. This was by Fernel,
a French physician, who, having observed the height of
the pole at Paris, went thence northward until he came
to a place where the height of the pole was exactly one
degree more than at that city. He measured the dis-
tance between the two stations by the number of revo-
lutions of one of the wheels of his carriage, to which a
proper indicator had been attached, and came to the
conclusion that the earth’s circumference is about twen-
ty-four thousand four hundred and eighty Italian miles.
Measures executed more and more carefully were
made in many countries: by Snell in Holland; by Nor-
wood between London and York in England; by Picard,
under the auspices of the French Academy of Sciences,
in France. Picard’s plan was to connect two points by
a series of triangles, and, thus ascertaining the length of
the arc of a meridian intercepted between them, to com-
pare it with the difference of latitudes found from celes-
tial observations. The stations were Malvoisine in the
vicinity of Paris, and Sourdon near Amiens. The dif-
ference of latitudes was determined by observing the
zenith-distances of 6 Cassiopeia. There are two points
of interest connected with Picard's operation: it was the
first in which instruments furnished with telescopes were
employed; and its result, as we shall shortly see, was to
Newton the first confirmation of the theory of universal
gravitation. -
At this time it had become clear from mechanical
considerations, more especially such as had been deduced
166 THE SIZE OF THE EARTH.
by Newton, that, since the earth is a rotating body, her
form cannot be that of a perfect sphere, but must be
that of a spheroid, oblate or flattened at the poles. It
would follow, from this, that the length of a degree
must be greater near the poles than at the equator.
The French Academy resolved to extend Picard's
operation, by prolonging the measures in each direction,
and making the result the basis of a more accurate map
of France. Delays, however, took place, and it was not
until 1718 that the measures, from Dunkirk on the
north to the southern extremity of France, were com-
pleted. A discussion arose as to the interpretation of
these measures, some affirming that they indicated a
prolate, others an oblate spheroid; the former figure
may be popularly represented by a lemon, the latter by
an orange. To settle this, the French Government, aided
by the Academy, sent out two expeditions to measure
degrees of the meridian—one under the equator, the
other as far north as possible; the former went to Peru,
the latter to Swedish Lapland. Very great difficulties
were encountered by both parties. The Lapland com-
mission, however, completed its observations long be-
fore the Peruvian, which consumed not less than nine
years. The results of the measures thus obtained con-
firmed the theoretical expectation of the oblate form.
Since that time many extensive and exact repetitions of
the observation have been made, among which may be
mentioned those of the English in England and in India,
and particularly that of the French on the occasion of
the introduction of the metric system of weights and
measures. It was begun by Delambre and Mechain,
from Dunkirk to Barcelona, and thence extended, by
Biot and Arago, to the island of Formentera near Mi-
norca. Its length was nearly twelve and a half degrees
COPERNICU.S. 167
Besides this method of direct measurement, the fig-
ure of the earth may be determined from the observed
number of oscillations made by a pendulum of invariable
length in different latitudes. These, though they con-
firm the foregoing results, give a somewhat greater
ellipticity to the earth than that found by the measure-
ment of degrees. Pendulums vibrate more slowly the
nearer they are to the equator. It follows, therefore,
that they are there farther from the centre of the earth.
From the most reliable measures that have been
made, the dimensions of the earth may be thus stated:
Greater or equatorial diameter. . . . . . . . . . 7,925 miles.
Less or polar diameter... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,899 “
Difference or polar compression. . . . . . . . . . 26 “
Such was the result of the discussion respecting the
figure and size of the earth. While it was yet undeter-
mined, another controversy arose, fraught with even
more serious consequences. This was the conflict re-
specting the earth’s position with regard to the sun and
the planetary bodies.
Copernicus, a Prussian, about the year 1507, had
completed a book “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Bodies.” He had journeyed to Italy in his youth, had
devoted his attention to astronomy, and had taught
mathematics at Rome. From a profound study of the
Ptolemaic and Pythagorean systems, he had come to a
conclusion in favor of the latter, the object of his book
being to sustain it. Aware that his doctrines were
totally opposed to revealed truth, and foreseeing that
they would bring upon him the punishments of the
Church, he expressed himself in a cautious and apolo-
getic manner, saying that he had only taken the liberty
of trying whether, on the supposition of the earth’s
168 TEIE BOOK OF COPERNICU.S.
motion, it was possible to find better explanations than
the ancient ones of the revolutions of the celestial orbs;
that in doing this he had only taken the privilege that
had been allowed to others, of feigning what hypothesis
they chose. The preface was addressed to Pope Paul
III.
Full of misgivings as to what might be the result, he
refrained from publishing his book for thirty-six years,
thinking that “perhaps it might be better to follow the
examples of the Pythagoreans and others, who delivered
their doctrine only by tradition and to friends.” At
the entreaty of Cardinal Schomberg he at length pub-
lished it in 1543. A copy of it was brought to him on
his death-bed. Its fate was such as he had anticipated.
The Inquisition condemned it as heretical. In their de-
cree, prohibiting it, the Congregation of the Index de-
nounced his system as “that false Pythagorean doctrine
utterly contrary to the Holy Scriptures.”
Astronomers justly affirm that the book of Coperni-
cus, “De Revolutionibus,” changed the face of their
Science. It incontestably established the heliocentric
theory. It showed that the distance of the fixed stars
is infinitely great, and that the earth is a mere point
in the heavens. Anticipating Newton, Copernicus im-
puted gravity to the Sun, the moon, and heavenly
bodies, but he was led astray by assuming that the celes-
tial motions must be circular. Observations on the
orbit of Mars, and his different diameters at different
times, had led Copernicus to his theory.
In thus denouncing the Copernican system as being
in contradiction to revelation, the ecclesiastical authori-
ties were doubtless deeply moved by inferential consid-
erations. To dethrone the earth from her central
dominating position, to give her many equals and not a
INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE. 169
few superiors, seemed to diminish her claims upon the
Divine regard. If each of the countless myriads of
stars was a sun, surrounded by revolving globes, peo-
pled with responsible beings like ourselves, if we had
fallen so easily and had been redeemed at so stupendous
a price as the death of the Son of God, how was it with
them . Of them were there none who had fallen or
might fall like us? Where, then, for them could a
Savior be found .
During the year 1608 one Lippershey, a Hollander,
discovered that, by looking through two glass lenses,
combined in a certain manner together, distant objects
were magnified and rendered very plain. He had in-
vented the telescope. In the following year Galileo, a
Florentine, greatly distinguished by his mathematical
and Scientific writings, hearing of the circumstance, but
without knowing the particulars of the construction,
invented a form of the instrument for himself. Im-
proving it gradually, he succeeded in making one that
could magnify thirty times. Examining the moon, he
found that she had valleys like those of the earth, and
mountains casting shadows. It had been said in the
old times that in the Pleiades there were formerly seven
stars, but a legend related that one of them had mysteri-
ously disappeared. On turning his telescope toward
them, Galileo found that he could easily count not fewer
than forty. In whatever direction he looked, he dis-
covered stars that were totally invisible to the naked
eye.
On the night of January 7, 1610, he perceived three
Small stars in a straight line, adjacent to the planet
Jupiter, and, a few evenings later, a fourth. He found
that these were revolving in orbits round the body of
the planet, and, with transport, recognized that they
8
170 DISCOVERIES OF GALILEO.
presented a miniature representation of the Copernican
system.
The announcement of these wonders at once attracted
universal attention. The spiritual authorities were not
slow to detect their tendency, as endangering the doc-
trine that the universe was made for man. In the cre-
ation of myriads of stars, hitherto invisible, there must
Surely have been some other motive than that of illumi-
nating the nights for him. . .
It had been objected to the Copernican theory that,
if the planets Mercury and Venus move round the sun
in orbits interior to that of the earth, they ought to
show phases like those of the moon; and that in the
case of Venus, which is so brilliant and conspicuous,
these phases should be very obvious. Copernicus him-
self had admitted the force of the objection, and had
vainly tried to find an explanation. Galileo, on turning
his telescope to the planet, discovered that the expected
phases actually exist; now she was a crescent, then
half-moon, then gibbous, then full. Previously to
Copernicus, it was supposed that the planets shine by
their own light, but the phases of Venus and Mars
proved that their light is reflected. The Aristotelian
notion, that celestial differ from terrestrial bodies in
being incorruptible, received a rude shock from the dis-
coveries of Galileo, that there are mountains and val-
leys in the moon like those of the earth, that the sun is
not perfect, but has spots on his face, and that he turns
on his axis instead of being in a state of majestic rest.
The apparition of new stars had already thrown serious
doubts on this theory of incorruptibility.
These and many other beautiful telescopic discov-
eries tended to the establishment of the truth of the
Copernican theory and gave unbounded alarm to the
PUNHSHMENT OF GALILEO. 171
Church. JBy the low and ignorant ecclesiastics they
were denounced as deceptions or frauds. Some affirmed
that the telescope might be relied on well enough for
terrestrial objects, but with the heavenly bodies it was
altogether a different affair. Others declared that its
invention was a mere application of Aristotle’s remark
that stars could be seen in the daytime from the bot-
tom of a deep well. Galileo was accused of imposture,
heresy, blasphemy, athcism. With a view of defend-
ing himself, he addressed a letter to the Abbe Castelli,
suggesting that the Scriptures were never intended to
be a scientific authority, but only a moral guide. This
made matters worse. He was summoned before the
Holy Inquisition, under an accusation of having taught
that the earth moves round the sun, a doctrine “utterly
contrary to the Scriptures.” He was ordered to re-
nounce that heresy, on pain of being imprisoned. He
was directed to desist from teaching and advocating the
Copernican theory, and pledge himself that he would
neither publish nor defend it for the future. Know-
ing well that Truth has no need of martyrs, he assented
to the required recantation, and gave the promise de-
manded.
For sixteen years the Church had rest. But in 1632
Galileo ventured on the publication of his work entitled
“The System of the World,” its object being the vindi-
cation of the Copernican doctrine. He was again sum-
moned before the Inquisition at Rome, accused of hav-
ing asserted that the earth moves round the Sun. He
was declared to have brought upon himself the penal-
ties of heresy. On his knees, with his hand on the
Bible, he was compelled to abjure and curse the doc-
trine of the movement of the earth. What a spectacle!
This venerable man, the most illustrious of his age,
172 PUNISHMENT OF GALILEO.
forced by the threat of death to deny facts which his
judges as well as himself knew to be true! Tſe was
then committed to prison, treated with remorseless
everity during the remaining ten years of his life,
and was denied burial in consecrated ground. Must
not that be false which requires for its support so much
imposture, so much barbarity : The opinions thus de-
fended by the Inquisition are now objects of derision
to the whole civilized world.
One of the greatest of modern mathematicians, refer-
ring to this subject, says that the point here contested
was one which is for mankind of the highest interest,
because of the rank it assigns to the globe that we in-
habit. If the earth be immovable in the midst of the
universe, man has a right to regard himself as the prin-
cipal object of the care of Nature. But if the earth be
only one of the planets revolving round the sun, an in-
significant body in the solar system, she will disappear
entirely in the immensity of the heavens, in which this
system, vast as it may appear to us, is nothing but an
insensible point. -
The triumphant establishment of the Copernican
doctrine dates from the invention of the telescope.
Soon there was not to be found in all Europe an astron-
omer who had not accepted the heliocentric theory with
its essential postulate, the double motion of the earth—
a movement of rotation on her axis, and a movement of
revolution round the sun. If additional proof of the
latter were needed, it was furnished by Bradley’s great
discovery of the aberration of the fixed stars, an aberra-
tion depending partly on the progressive motion of light,
and partly on the revolution of the earth. Bradley’s
discovery ranked in importance with that of the preces-
sion of the equinoxes. Roemer's discovery of the pro-
DISTANCE OF THE EARTH FROM THE SUN. 173
gressive motion of light, though denounced by Fon-
tenelle as a seductive error, and not admitted by Cas-
sini, at length forced its way to universal acceptance.
iſ Next it was necessary to obtain correct ideas of the
dimensions of the Solar system, or, putting the problem
under a more limited form, to determine the distance
of the earth from the Sun.
In the time of Copernicus it was supposed that the
Sun's distance could not exceed five million miles, and
indeed there were many who thought that estimate very
extravagant. From a review of the observations of
Tycho Brahe, Kepler, however, concluded that the error
was actually in the opposite direction, and that the esti-
mate must be raised to at least thirteen million. In
1670 Cassini showed that these numbers were alto-
gether inconsistent with the facts, and gave as his con-
clusion eighty-five million.
The transit of Venus over the face of the sun, June
3, 1769, had been foreseen, and its great value in the
solution of this fundamental problem in astronomy
appreciated. With commendable alacrity various gov-
ernments contributed their assistance in making obser-
vations, so that in Europe there were fifty stations, in
Asia six, in America seventeen. It was for this pur-
pose that the English Government dispatched Captain
Cook on his celebrated first voyage. He went to Ota-
heite. His voyage was crowned with success. The sun
rose without a cloud, and the sky continued equally clear
throughout the day. The transit at Cook’s station lasted
from about half-past nine in the morning until about
half-past three in the afternoon, and all the observations
were made in a satisfactory manner.
But, on the discussion of the observations made at
the different stations, it was found that there was not
174 DIMENSIONS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
the accordance that could have been desired—the result
Varying from eighty-eight to one hundred and nine
million. The celebrated mathematician, Encke, there.
fore reviewed them in 1822–24, and came to the conclu-
sion that the Sun's horizontal parallax, that is, the angle
under which the semi-diameter of the earth is seen from
the Sun, is 81%; Seconds; this gave as the distance
95,274,000 miles. Subsequently the observations were
reconsidered by Hansen, who gave as their result 91,
659,000 miles. Still later, Leverrier made it 91,759,-
000. Airy and Stone, by another method, made it
91,400,000; Stone alone, by a revision of the old obser-
vations, 91,730,000; and finally, Foucault and Fizeau,
from physical experiments, determining the velocity of
light, and therefore in their nature altogether differing
from transit observations, 91,400,000. Until the results
of the transit of next year (1874) are ascertained, it must
therefore be admitted that the distance of the earth from
the sun is somewhat less than ninety-two million miles.
This distance once determined, the dimensions of the
solar system may be ascertained with ease and precision.
It is enough to mention that the distance of Neptune
from the Sun, the most remote of the planets at present
known, is about thirty times that of the earth.
By the aid of these numbers we may begin to gain
a just appreciation of the doctrine of the human destiny
of the universe—the doctrine that all things were made
for man. Seen from the sun, the earth dwindles away
to a mere speck, a mere dust-mote glistening in his
beams. If the reader wishes a more precise valuation,
let him hold a page of this book a couple of feet from
his eye; then let him consider one of its dots or full-
stops; that dot is several hundred times larger in sur-
face than is the earth as seen from the Sun!
DISTANCES OF THE STARS. 175
Of what consequence, then, can such an almost im-
perceptible particle be? One might think that it could
be removed or even annihilated, and yet never be missed.
Of what consequence is one of those human monads, of
whom more than a thousand millions swarm on the sur-
face of this all but invisible speck, and of a million of
whom scarcely one will leave a trace that he has ever
existed ? Of what consequence is man, his pleasures or
his pains?
Among the arguments brought forward against the
Copernican system at the time of its promulgation, was
one by the great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, origi-
mally urged by Aristarchus against the Pythagorean
system, to the effect that, if, as was alleged, the earth
moves round the Sun, there ought to be a change of the
direction in which the fixed stars appear. At one time
we are nearer to a particular region of the heavens by a
distance equal to the whole diameter of the earth's orbit
than we were six months previously, and hence there
ought to be a change in the relative position of the
stars; they should seem to separate as we approach
them, and to close together as we recede from them;
or, to use the astronomical expression, these stars should
have a yearly parallax.
The parallax of a star is the angle contained between
two lines drawn from it—one to the Sun, the other to
the earth.
At that time, the earth's distance from the Sun was
greatly under-estimated. Had it been known, as it is
now, that that distance exceeds ninety million miles, or
that the diameter of the Orbit is more than one hundred
and eighty million, that argument would doubtless have
had very great weight. -
In reply to Tycho, it was said that, since the paral-
176 DISTANCES OF THE STARS.
lax of a body diminishes as its distance increases, a star
may be so far off that its parallax may be imperceptible.
This answer proved to be correct. The detection of the
parallax of the stars depended on the improvement of
instruments for the measurement of angles.
The parallax of a Centauri, a fine double star of the
Southern Hemisphere, at present considered to be the
nearest of the fixed stars, was first determined by Hen-
derson and Maclear at the Cape of Good Hope in
1832–33. It is about nine-tenths of a second. Hence
this star is almost two hundred and thirty thousand
times as far from us as the sun. Seen from it, if the
Sun were even large enough to fill the whole orbit of
the earth, or one hundred and eighty million miles in
diameter, he would be a mere point. With its com-
panion, it revolves round their common centre of grav-
ity in eighty-one years, and hence it would seem that
their conjoint mass is less than that of the Sun.
The star 61 Cygni is of the sixth magnitude. Its
parallax was first found by Bessel in 1838, and is about
one-third of a second. The distance from us is, there-
fore, much more than five hundred thousand times that
of the sun. With its companion, it revolves round their
common centre of gravity in five hundred and twenty
years. Their conjoint weight is about one-third that of
the Sun.
There is reason to believe that the great star Sirius,
the brightest in the heavens, is about six times as far off
as a Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million
miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more
brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through the
telescope, he has no measurable diameter; he looks
merely like a very bright spark.
The stars, then, differ not merely in visible magni.
BRUNo. 177
tude, but also in actual size. As the spectroscope shows,
they differ greatly in chemical and physical constitution.
That instrument is also revealing to us the duration of
the life of a star, through changes in the refrangibility
of the emitted light. Though, as we have seen, the near-
est to us is at an enormous and all but immeasurable dis-
tance, this is but the first step—there are others the rays
of which have taken thousands, perhaps millions, of years
to reach us! The limits of our own system are far be-
yond the range of our greatest telescopes; what, then,
shall we say of other systems beyond? Worlds are scat-
tered like dust in the abysses in space.
Have these gigantic bodies—myriads of which are
placed at So vast a distance that our unassisted eyes can-
not perceive them—have these no other purpose than
that assigned by theologians, to give light to us? Does
not their enormous size demonstrate that, as they are
centres of force, so they must be centres of motion—
suns for other systems of worlds?
While yet these facts were very imperfectly known
—indeed, were rather speculations than facts—Giordano
Bruno, an Italian, born seven years after the death of
Copernicus, published a work on the “Infinity of the
Universe and of Worlds; ” he was also the author of
“Evening Conversations on Ash-Wednesday,” an apol-
ogy for the Copernican system, and of “The One Sole
Cause of Things.” To these may be added an allegory
published in 1584, “The Expulsion of the Triumphant
Beast.” He had also collected, for the use of future as-
tronomers, all the observations he could find respecting
the new star that suddenly appeared in Cassiopeia, A. D.
1572, and increased in brilliancy, until it surpassed all
the other stars. It could be plainly seen in the day-
time. On a sudden, November 11th, it was as bright
178 BRUNO,
as Venus at her brightest. In the following March it
was of the first magnitude. It exhibited various hues
of color in a few months, and disappeared in March,
1574.
The star that suddenly appeared in Serpentarius, in
Kepler's time (1604), was at first brighter than Venus.
It lasted more than a year, and, passing through various
tints of purple, yellow, red, became extinguished.
Originally, Bruno was intended for the Church. He
had become a Dominican, but was led into doubt by his
meditations on the subjects of transubstantiation and
the immaculate conception. Not caring to conceal his
opinions, he soon fell under the censure of the spiritual
authorities, and found it necessary to seek refuge suc-
cessively in Switzerland, France, England, Germany.
The cold-scented sleuth-hounds of the Inquisition fol-
iowed his track remorselessly, and eventually hunted
him back to Italy. He was arrested in Venice, and
confined in the Piombi for six years, without books, or
paper, or friends.
In England he had given lectures on the plurality
of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian,
his most important works. It added not a little to the
exasperation against him, that he was perpetually de-
claiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his
persecutors—that wherever he went he found skepti-
cism warnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and
that it was not against the belief of men, but against
their pretended belief, that he was fighting ; that he
was struggling with an Orthodoxy that had neither
morality nor faith.
In his “Evening Conversations” he had insisted
that the Scriptures were never intended to teach science,
but morals only; and that they cannot be received as of
SCIENTIFIC IDEAS OF BRUNO. 179
any authority on astronomical and physical subjects.
Especially must we reject the view they reveal to us of
the constitution of the world, that the earth is a flat sur-
face, supported on pillars; that the sky is a firmament—
the floor of heaven. On the contrary, we must believe
that the universe is infinite, and that it is filled with
self-luminous and opaque worlds, many of them in-
habited; that there is nothing above and around us but
space and stars. His meditations on these subjects had
brought him to the conclusion that the views of Aver-
roes are not far from the truth—that there is an Intel-
lect which animates the universe, and of this Intellect :
the visible world is only an emanation or manifestation,
originated and sustained by force derived from it, and,
were that force withdrawn, all things would disappear.
This ever-present, all-pervading Intellect is God, who
lives in all things, even such as seem not to live; that
every thing is ready to become organized, to burst into
life. God is, therefore, “the One Sole Cause of
Things,” “the All in All.”
Bruno may hence be considered among philosophical
writers as intermediate between Averroes and Spinoza.
The latter held that God and the Universe are the same,
that all events happen by an immutable law of Nature,
by an unconquerable necessity; that God is the Uni-
verse, producing a series of necessary movements or
acts, in consequence of intrinsic, unchangeable, and ir-
resistible energy. *>
On the demand of the spiritual authorities, Bruno
was removed from Venice to Rome, and confined in the
prison of the Inquisition, accused not only of being a
heretic, but also a heresiarch, who had written things
unseemly concerning religion; the special charge against
him being that he had taught the plurality of worlds, a
180 TIIE MURDER OF BRUNO.
doctrine repugnant to the whole tenor of Scripture and
inimical to revealed religion, especially as regards the
plan of Salvation. After an imprisonment of two years
he was brought before his judges, declared guilty of the
acts alleged, excommunicated, and, on his nobly refusing
to recant, was delivered over to the secular authorities
to be punished “as mercifully as possible, and without
the shedding of his blood,” the horrible formula for
burning a prisoner at the stake. Inowing well that
though his tormentors might destroy his body, his
thoughts would still live among men, he said to his
judges, “Perhaps it is with greater fear that you pass
the sentence upon me than I receive it.” The sentence
was carried into effect, and he was burnt at Rome,
February 16th, A. D. 1600.
No one can recall without sentiments of pity the
sufferings of those countless martyrs, who first by one
party, and then by another, have been brought for their
religious opinions to the stake. But each of these had
in his Supreme moment a powerful and unfailing Sup-
port. The passage from this life to the next, though
through a hard trial, was the passage from a transient
trouble to eternal happiness, an escape from the cruelty
of earth to the charity of heaven. On his way through
the dark valley the martyr believed that there was an
invisible hand that would lead him, a friend that would
guide him all the more gently and firmly because of the
terrors of the flames. For Bruno there was no such
support. The philosophical opinions, for the sake of
which he surrendered his life, could give him no con-
solation. He must fight the last fight alone. Is there
not something very grand in the attitude of this solitary
man, something which human nature cannot help ad.
miring, as he stands in the gloomy hall before his inex
MURDER OF BRUNO. 1S1
orable judges? No accuser, no witness, no advocate is
present, but the familiars of the Holy Office, clad in
black, are stealthily moving about. The tormentors and
the rack are in the vaults below. He is simply told
that he has brought upon himself strong suspicions of
heresy, since he has said that there are other worlds than
ours. He is asked if he will recant and abjure his error.
IIe cannot and will not deny what he knows to be true,
and perhaps—for he had often done so before—he tells
his judges that they, too, in their hearts are of the same
belief. What a contrast between this scene of manly
honor, of unshaken firmness, of inflexible adherence to
the truth, and that other scene which took place more
than fifteen centuries previously by the fireside in the
hall of Caiaphas the high-priest, when the cock crew,
and “the Lord turned and looked upon Peter’ (Luke
xxii. 61)! And yet it is upon Peter that the Church
has grounded her right to act as she did to Bruno, Si-
But perhaps the day approaches when posterity will
offer an expiation for this great ecclesiastical crime, and
a statue of Bruno be unveiled under the dome of St.
Peter's at Rome.
CHAPTER WII.
CONTROWERSY RESPECTING THE AGE OF THE EARTH.
Scriptural view that the Earth is only six thousand years old, and that it
was made in a week.-Patristic chronology founded on the ages of the
patriarchs.--Difficulties arising from different estimates in different
versions of the Bible. -
Legend of the Deluge.—The repeopling.—The Tower of Babel; the con-
fusion of tongues.—The primitive language,
I)iscovery by Cassini of the oblateness of the planet Jupiter.—Discovery by
Newton of the oblateness of the Earth.-Deduction that she has been
modeled by mechanical causes.—Confirmation of this by geological
discoveries respecting aqueous rocks ; corroboration by organic re-
mains.—The necessity of admitting enormously long periods of time.
—Displacement of the doctrine of Creation by that of Evolution—
I)iscoveries respecting the Antiquity of Man.
The time-scale and space-scale of the world are infinite.—Moderation with
which the discussion of the Age of the World has been conducted.
THE true position of the earth in the universe was
established only after a long and severe conflict. The
Church used whatever power she had, even to the in-
fliction of death, for sustaining her ideas. Tut it was
in vain. The evidence in behalf of the Copernican
theory became irresistible. It was at length universally
admitted that the sun is the central, the ruling body
of our system; the earth only one, and by no means the
largest, of a family of encircling planets. *
Taught by the issue of that dispute, when the ques-
AGE .OF THE EARTH, 183
tion of the age of the world presented itself for con-
sideration, the Church did not exhibit the active resist-
ance she had displayed on the former occasion. For,
though her traditions were again put in jeopardy, they
were not, in her judgment, so vitally assailed. To de-
throne the Earth from her dominating position was, so
the spiritual authorities declared, to undermine the very
foundation of revealed truth; but discussions respecting
the date of creation might within certain limits be per-
mitted. Those limits were, however, very quickly over-
passed, and thus the controversy became as dangerous as
the former one had been. -
It was not possible to adopt the advice given by
Plato in his “Timaeus,” when treating of this subject—
the origin of the universe: “It is proper that both I
who speak and you who judge should remember that
we are but men, and therefore, receiving the probable
mythological tradition, it is meet that we inquire no
further into it.” Since the time of St. Augustine the
Scriptures had been made the great and final authority
in all matters of Science, and theologians had deduced
from them schemes of chronology and Cosmogony which
had proved to be stumbling-blocks to the advance of
real knowledge. -
It is not necessary for us to do more than to allude
to some of the leading features of these schemes; their
peculiarities will be easily discerned with sufficient clear-
ness. Thus, from the six days of creation and the Sab-
bath-day of rest, since we are told that a day is with the
Tord as a thousand years, it was inferred that the dura-
tion of the world will be through six thousand years of
Suffering, and an additional thousand, a millennium of
rest. It was generally admitted that the earth was
about four thousand years old at the birth of Christ,

184. " PATRISTIC CHRONOLOGY.
but, so careless had Europe been in the study of its
annals, that not until A. D. 527 had it a proper chronol-
ogy of its own. A Roman abbot, Dionysius Exiguus,
or Dennis the Less, then fixed the vulgar era, and gave
Europe its present Christian chronology.
The method followed in obtaining the earliest chro-
nological dates was by computations, mainly founded
on the lives of the patriarchs. Much difficulty was en
countered in reconciling numerical discrepancies. Even
if, as was taken for granted in those uncritical ages,
Moses was the author of the books imputed to him, due
weight was not given to the fact that he related events,
many of which took place more than two thousand years
before he was born. It scarcely seemed necessary to
regard the Pentateuch as of plenary inspiration, since no
means had been provided to perpetuate its correctness.
The different copies which had escaped the chances
of time varied very much; thus the Samaritan made
thirteen hundred and seven years from the Creation
to the Deluge, the Hebrew sixteen hundred and fifty-
six, the Septuagint twenty-two hundred and sixty-
three. The Septuagint counted fifteen hundred years
more from the Creation to Abraham than the Hebrew.
In general, however, there was an inclination to the
supposition that the Deluge took place about two thou-
sand years after the Creation, and, after another interval
of two thousand years, Christ was born. Persons who
had given much attention to the subject affirmed that
there were not less than one hundred and thirty-two
different opinions as to the year in which the Messiah
appeared, and hence they declared that it was inexpedi-
ent to press for acceptance the Scriptural numbers too
closely, since it was plain, from the great differences in
different copies, that there had been no providential
IPATRISTIC CHRONOLOGY. 185
intervention to perpetuate a correct reading, nor was
there any mark by which men could be guided to the
only authentic version. Even those held in the highest
esteem contained undeniable errors. Thus the Septua-
gint made Methuselah live until after the Deluge.
It was thought that, in the antediluvian world, the
year consisted of three hundred and sixty days. Some
even affirmed that this was the origin of the division
of the circle into three hundred and sixty degrees. At
the time of the Deluge, so many theologians declared,
the motion of the Sun was altered, and the year became
five days and six hours longer. There was a prevalent
opinion that that stupendous event occurred on Novem-
ber 26, in the year of the world 1656. Dr. Whiston,
however, disposed to greater precision, inclined to post-
pone it to November 28th. Some thought that the
rainbow was not seen until after the flood; others, ap-
parently with better reason, inferred that it was then
first established as a sign. On coming forth from the
ark, men received permission to use flesh as food, the
antediluvians having been herbivorous ! It would
seem that the Deluge had not occasioned any great
geographical changes, for Noah, relying on his antedilu-
vian knowledge, proceeded to divide the earth among
his three sons, giving to Japhet Europe, to Shem Asia,
to Ham Africa. No provision was made for America,
as he did not know of its existence. These patriarchs,
undeterred by the terrible solitudes to which they were
going, by the undrained swamps and untracked for.
ests, journeyed to their allotted possessions, and com-
menced the settlement of the continents.
In Seventy years the Asiatic family had increased
to several hundred. They had found their way to the
plains of Mesopotamia, and there, for some motive that
1S6 PATRISTIC CHRONOLOGY.
we cannot divine, began building a tower “whose top
might reach to heaven.” Eusebius informs us that the
work continued for forty years. They did not abandon
it until a miraculous confusion of their language took
place and dispersed them all over the earth. St. Am-
brose shows that this confusion could not have been
brought about by men. Origen believes that not even
the angels accomplished it. i
The confusion of tongues has given rise to many
curious speculations among divines as to the primitive
speech of man. Some have thought that the language
of Adam consisted altogether of nouns, that they were
monosyllables, and that the confusion was occasioned by
the introduction of polysyllables. But these learned
men must Surely have overlooked the numerous conver-
sations reported in Genesis, such as those between the
Almighty and Adam, the serpent and Eve, etc. In
these all the various parts of speech occur. There was,
however, a coincidence of opinion that the primitive
language was Hebrew. On the general principles of
patristicism, it was fitting that this should be the case.
The Greek Fathers computed that, at the time of
the dispersion, seventy-two nations were formed, and in
this conclusion St. Augustine coincides. But difficulties
seem to have been recognized in these computations;
thus the learned Dr. Shuckford, who has treated very
elaborately on all the foregoing points in his excellent
work “On the Sacred and Profane History of the World
connected,” demonstrates that there could not have been
more than twenty-one or twenty-two men, women, and
children, in each of those kingdoms. *
A very vital point in this system of chronological
computation, based upon the ages of the patriarchs, was
the great length of life to which those worthies attained.
PATRISTIC CHRONOLOGY. 187
It was generally supposed that before the Flood “there
was a perpetual equinox,” and no vicissitudes in Nature.
After that event the standard of life diminished one-
half, and in the time of the Psalmist it had sunk to
seventy years, at which it still remains. Austerities of
climate were affirmed to have arisen through the shifting
of the earth’s axis at the Flood, and to this ill effect were
added the noxious influences of that universal catastro-
phe, which, “converting the surface of the earth into a
vast swamp, gave rise to fermentations of the blood
and a weakening of the fibres.”
With a view of avoiding difficulties arising from the
extraordinary length of the patriarchal lives, certain
divines suggested that the years spoken of by the Sacred
penman were not ordinary but lunar years. This,
though it might bring the age of those venerable men
within the recent term of life, introduced, however,
another insuperable difficulty, since it made them have
children when only five or six years old.
Sacred science, as interpreted by the Fathers of the
Church, demonstrated these facts: 1. That the date of
Creation was comparatively recent, not more than four
or five thousand years before Christ; 2. That the act of
Creation occupied the 'space of six ordinary days; 3.
That the Deluge was universal, and that the animals
which survived it were preserved in an ark; 4. That
Adam was created perfect in morality and intelligence,
that he fell, and that his descendants have shared in his
sin and his fall.
Of these points and others that might be mentioned
there were two on which ecclesiastical authority felt
that it must insist. These were: 1. The recent date of
Creation; for, the remoter that event, the more urgent
the necessity of vindicating the justice of God, who ap-
188 SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY.
parently had left the majority of our race to its fate,
and had reserved salvation for the few who were living
in the closing ages of the world; 2. The perfect con-
dition of Adam at his creation, since this was necessary
to the theory of the fall, and the plan of salvation.
Theological authorities were therefore constrained
to look with disfavor on any attempt to carry back the
origin of the earth to an epoch indefinitely remote, and
on the Mohammedan theory of the evolution of man
from lower forms, or his gradual development to his
present condition in the long lapse of time.
From the puerilities, absurdities, and contradictions
of the foregoing statement, we may gather how very un-
satisfactory this so-called sacred science was. And per-
haps we may be brought to the conclusion to which Dr.
Shuckford, above quoted, was constrained to come, after
his wearisome and unavailing attempt to coördinate its
various parts: “As to the Fathers of the first ages of
the Church, they were good men, but not men of uni-
versal learning.”
Sacred cosmogony regards the formation and mod-
eling of the earth as the direct act of God; it rejects
the intervention of secondary causes in those events.
Scientific cosmogony dates from the telescopic dis-
covery made by Cassini—an Italian astronomer, under
whose care Louis XIV. placed the Observatory of Paris
—that the planet Jupiter is not a sphere, but an oblate
spheroid, flattened at the poles. Mechanical philosophy
demonstrated that such a figure is the necessary result
of the rotation of a yielding mass, and that the Inore
rapid the rotation the greater the flattening, or, what
comes to the same thing, the greater the equatorial bulg-
ing must be. .
FORMATION OF THE EARTH, 189
From considerations—purely of a mechanical kind—
Newton had foreseen that such likewise, though to a
less striking extent, must be the figure of the earth.
To the protuberant mass is due the precession of the
equinoxes, which requires twenty-five thousand eight
hundred and sixty-eight years for its completion, and
also the mutation of the earth’s axis, discovered by
Bradley. We have already had occasion to remark
that the earth's equatorial diameter exceeds the polar by
about twenty-six miles.
Two facts are revealed by the oblateness of the
earth : 1. That she has formerly been in a yielding
or plastic condition; 2. That she has been modeled by a
mechanical and therefore a secondary cause.
But this influence of mechanical causes is mani-
fested not only in the exterior configuration of the
globe of the earth as a spheroid of revolution, it also
plainly appears on an examination of the arrangement
of her substance.
If we consider the aqueous rocks, their aggregate is
many miles in thickness; yet they undeniably have
been of slow deposit. The material of which they con-
sist has been obtained by the disintegration of ancient
lands; it has found its way into the water-courses, and
by them been distributed anew. Effects of this kind,
taking place before our eyes, require a very consid-
erable lapse of time to produce a well-marked result—
a water deposit may in this manner measure in thick-
ness a few inches in a century—what, then, shall we
say as to the time consumed in the formation of depos-
its of many thousand yards? -
The position of the coast-line of Egypt has been
known for much more than two thousand years. In
that time it has made, by reason of the detritus brought
190 ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH,
down by the Nile, a distinctly-marked encroachment
on the Mediterranean. But all Lower Egypt has had
a similar origin. The coast-line near the mouth of the
Mississippi has been well known for three hundred
years, and during that time has scarcely made a percep-
tible advance on the Gulf of Mexico; but there was a
time when the delta of that river was at St. Louis, more
than seven hundred miles from its present position. In
Egypt and in America—in fact, in all countries—the
rivers have been inch by inch prolonging the land into
the Sea; the slowness of their work and the vastness of
its extent satisfy us that we must concede for the opera-
tion enormous periods of time.
To the same conclusion we are brought if we con-
sider the filling of lakes, the deposit of travertines, the
denudation of hills, the cutting action of the Sea on its
shores, the undermining of cliffs, the weathering of
rocks by atmospheric water and carbonic acid. -
Sedimentary strata must have been originally de-
posited in planes nearly horizontal. Wast numbers of
them have been forced, either by paroxysms at intervals
or by gradual movement, into all manner of angular in-
clinations. Whatever explanations we may offer of
these innumerable and immense tilts and fractures, they
would seem to demand for their completion an incon-
ceivable length of time. -
The coal-bearing strata in Wales, by their gradual
submergence, have attained a thickness of 12,000 feet;
in Nova Scotia of 14,570 feet. So slow and so steady
was this submergence, that erect trees stand one above
another on successive levels; seventeen such repetitions
may be counted in a thickness of 4,515 feet. The age
of the trees is proved by their size, some being four feet
in diameter. Round them, as they gradually went
GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE EARTH'S AGE. 191
down with the subsiding soil, Calamites grew, at One
level after another. In the Sydney coal-field fifty-nine
fossil forests occur in Superposition.
Marine shells, found on mountain-tops far in the
interior of continents, were regarded by theological writ-
ers as an indisputable illustration of the Deluge. But
when, as geological studies became more exact, it was
proved that in the crust of the earth vast fresh-water for-
mations are repeatedly intercalated with vast marine
ones, like the leaves of a book, it became evident that
no single cataclysm was sufficient to account for such
results; that the same region, through gradual varia-
tions of its level and changes in its topographical Sur-
roundings, had sometimes been dryland, sometimes cov-
ered with fresh and sometimes with sea water. It be-
came evident also that, for the completion of these
changes, tens of thousands of years were required.
To this evidence of a remote origin of the earth,
derived from the vast Superficial extent, the enormous
thickness, and the varied characters of its strata, was
added an imposing body of proof depending on its fos-
sil remains. The relative ages of formations having
been ascertained, it was shown that there has been an
advancing physiological progression of organic forms,
both vegetable and animal, from the oldest to the most
recent; that those which inhabit the surface in our
times are but an insignificant fraction of the prodi-
gious multitude that have inhabited it heretofore; that
for each species now living there are thousands that
have become extinct. Though special formations are
so strikingly characterized by some predominating type
of life as to justify such expressions as the age of mol-
lusks, the age of reptiles, the age of mammals, the intro-
duction of the new-comers did not take place abruptly,
192 CREATION AND EVOLUTION.
as by Sudden creation. They gradually emerged in an
antecedent age, reached their culmination in the one
which they characterize, and then gradually died out in
a succeeding. There is no such thing as a sudden crea-
tion, a sudden strange appearance—but there is a slow
metamorphosis, a slow development from a prečxisting
form. Here again we encounter the necessity of ad-
mitting for such results long periods of time. Within
the range of history no well-marked instance of such
development has been witnessed, and we speak with
hesitation of doubtful instances of extinction. Yet in
geological times myriads of evolutions and extinctions
have occurred.
Since thus, within the experience of man, no case of
metamorphosis or development has been observed, some
have been disposed to deny its possibility altogether,
affirming that all the different species have come into
existence by separate creative acts. But Surely it is less
unphilosophical to suppose that each species has been
evolved from a predecessor by a modification of its
parts, than that it has suddenly started into existence
out of nothing. Nor is there much weight in the re-
mark that no man has ever witnessed such a transfor-
mation taking place. Let it be remembered that no
man has ever witnessed an act of creation, the sudden
appearance of an organic form, without any progenitor.
Abrupt, arbitrary, disconnected creative acts may
serve to illustrate the Divine power; but that continu-
ous unbroken chain of organisms which extends from
palaeozoic formations to the formations of recent times,
a chain in which each link hangs on a preceding and
sustains a succeeding one, demonstrates to us not only
that the production of animated beings is governed by
law, but that it is by law that has undergone no change.
GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE EARTH'S AGE. 193
In its operation, through myriads of ages, there has been
no variation, no suspension.
The foregoing paragraphs may serve to indicate the
character of a portion of the evidence with which we
must deal in considering the problem of the age of the
earth. Through the unintermitting labors of geologists,
so immense a mass has been accumulated, that many
volumes would be required to contain the details. It
is drawn from the phenomena presented by all kinds
of rocks, aqueous, igneous, metamorphic. Of aqueous
rocks it investigates the thickness, the inclined positions,
and how they rest unconformably on One another ; how
those that are of fresh-water origin are intercalated with
those that are marine; how vast masses of material have
been removed by slow-acting causes of denudation, and
extensive geographical surfaces have been remodeled;
how continents have undergone movements of elevation
and depression, their shores sunk under the ocean, or
sea-beaches and sea-cliffs carried far into the interior.
It considers the Zoological and botanical facts, the fauna
and flora of the successive ages, and how in an orderly
manner the chain of organic forms, plants, and animals,
has been extended, from its dim and doubtful begin.
nings to our own times. From facts presented by the
deposits of coal—coal which, in all its varieties, has
originated from the decay of plants—it not only demon-
strates the changes that have taken place in the earth’s
atmosphere, but also universal changes of climate. From
other facts it proves that there have been oscillations of
temperature, periods in which the mean heat has risen,
and periods in which the polar ices and snows have
covered large portions of the existing continents—gla-
cial periods, as they are termed.
One School of geologists, resting its argument on
9
194 ASTRONOMICAL EVIDENCE. f
very imposing evidence, teaches that the whole mass of
the earth, from being in a molten, or perhaps a vaporous
condition, has cooled by radiation in the lapse of mill-
ions of ages, until it has reached its present equilibrium
of temperature. Astronomical observations give great
weight to this interpretation, especially so far as the
planetary bodies of the solar system are concerned. It
is also supported by such facts as the small mean den-
sity of the earth, the increasing temperature at increas-
ing depths, the phenomena of volcanoes and injected
veins, and those of igneous and metamorphic rocks.
To satisfy the physical changes which this school of
geologists contemplates, myriads of centuries are re-
quired. -
But, with the views that the adoption of the Co-
pernican system has given us, it is plain that we can-
not consider the origin and biography of the earth
in an isolated way; we must include with her all the
other members of the system or family to which she
belongs. Nay, more, we cannot restrict ourselves to
the Solar system ; we must embrace in our discus-
sions the starry worlds. And, since we have become
familiarized with their almost immeasurable distances
from one another, we are prepared to accept for their
origin an immeasurably remote time. There are stars
so far off that their light, fast as it travels, has taken
thousands of years to reach us, and hence they must
have been in existence many thousands of years ago.
Geologists having unanimously agreed—for perhaps
there is not a single dissenting voice—that the chronolo-
gy of the earth must be greatly extended, attempts have
been made to give precision to it. Some of these have
been based on astronomical, some on physical principles.
Thus calculations founded on the known changes of the
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 195
eccentricity of the earth's orbit, with a view of deter-
mining the lapse of time since the beginning of the
last glacial period, have given two hundred and forty
thousand years. Though the general postulate of the
immensity of geological times may be conceded, such
calculations are on too uncertain a theoretical basis to
furnish incontestable results.
But, considering the whole subject from the present
Scientific stand-point, it is very clear that the views pre-
sented by theological writers, as derived from the Mo-
saic record, cannot be admitted. Attempts have been
repeatedly made to reconcile the revealed with the dis-
covered facts, but they have proved to be unsatisfactory.
The Mosaic time is too short, the order of creation in-
correct, the divine interventions too anthropomorphic;
and, though the presentment of the subject is in har-
mony with the ideas that men have entertained, when
first their minds were turned to the acquisition of natu-
ral knowledge, it is not in accordance with their present
conceptions of the insignificance of the earth and the
grandeur of the universe. -
Among late geological discoveries is one of special
interest; it is the detection of human remains and hu-
man works in formations which, though geologically
recent, are historically very remote.
The fossil remains of men, with rude implements
of rough or chipped flint, of polished stone, of bone, of
bronze, are found in Europe in caves, in drifts, in peat-
beds. They indicate a savage life, spent in hunting and
fishing. Recent researches give reason to believe that,
under low and base grades, the existence of man can be
traced back into the tertiary times. He was contempo-
rary with the Southern elephant, the rhinoceros lepto:
196 ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
rhinus, the great hippopotamus, perhaps even in the mio.
cene contemporary with the mastodon. -
t the close of the Tertiary period, from causes not
yet determined, the Northern Hemisphere underwent
a great depression of temperature. From a torrid it
passed to a glacial condition. After a period of prodi-
gious length, the temperature again rose, and the glaciers
that had so extensively covered the surface receded.
Once more there was a decline in the heat, and the gla-
Ciers again advanced, but this time not so far as former-
ly. This ushered in the Quaternary period, during
which very slowly the temperature came to its present
degree. The water deposits that were being made re-
quired thousands of centuries for their completion. At
the beginning of the Quaternary period there were alive
the cave-bear, the cave-lion, the amphibious hippopota-
mus, the rhinoceros with chambered nostrils, the mam-
moth. In fact, the mammoth swarmed. He delighted
in a boreal climate. By degrees the reindeer, the horse,
the ox, the bison, multiplied, and disputed with him his
food. Partly for this reason, and partly because of the
increasing heat, he became extinct. From middle Eu-
rope, also, the reindeer retired. His departure marks
the end of the Quaternary period.
Since the advent of man on the earth, we have,
therefore, to deal with periods of incalculable length.
Vast changes in the climate and fauna were produced
by the slow operation of causes such as are in action at
the present day. Figures cannot enable us to appreciate
these enormous lapses of time.
It seems to be satisfactorily established, that a race
allied to the Basques may be traced back to the Neo-
lithic age. At that time the British Islands were un-
dergoing a change of level, like that at present occur-
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 197
ring in the Scandinavian Peninsula. Scotland was rising,
England was sinking. In the Pleistocene age there ex-
isted in Central Europe a rude race of hunters and fish-
ers closely allied to the Esquimaux.
In the old glacial drift of Scotland the relics of man
are found along with those of the fossil elephant. This
carries us back to that time above referred to, when a
large portion of Europe was covered with ice, which
had edged down from the polar regions to Southerly
latitudes, and, as glaciers, descended from the summits
of the mountain-chains into the plains. Countless spe-
cies of animals perished in this cataclysm of ice and
snow, but man survived.
In his primitive savage condition, living for the
most part on fruits, roots, shell-fish, man was in posses-
sion of a fact which was certain eventually to insure
his civilization. He knew how to make a fire. In peat-
beds, under the remains of trees that in those localities
have long ago become extinct, his relics are still found,
the implements that accompany him indicating a dis-
tinct chronological order. Near the surface are those of
bronze, lower down those of bone or horn, still lower
those of polished stone, and beneath all those of chipped
or rough stone. The date of the origin of some of these
beds cannot be estimated at less than forty or fifty thou-
Sand years.
The caves that have been examined in France and
elsewhere have furnished for the Stone age axes, knives,
lance and arrow points, scrapers, hammers. The change
from what may be termed the chipped to the polished
stone period is very gradual. It coincides with the
domestication of the dog, an epoch in hunting-life. It
embraces thousands of centuries. The appearance of
arrow-heads indicates the invention of the bow, and the
198 ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
rise of man from a defensive to an offensive mode of
life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how in-
ventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips,
that the huntsman was including smaller animals, and
perhaps birds, in his chase; bone whistles, his compan-
ionship with other huntsmen or with his dog. The
Scraping-knives of flint indicate the use of skin for
clothing, and rude bodkins and needles its manufacture.
Shells perforated for bracelets and necklaces prove how
Soon a taste for personal adornment was acquired; the
implements necessary for the preparation of pigments
suggest the painting of the body, and perhaps tattooing;
and bâtons of rank bear witness to the beginning of a
Social Organization.
With the utmost interest we look upon the first
germs of art among these primitive men. They have
left us rude sketches on pieces of ivory and flakes of
bone, and carvings, of the animals contemporary with
them. In these prehistoric delineations, sometimes not
without spirit, we have mammoths, combats of rein-
deer. One presents us with a man harpooning a fish,
another a hunting-scene of naked men armed with the
dart. Man is the only animal who has the propensity
of depicting external forms, and of availing himself of
the use of fire.
Shell-mounds, consisting of bones and shells, some
of which may be justly described as of vast extent, and
of a date anterior to the Bronze age, and full of stone
implements, bear in all their parts indications of the use
of fire. These are often adjacent to the existing coasts;
sometimes, however, they are far inland, in certain in-
stances as far as fifty miles. Their contents and posi-
tion indicate for them a date posterior to that of the
great extinct mammals, but prior to the domesticated.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 199
Some of these, it is said, cannot be less than one hundred
thousand years old. r
The lake-dwellings in Switzerland—huts built on
piles or logs, wattled with boughs—were, as may be in-
ferred from the accompanying implements, begun in the
Stone age, and continued into that of Bronze. In the
latter period the evidences become numerous of the
adoption of an agricultural life.
It must not be supposed that the periods into which
geologists have found it convenient to divide the prog-
ress of man in civilization are abrupt epochs, which .
hold good simultaneously for the whole human race.
Thus the wandering Indians of America are only at the
present moment emerging from the Stone age. They
are still to be seen in many places armed with arrows,
tipped with flakes of flint. It is but as yesterday that
Some have obtained, from the white man, iron, fire-arms,
and the horse. -
So far as investigations have gone, they indisputably
refer the existence of man to a date remote from us
by many hundreds of thousands of years. It must be
borne in mind that these investigations are quite recent,
and confined to a very limited geographical space. No
researches have yet been made in those regions which
might reasonably be regarded as the primitive habitat
of man. - -
We are thus carried back immeasurably beyond the
six thousand years of Patristic chronology. It is diffi-
cult to assign a shorter date for the last glaciation of
Europe than a quarter of a million of years, and human
existence antedates that. But not only is it this grand
fact that confronts us, we have to admit also a primitive
animalized state, and a slow, a gradual development.
But this forlorn, this Savage condition of humanity
200 AGE OF THE EARTH.
is in strong contrast to the paradisiacal happiness of the
garden of Eden, and, what is far more serious, it is incon-
sistent with the theory of the Fall.
I have been induced to place the subject of this
chapter out of its proper chronological order, for the
sake of presenting what I had to say respecting the na-
ture of the world more completely by itself. The dis-
cussions that arose as to the age of the earth were long
after the conflict as to the criterion of truth—that is,
after the Reformation; indeed, they were substantially
included in the present century. They have been con-
ducted with so much moderation as to justify the term
I have used in the title of this chapter, “Controversy,”
rather than “Conflict.” Geology has not had to en-
counter the vindictive opposition with which astronomy
was assailed, and, though, on her part, she has insisted
on a concession of great antiquity for the earth, she has
herself pointed out the unreliability of all numerical
estimates thus far offered. The attentive reader of this
chapter cannot have failed to observe inconsistencies in
the numbers quoted. Though wanting the merit of ex-
actness, those numbers, however, justify the claim of
vast antiquity, and draw us to the conclusion that the
time-scale of the world answers to the space-Scale in
magnitude.
CHAPTER WIII.
CONFLICT RESPECTING THE CRITERION OF TRUTH.
Ancient philosophy declares that man has no means of ascertaining the
truth. *
Differences of belief arise among the early Christians.—An ineffectual at-
tempt is made to remedy them by Councils.-Miracle and ordeal proof
introduced.
The papacy resorts to auricular confession and the Inquisition.—It per-
petrates frightful atrocities for the suppression of differences of
opinion.
Effect of the discovery of the Pandects of Justinian and development of the
canon law on the nature of evidence.—It becomes more scientific.
The Reformation establishes the rights of individual reason.—Catholicism
asserts that the criterion of truth is in the Church. It restrains the
reading of books by the Index. Expurgalorius, and combats dissent
by such means as the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve.
Examination of the authenticity of the Pentateuch as the Protestant crite-
tion.—Spurious character of those books.
For Science the criterion of truth is to be found in the revelations of Wa-
ture: for the Protestant, it is in the Scriptures ; for the Catholic, in
an infallible Pope.
“WHAT is truth?” was the passionate demand of a
Roman procurator on one of the most momentous occa-
sions in history. And the Divine Person who stood
before him, to whom the interrogation was addressed,
made no reply—unless, indeed, silence contained the
reply.
Often and vainly had that demand been made before
202 THE CRITERION OF TRUTH,
—often and vainly has it been made since. No one has
yet given a Satisfactory answer.
When, at the dawn of science in Greece, the ancient
religion was disappearing like a mist at Sunrise, the
pious and thoughtful men of that country were thrown
into a condition of intellectual despair. Anaxagoras
plaintively exclaims, “Nothing can be known, nothing
can be learned, nothing can be certain, sense is limited,
intellect is weak, life is short.” Xenophanes tells us
that it is impossible for us to be certain even when we
utter the truth. Parmenides declares that the very con-
stitution of man prevents him from ascertaining abso-
lute truth. Empedocles affirms that all philosophical
and religious systems must be unreliable, because we
have no criterion by which to test them. Democritus
asserts that even things that are true cannot impart cer-
tainty to us; that the final result of human inquiry is
the discovery that man is incapable of absolute knowl-
edge; that, even if the truth be in his possession, he
cannot be certain of it. Pyrrho bids us reflect on the
necessity of suspending our judgment of things, since
we have no criterion of truth ; so deep a distrust did he
impart to his followers, that they were in the habit of
saying, “We assert nothing; no, not even that we assert
nothing.” Epicurus taught his disciples that truth
can never be determined by reason. Arcesilaus, deny-
ing both intellectual and sensuous knowledge, publicly
avowed that he knew nothing, not even his own igno-
rance! The general conclusion to which Greek philoso-
phy came was this—that, in view of the contradiction of
the evidence of the senses, we cannot distinguish the
true from the false; and such is the imperfection of rea-
son, that we cannot affirm the correctness of any philo-
sophical deduction.
THE CRITERION OF TRUTHI. 203
It might be supposed that a revelation from God to
man would come with such force and clearness as to
settle all uncertainties and overwhelm all opposition.
A Greek philosopher, less despairing than others, had
ventured to affirm that the coexistence of two forms of
faith, both claiming to be revealed by the omnipotent
God, proves that neither of them is true. But let us
remember that it is difficult for men to come to the
same conclusion as regards even material and visible
things, unless they stand at the same point of view. If
discord and distrust were the condition of philosophy
three hundred years before the birth of Christ, discord
and distrust were the condition of religion three hun-
dred years after his death. This is what Hilary, the
Bishop of Poictiers, in his well-known passage written
about the time of the Nicene Council, says:
“It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous that
there are as many creeds as opinions among men, as
many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of
blasphemy as there are faults among us, because we
make creeds arbitrarily and explain them as arbitrarily.
Every year, nay, every moon, we make new creeds to
describe invisible mysteries; we repent of what we
have done; we defend those who repent ; we anathe-
matize those whom we defend ; we condemn either the
doctrines of others in ourselves, or our own in that of
others; and, reciprocally tearing each other to pieces,
we have been the cause of each other's ruin.”
These are not mere words; but the import of this
self-accusation can be realized fully only by such as are
familiar with the ecclesiastical history of those times.
As soon as the first fervor of Christianity as a sys.
tem of benevolence had declined, dissensions appeared.
Ecclesiastical historians assert that “as early as the sec.
204 EARLY CHRISTIAN COUNCILS.
Ond century began the contest between faith and rea-
son, religion and philosophy, piety and genius.” To
compose these dissensions, to obtain some authoritative
expression, Some criterion of truth, assemblies for con-
Sultation were resorted to, which eventually took the
form of councils. For a long time they had nothing
more than an advisory authority; but, when, in the
fourth century, Christianity had attained to imperial
rule, their dictates became compulsory, being enforced
by the civil power. By this the whole face of the
Church was changed. CEcumenical councils—parlia-
ments of Christianity—consisting of delegates from all
the churches in the world, were summoned by the au-
thority of the emperor; he presided either personally
or nominally in them—composed all differences, and
was, in fact, the Pope of Christendom. Mosheim, the
historian, to whom I have more particularly referred
above, speaking of these times, remarks that “there
was nothing to exclude the ignorant from ecclesiastical
preferment; the savage and illiterate party, who looked
on all kinds of learning, particularly philosophy, as per-
nicious to piety, was increasing;” and, accordingly, “the
disputes carried on in the Council of Nicea offered a re-
markable example of the greatest ignorance and utter
confusion of ideas, particularly in the language and ex-
planations of those who approved of the decisions of
that council.” Wast as its influence has been, “the
ăncient critics are neither agreed concerning the time
nor place in which it was assembled, the number of those
who sat in it, nor the bishop who presided. No authen-
tic acts of its famous sentence have been committed to
writing, or, at least, none have been transmitted to Our
times.” The Church had now become what, in the
language of modern politicians, would be called “a con:
THE COUNCIL OF NICEA. 205
federated republic.” The will of the council was de-
termined by a majority vote, and, to secure that, all
manner of intrigues and impositions were resorted to ;
the influence of court females, bribery, and violence,
were not spared. The Council of Nicea had scarcely ad-
journed, when it was plain to all impartial men that, as
a method of establishing a criterion of truth in religious
matters, such councils were a total failure. The mi-
nority had no rights which the majority need respect.
The protest of many good men, that a mere majority
vote given by delegates, whose right to vote had never
been examined and authorized, could not be received as
ascertaining absolute truth, was passed over with con-
tempt, and the consequence was, that council was as-
sembled against council, and their jarring and contra-
dictory decrees spread perplexity and confusion through-
out the Christian world. In the fourth century alone
there were thirteen councils adverse to Arius, fifteen in
his favor, and seventeen for the semi-Arians—in all,
forty-five. Minorities were perpetually attempting to
use the weapon which majorities had abused.
The impartial ecclesiastical historian above quoted,
moreover, says that “two monstrous and calamitous
errors were adopted in this fourth century: 1. That it
was an act of virtue to deceive and lie when, by that
means, the interests of the Church might be promoted.
2. That errors in religion, when maintained and ad-
hered to after proper admonition, were punishable with
civil penalties and corporal tortures.”
Not without astonishment can we look back at what,
in those times, were popularly regarded as criteria of
truth. Doctrines were considered as established by the
number of martyrs who had professed them, by mira.
cles, by the confession of demons, of lunatics, or of per.
206 TRUTH DETERMINED BY MIRACLES.
sons possessed of evil spirits: thus, St. Ambrose, in his
disputes with the Arians, produced men possessed by
devils, who, on the approach of the relics of certain
martyrs, acknowledged, with loud cries, that the Nicean
doctrine of the three persons of the Godhead was true,
But the Arians charged him with suborning these infer.
mal witnesses with a weighty bribe. Already, ordeal
tribunals were making their appearance. During the
following six centuries they were held as a final resort
for establishing guilt or innocence, under the forms of
trial by cold water, by duel, by the fire, by the cross.
What an utter ignorance of the nature of evidence
and its laws have we here! An accused man sinks or
Swims when thrown into a pond of water; he is burnt
or escapes unharmed when he holds a piece of red-hot
iron in his hand; a champion whom he has hired is van-
quished or vanquishes in single fight; he can keep his
arms outstretched like a cross, or fails to do so longer
than his accuser, and his innocence or guilt of some im-
puted crime is established Are these criteria of truth?
Is it surprising that all Europe was filled with im-
posture miracles during those ages?—miracles that are
a disgrace to the common-sense of man!
But the inevitable day came at length. Assertions
and doctrines based upon such preposterous evidence
were involved in the discredit that fell upon the evi-
dence itself. As the thirteenth century is approached,
we find unbelief in all directions setting in. First, it is
plainly seen among the monastic orders, then it spreads
rapidly among the common people. Books, such as
“The Everlasting Gospel,” appear among the former;
sects, such as the Catharists, Waldenses, Petrobrussians,
arise among the latter. They agreed in this, “that
the public and established religion was a motley System
AURICULAR CONFESSION AND THE INQUISITION. 207
of errors and superstitions, and that the dominion which
the pope had usurped over Christians was unlawful and
tyrannical; that the claim put forth by Rome, that the
Bishop of Rome is the Supreme lord of the universe,
and that neither princes nor bishops, civil governors nor
ecclesiastical rulers, have any lawful power in church or
state but what they receive from him, is utterly with-
out foundation, and a usurpation of the rights of
man.”
To withstand this flood of impiety, the papal gov-
ernment established two institutions: 1. The Inquisi-
tion; 2. Auricular confession—the latter as a means of
detection, the former as a tribunal for punishment.
In general terms, the commission of the Inquisition
was, to extirpate religious dissent by terrorism, and sur-
round heresy with the most horrible associations; this
necessarily implied the power of determining what con-
stitutes heresy. The criterion of truth was thus in pos-
session of this tribunal, which was charged “to discower
and bring to judgment heretics lurking in towns, houses,
cellars, woods, caves, and fields.” With such savage
alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the in-
terests of religion, that between 1481 and 1808 it had
punished three hundred and forty thousand persons, and
of these nearly thirty-two thousand had been burnt
In its earlier days, when public opinion could find no
means of protesting against its atrocities, “it often put
to death, without appeal, on the very day that they
were accused, nobles, clerks, monks, hermits, and lay
persons of every rank.” In whatever direction thought-
ful men looked, the air was full of fearful shadows. No
one could indulge in freedom of thought without ex-
pecting punishment. So dreadful were the proceedings
of the Inquisition, that the exclamation of Pagliarici
208 THE INQUISITION.
was the exclamation of thousands: “It is hardly possi-
ble for a man to be a Christian, and die in his bed.”
The Inquisition destroyed the sectaries of Southern
France in the thirteenth century. Its unscrupulous
atrocities extirpated Protestantism in Italy and Spain.
Nor did it confine itself to religious affairs; it engaged
in the Suppression of political discontent. Nicolas
Eymeric, who was inquisitor-general of the kingdom of
Aragon for nearly fifty years, and who died in 1399,
has left a frightful statement of its conduct and appall-
ing cruelties in his “Directorium Inquisitorum.”
This disgrace of Christianity, and indeed of the
human race, had different constitutions in different
countries. The papal Inquisition continued the tyran-
ny, and eventually superseded the old episcopal inqui-
sitions. The authority of the bishops was unceremo-
niously put aside by the officers of the pope.
By the action of the fourth Lateran Council, A. D.
1215, the power of the Inquisition was frightfully in-
creased, the necessity of private confession to a priest—
auricular confession—being at that time formally estab-
lished. This, so far as domestic life was concerned,
gave omnipresence and Omniscience to the Inquisition.
Not a man was safe. In the hands of the priest, who, at
the confessional, could extract or extort from them their
most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were
turned into spies. Summoned before the dread tribu-
mal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong
suspicions of heresy. No accuser was named; but the
thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, the boot and wedge,
or other enginery of torture, soon supplied that defect,
and, innocent or guilty, he accused himself!
Notwithstanding all this power, the Inquisition failed
of its purpose. When the heretic could no longer con.
\
EFFECTS OF THE INQUISITION. 209
front it, he evaded it. A dismal disbelief stealthily per-
vaded all Europe—a denial of Providence, of the im-
mortality of the soul, of human free-will, and that man
can possibly resist the absolute necessity, the destiny
which envelops him. Ideas such as these were cher-
ished in silence by multitudes of persons driven to them
by the tyrannical acts of ecclesiasticism. In spite of
persecution, the Waldenses still survived to propagate
their declaration that the Roman Church, since Con-
stantine, had degenerated from its purity and sanctity;
to protest against the sale of indulgences, which they
said had nearly abolished prayer, fasting, alms; to affirm
that it was utterly useless to pray for the souls of the
dead, since they must already have gone either to heaven
or hell. Though it was generally believed that philos-
ophy or science was pernicious to the interests of Chris-
tianity or true piety, the Mohammedan literature then
prevailing in Spain was making converts among all
classes of Society. We see very plainly its influence in
many of the sects that then arose; thus, “the Brethren
and Sisters of the Free Spirit” held that “the universe
came by emanation from God, and would finally return
to him by absorption; that rational Souls are so many
portions of the Supreme Deity; and that the universe,
considered as one great whole, is God.” These are
ideas that can only be entertained in an advanced intel-
lectual condition. Of this sect it is said that many
suffered burning with unclouded Serenity, with trium-
phant feelings of cheerfulness and joy. Their orthodox
enemies accused them of gratifying their passions at
midnight assemblages in darkened rooms, to which both
Sexes in a condition of nudity repaired. A similar accu-
sation, as is well known, was brought against the primi-
tive Christians by the fashionable society of Rome.
210 THE PANDECT.S OF JUSTINIAN.
The influences of the Averroistic philosophy were
apparent in many of these sects. That Mohammedan
system, considered from a Christian point of view, led
to the heretical belief that the end of the precepts of
Christianity is the union of the soul with the Supreme
Being; that God and Nature have the same relations
to each other as the soul and the body; that there is
but one individual intelligence; and that one soul per-
forms all the spiritual and rational functions in all the
human race. When, Subsequently, toward the time of
the Reformation, the Italian Averroists were required by
the Inquisition to give an account of themselves, they
attempted to show that there is a wide distinction be-
tween philosophical and religious truth; that things
may be philosophically true, and yet theologically false—
an exculpatory device condemned at length by the Lat-
eran Council in the time of Leo X.
Dut, in spite of auricular confession, and the Inqui-
sition, these heretical tendencies survived. It has been
truly said that, at the epoch of the Reformation, there
lay concealed, in many parts of Europe, persons who en-
tertained the most virulent enmity against Christianity.
In this pernicious class were many Aristotelians, such
as Pomponatius; many philosophers and wits, such as
Dodin, Rabelais, Montaigne; many Italians, as Leo X.,
Bembo, Bruno.
Miracle-evidence began to fall into discredit during
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The sarcasms of
the Hispano-Moorish philosophers had forcibly drawn
the attention of many of the more enlightened eccle-
siastics to its illusory nature. The discovery of the
Pandects of Justinian, at Amalfi, in 1130, doubtless
exerted a very powerful influence in promoting the
study of Roman jurisprudence, and disseminating better
…’
THE DECRETALS, 211
notions as to the character of legal or philosophical evi-
dence. Hallam has cast some doubt on the well-known
story of this discovery, but he admits that the celebrated
copy in the Laurentian library, at Florence, is the only
one containing the entire fifty books. Twenty years
subsequently, the monk Gratian collected together the
various papal edicts, the canons of councils, the dec-
larations of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, in
a volume called “The Decretum,” considered as the
earliest authority in canon law. In the next century
Gregory IX. published five books of Decretals, and
Boniface VIII. Subsequently added a sixth. To these
followed the Clementine Constitutions, a seventh book
of Decretals, and “A Book of Institutes,” published to-
gether, by Gregory XIII., in 1580, under the title of
“Corpus Juris Canonici.” The canon law had grad-
ually gained enormous power through the control it had
obtained over wills, the guardianship of orphans, mar-
riages, and divorces.
The rejection of miracle-evidence, and the substitu-
tion of legal evidence in its stead, accelerated the ap-
proach of the Reformation. No longer was it possible
to admit the requirement which, in former days, An-
selm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his treatise,
“Cur Deus Homo,” had enforced, that we must first
believe without examination, and may afterward en-
deavor to understand what we have thus believed.
When Cajetan said to Luther, “Thou must believe
that one single drop of Christ's blood is sufficient to
redeem the whole human race, and the remaining quan-
tity that was shed in the garden and on the cross was
left as a legacy to the pope, to be a treasure from which
indulgences were to be drawn,” the soul of the sturdy
German monk revolted against such a monstrous asser-
212 THE REFORMATION.
tion, nor would he have believed it though a thousand
miracles had been worked in its support. This shameful
practice of selling indulgences for the commission of sin
originated among the bishops, who, when they had need
of money for their private pleasures, obtained it in that
way. Abbots and monks, to whom this gainful commerce
was denied, raised funds by carrying about relics in Sol.
emn procession, and charging a fee for touching them.
The popes, in their pecuniary straits, perceiving how
lucrative the practice might become, deprived the bish-
ops of the right of making such sales, and appropriated
it to themselves, establishing agencies, chiefly among the
mendicant orders, for the traffic. Among these orders
there was a sharp competition, each boasting of the Su-
perior value of its indulgences through its greater in-
fluence at the court of heaven, its familiar connection
with the Virgin Mary and the Saints in glory. Even
against Luther himself, who had been an Augustinian
monk, a calumny was circulated that he was first alien-
ated from the Church by a traffic of this kind having
been conferred on the Dominicans, instead of On his own
order, at the time when Leo X. was raising funds by
this means for building St. Peter's, at Rome, A. D. 1517;
and there is reason to think that Leo himself, in the
earlier stages of the Reformation, attached weight to
that allegation.
Indulgences were thus the immediate inciting cause
of the Reformation, but very soon there came into light
the real principle that was animating the controversy.
It lay in the question, Does the Bible owe its authen-
ticity to the Church? or does the Church owe her au-
thenticity to the Bible? Where is the criterion of
truth : .
It is not necessary for me here to relate the well-
THE REFORMATION. 213
known particulars of that controversy, the desolating
wars and scenes of blood to which it gave rise: how
Luther posted on the door of the cathedral of Wittem-
berg ninety-five theses, and was summoned to Rome to
answer for his offense; how he appealed from the pope,
ill-informed at the time, to the pope when he should
have been better instructed; how he was condemned as
a heretic, and thereupon appealed to a general council;
how, through the disputes about purgatory, transubstan-
tiation, auricular confession, absolution, the fundamental
idea which lay at the bottom of the whole movement
came into relief, the right of individual judgment; how
Luther was now excommunicated, A. D. 1520, and in de-
fiance burnt the bull of excommunication and the vol-
umes of the canon law, which he denounced as aiming
at the subversion of all civil government, and the exalta-
tion of the papacy; how by this skillful manoeuvre he
brought over many of the German princes to his views;
how, summoned before the Imperial Diet at Worms, he
refused to retract, and, while he was hidden in the castle
of Wartburg, his doctrines were spreading, and a ref-
ormation under Zwingli broke out in Switzerland; how
the principle of sectarian decomposition embedded in
the movement gave rise to rivalries and dissensions be-
tween the Germans and the Swiss, and even divided
the latter among themselves under the leadership of
Zwingli and of Calvin; how the Conference of Marburg,
the Diet of Spires, and that at Augsburg, failed to com-
pose the troubles, and eventually the German Reforma-
tion assumed a political organization at Smalcalde. The
quarrels between the Lutherans and the Calvinists gave
hopes to Rome that she might recover her losses.
Teo was not slow to discern that the Lutheran Ref-
ormation was something more serious than a squabble
214 THE REFORMATION.
among some monks about the profits of indulgence-sales,
and the papacy set itself seriously at work to overcome
the revolters. It instigated the frightful wars that for
So many years desolated Europe, and left animosities
which neither the Treaty of Westphalia, nor the Council
of Trent after eighteen years of debate, could compose.
No one can read without a shudder the attempts that
were made to extend the Inquisition in foreign coun
tries. All Europe, Catholic and Protestant, was horror-
stricken at the Huguenot massacre of St. Bartholomew’s
Eve (A. D. 1572). For perfidy and atrocity it has no
equal in the annals of the world.
The desperate attempt in which the papacy had been
engaged to put down its opponents by instigating civil
Wars, massacres, and assassinations, proved to be alto-
gether abortive. Nor had the Council of Trent any
better result. Ostensibly summoned to correct, illus-
trate, and fix with perspicacity the doctrine of the
Church, to restore the vigor of its discipline, and to re-
form the lives of its ministers, it was so manipulated
that a large majority of its members were Italians, and
under the influence of the pope. Hence the Protestants,
could not possibly accept its decisions.
The issue of the Reformation was the acceptance by
all the Protestant Churches of the dogma that the Bible
is a sufficient guide for every Christian man. Tradition
was rejected, and the right of private interpretation as-
sured. It was thought that the criterion of truth had
at length been obtained.
The authority thus imputed to the Scriptures was
not restricted to matters of a purely religious or moral
kind; it extended over philosophical facts and to the
interpretation of Nature. Many went as far as in the
old times Epiphanius had done: he believed that the
_*
LUTHER, 215
Bible contained a complete system of mineralogy | The
Teformers would tolerate no science that was not in
accordance with Genesis. Among them there were
many who maintained that religion and piety could
never flourish unless separated from learning and sci-
once. The fatal maxim that the Bible contained the
sum and substance of all knowledge, useful or pos-
sible to man—a maxim employed with such pernicious
effect of old by Tertullian and by St. Augustine, and
which had so often been enforced by papal authority—
was still strictly insisted upon. The leaders of the Ref-
ormation, Luther and Melanchthon, were determined
to banish philosophy from the Church. Luther declared
that the study of Aristotle is wholly useless; his vilifica-
tion of that Greek philosopher knew no bounds. He
is, says Luther, “truly a devil, a horrid calumniator,
a wicked sycophant, a prince of darkness, a real Apol-
lyon, a beast, a most horrid impostor on mankind, one
in whom there is scarcely any philosophy, a public and
professed liar, a goat, a complete epicure, this twice
execrable Aristotle.” The schoolmen were, so Luther
said, “locusts, caterpillars, frogs, lice.” He entertained
an abhorrence for them. These opinions, though not
so emphatically expressed, were entertained by Calvin.
So far as science is concerned, nothing is owed to the
Reformation. The Procrustean bed of the Pentateuch
was still before her.
In the annals of Christianity the most ill-omened
day is that in which she separated herself from science.
She compelled Origen, at that time (A. D. 231) its chief
representative and supporter in the Church, to aban-
don his charge in Alexandria, and retire to Caesarea.
In vain through many subsequent centuries did her
leading men spend themselves in—as the phrase then
216 CALWIN.
went—“drawing forth the internal juice and marrow
of the Scriptures for the explaining of things.” Uni-
versal history from the third to the sixteenth century
shows with what result. The dark ages owe their
darkness to this fatal policy. Here and there, it is
true, there were great men, such as Frederick II. and
Alphonso X., who, standing at a very elevated and gen-
eral point of view, had detected the value of learning to
civilization, and, in the midst of the dreary prospect that
ecclesiasticism had created around them, had recognized
that science alone can improve the social condition of
IYlä.Il.
The infliction of the death-punishment for difference
of opinion was still resorted to. When Calvin caused
Servetus to be burnt at Geneva, it was obvious to every
one that the spirit of persecution was unimpaired. The
offense of that philosopher lay in his belief. This was,
that the genuine doctrines of Christianity had been lost
even before the time of the Council of Nicea ; that the
Holy Ghost animates the whole system of Nature, like
a soul of the world, and that, with the Christ, it will
be absorbed, at the end of all things, into the substance
of the Deity, from which they had emanated. For this
he was roasted to death over a slow fire. Was there
any distinction between this Protestant auto-da-fe and
the Catholic one of Wanini, who was burnt at Tou-
louse, by the Inquisition, in 1629, for his “Dialogues
concerning Nature?”
The invention of printing, the dissemination of
books, had introduced a class of dangers which the per-
secution of the Inquisition could not reach. In 1559,
Pope Paul IV. instituted the Congregation of the In-
dex Expurgatorius. “Its duty is to examine books and
manuscripts intended for publication, and to decide
THE INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. 217
whether the people may be permitted to read them; to
correct those books of which the errors are not nu-
merous, and which contain certain useful and Salutary
truths, so as to bring them into harmony with the doc-
trines of the Church; to condemn those of which the
principles are heretical and pernicious; and to grant
the peculiar privilege of perusing heretical books to cer-
tain persons. This congregation, which is sometimes
held in presence of the pope, but generally in the pal-
ace of the Cardinal-president, has a more extensive
jurisdiction than that of the Inquisition, as it not only
takes cognizance of those books that contain doctrines
contrary to the Roman Catholic faith, but of those that
concern the duties of morality, the discipline of the
Church, the interests of society. Its name is derived
from the alphabetical tables or indexes of heretical
books and authors composed by its appointment.”
The Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books at
first indicated those works which it was unlawful to
read; but, on this being found insufficient, whatever
was not permitted was prohibited—an audacious at-
tempt to prevent all knowledge, except such as suited
the purposes of the Church, from reaching the people.
The two rival divisions of the Christian Church—
Protestant and Catholic—were thus in accord on one
point: to tolerate no science except such as they con-
sidered to be agreeable to the Scriptures. The Catho-
lic, being in possession of centralized power, could make
its decisions respected wherever its sway was acknowl-
edged, and enforce the monitions of the Index Expurga-
torius; the Protestant, whose influence was diffused
among many foci in different nations, could not act in
such a direct and resolute manner. Its mode of pro-
cedure was, by raising a theological odium against an
1()
218 THE SCRIPTURES THE STANDARD OF SCIENCE.
offender, to put him under a social ban—a course per-
haps not less effectual than the other.
As we have seen in former chapters, an antagonism
between religion and science had existed from the earli-
est days of Christianity. On every occasion permitting
its display it may be detected through successive centu-
ries. We witness it in the downfall of the Alexandrian
Museum, in the cases of Erigena and Wiclif, in the con-
temptuous rejection by the heretics of the thirteenth
century of the Scriptural account of the Creation; but
it was not until the epoch of Copernicus, Kepler, and
Galileo, that the efforts of Science to burst from the
thraldom in which she was fettered became uncontrol-
lable. In all countries the political power of the Church
had greatly declined; her leading men perceived that
the cloudy foundation on which she had stood was dis-
solving away. Repressive measures against her antago-
mists, in old times resorted to with effect, could be no
longer advantageously employed. To her interests the
burning of a philosopher here and there did more harm
than good. In her great conflict with astronomy, a
conflict in which Galileo stands as the central figure,
she received an utter overthrow ; and, as we have seen,
when the immortal work of Newton was printed, she
could offer no resistance, though Leibnitz affirmed, in
the face of Europe, that “Newton had robbed the Deity
of some of his most excellent attributes, and had Sapped
the foundation of natural religion.”
From the time of Newton to our own time, the di-
vergence of science from the dogmas of the Church has
continually increased. The Church declared that the
earth is the central and most important body in the
universe; that the sun and moon and stars are tribu-
tary to it. On these points she was worsted by astron-
THE PENTATEUCH. 219
omy. She affirmed that a universal deluge had covered
the earth; that the only surviving animals were such as
had been saved in an ark. In this her error was estab-
lished by geology. She taught that there was a first
man, who, some six or eight thousand years ago, was
suddenly created or called into existence in a condition
of physical and moral perfection, and from that condi-
tion he fell. But anthropology has shown that human
beings existed far back in geological time, and in a sav-
age state but little better than that of the brute.
Many good and well-meaning men have attempted
to reconcile the statements of Genesis with the discov-
eries of Science, but it is in vain. The divergence has
increased so much, that it has become an absolute oppo
sition. One of the antagonists must give way.
May we not, then, be permitted to examine the au-
thenticity of this book, which, since the second century,
has been put forth as the criterion of scientific truth
To maintain itself in a position so exalted, it must chal-
lenge human criticism.
In the early Christian ages, many of the most emi-
nent Fathers of the Church had serious doubts respect-
ing the authorship of the entire Pentateuch. I have not
space, in the limited compass of these pages, to present
in detail the facts and arguments that were then and
have since been adduced. The literature of the subject
is now very extensive. I may, however, refer the read-
er to the work of the pious and learned Dean Pri-
deaux, on “The Old and New Testament connected,” a
work which is one of the literary ornaments of the last
century. He will also find the subject more recently
and exhaustively discussed by Bishop Colenso. The
following paragraphs will convey a sufficiently distinct
impression of the present state of the controversy:
220 THE PENTATEUCH.
The Pentateuch is affirmed to have been written by
Moses, under the influence of divine inspiration. Con-
sidered thus, as a record vouchsafed and dictated by the
Almighty, it commands not only scientific but universal
COnSent. -
ISut here, in the first place, it may be demanded,
Who or what is it that has put forth this great claim in
its behalf Ż
Not the work itself. It nowhere claims the author-
ship of one man, or makes the impious declaration that
it is the writing of Almighty God.
Not until after the second century was there any
such extravagant demand on human credulity. It ori-
ginated, not among the higher ranks of Christian phi-
losophers, but among the more fervid Fathers of the
Church, whose own writings prove them to have been
unlearned and uncritical persons.
Every age, from the second century to our times, has
offered men of great ability, both Christian and Jewish,
who have altogether repudiated these claims. Their de-
cision has been founded upon the intrinsic evidence of
the books themselves. These furnish plain indications
of at least two distinct authors, who have been respec-
tively termed Elohistic and Jehovistic. Hupfeld main-
tains that the Jehovistic narrative bears marks of hav-
ing been a second original record, wholly independent
of the Elohistic. The two sources from which the nar-
ratives have been derived are, in many respects, contra-
dictory of each other. Moreover, it is asserted that
the books of the Pentateuch are never ascribed to Moses
in the inscriptions of Hebrew manuscripts, or in printed
copies of the Hebrew Bible, nor are they styled “Books
of Moses” in the Septuagint or Vulgate, but only in
modern translations. -
THE PENTATEUCH. 221
It is clear that they cannot be imputed to the sole
authorship of Moses, since they record his death. It is
clear that they were not written until many hundred
years after that event, since they contain references to
facts which did not occur until after the establishment
of the government of kings among the Jews.
No man may dare to impute them to the inspiration
of Almighty God—their inconsistencies, incongruities,
contradictions, and impossibilities, as exposed by many
learned and pious moderns, both German and English,
are so great. It is the decision of these critics that
Genesis is a narrative based upon legends; that Exodus
is not historically true; that the whole Pentateuch is
unhistoric and non-Mosaic; it contains the most extraor-
dinary contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to
involve the credibility of the whole—imperfections so
many and so conspicuous that they would destroy the
authenticity of any modern historical work.
Hengstenberg, in his “Dissertations on the Genuine-
ness of the Pentateuch,” says: “It is the unavoidable
fate of a spurious historical work of any length to be
involved in contradictions. This must be the case to a
very great extent with the Pentateuch, if it be not gen-
uine. If the Pentateuch is spurious, its histories and
laws have been fabricated in successive portions, and
were committed to writing in the course of many cen-
turies by different individuals. From such a mode of
Origination, a mass of contradictions is inseparable, and
the improving hand of a later editor could never be
capable of entirely obliterating them.”
To the above conclusions I may add that we are
expressly told by Ezra (Esdras ii. 14) that he him-
self, aided by five other persons, wrote these books in
the space of forty days. He says that at the time
222 THE PENTATEUCH.
of the Babylonian captivity the ancient sacred writings
of the Jews were burnt, and gives a particular detail of
the circumstances under which these were composed.
IHe sets forth that he undertook to write all that had
been done in the world since the beginning. It may
be said that the books of Esdras are apocryphal, but
in return it may be demanded, Has that conclusion been
reached on evidence that will withstand modern criti-
cism : In the early ages of Christianity, when the
story of the fall of man was not considered as essential
to the Christian system, and the doctrine of the atone-
ment had not attained that precision which Anselm
eventually gave it, it was very generally admitted by
the Fathers of the Church that Ezra probably did so
compose the Pentateuch. Thus St. Jerome says, “Sive
Mosem dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi, sive Es-
dram ejusdem instauratorem operis, non recuso.” Cle-
mens Alexandrinus Says that when these books had
been destroyed in the captivity of Nebuchadnezzar,
Esdras, having become inspired prophetically, repro-
duced them. Irenaeus says the same.
The incidents contained in Genesis, from the first
to the tenth chapters inclusive (chapters which, in their
bearing upon Science, are of more importance than other
portions of the Pentateuch), have been obviously com-
piled from short, fragmentary legends of various author-
ship. To the critical eye they all, however, present
peculiarities which demonstrate that they were written
on the banks of the Euphrates, and not in the Desert of
Arabia. They contain many Chaldaisms. An Egyptian
would not speak of the Mediterranean Sea as being west
of him, an Assyrian would. Their scenery and machinery,
if such expressions may with propriety be used, are al-
together Assyrian, not Egyptian. They were such rec-
ASSYRIAN TILE RECORDS. 223
ords as one might expect to meet with in the cuneiform
impressions of the tile libraries of the Mesopotamian
kings. It is affirmed that one such legend, that of the
Deluge, has already been exhumed, and it is not beyond
the bounds of probability that the remainder may in
like manner be obtained.
From such Assyrian sources, the legends of the crea-
tion of the earth and heaven, the garden of Eden, the
making of man from clay, and of woman from One of
his ribs, the temptation by the serpent, the naming of
animals, the cherubim and flaming sword, the Deluge
and the ark, the drying up of the waters by the wind,
the building of the Tower of Babel, and the confusion
of tongues, were obtained by Ezra. He commences ab-
ruptly the proper history of the Jews in the eleventh
chapter. At that point his universal history ceases; he
occupies himself with the story of one family, the de-
scendants of Shem.
It is of this restriction that the Duke of Argyll, in
his book on “Primeval Man,” very graphically says:
“In the genealogy of the family of Shem we have a list
of names which are names, and nothing more to us. It
is a genealogy which neither does, nor pretends to do,
more than to trace the order of succession among a few
families only, out of the millions then already existing
in the world. Nothing but this order of succession is
given, nor is it at all certain that this order is consecutive
or complete. Nothing is told us of all that lay behind
that curtain of thick darkness, in front of which these
names are made to pass; and yet there are, as it were,
momentary liftings, through which we have glimpses
of great movements which were going on, and had been
long going on beyond. No shapes are distinctly seen.
Even the direction of those movements can only be
224 DIVERSE AUTHORSHIP OF THE PENTATEUCH.
guessed. Put voices are heard which are as the voices
of many waters.” I agree in the opinion of Hupfeld,
that “the discovery that the Pentateuch is put together
out of various Sources, or original documents, is beyond
all doubt not only one of the most important and most
pregnant with consequences for the interpretation of
the historical books of the Old Testament, or rather for
the whole of theology and history, but it is also one of
the most certain discoveries which have been made in
the domain of criticism and the history of literature.
Whatever the anticritical party may bring forward to
the contrary, it will maintain itself, and not retrograde
again through any thing, so long as there exists such a
thing as criticism; and it will not be easy for a reader
upon the stage of culture on which we stand in the
present day, if he goes to the examination unpreju-
diced, and with an uncorrupted power of appreciating
the truth, to be able to ward off its influence.”
What then? shall we give up these books? Does not
the admission that the narrative of the fall in Eden is
legendary carry with it the surrender of that most sol-
emn and sacred of Christian doctrines, the atonement?
Let us reflect on this! Christianity, in its earliest
days, when it was converting and conquering the world,
knew little or nothing about that doctrine. We have
seen that, in his “Apology,” Tertullian did not think
it worth his while to mention it. It originated among
the Gnostic heretics. It was not admitted by the Alex-
andrian theological school. It was never prominently
advanced by the Fathers. It was not brought into its
present commanding position until the time of Anselm.
Philo Judaeus speaks of the story of the fall as symboli-
cal; Origen regarded it as an allegory. Perhaps some
of the Protestant churches may, with reason, be accused
INFALLIBILITY. 225
of inconsistency, since in part they consider it as myth-
ical, in part real. But, if, with them, we admit that the
Serpent is symbolical of Satan, does not that cast an air
of allegory over the whole narrative?
It is to be regretted that the Christian Church has
burdened itself with the defense of these books, and
voluntarily made itself answerable for their manifest
contradictions and errors. Their vindication, if it were
possible, should have been resigned to the Jews, among
whom they originated, and by whom they have been
transmitted to us. Still more, it is to be deeply regret-
ted that the Pentateuch, a production so imperfect as
to be unable to stand the touch of modern criticism,
should be put forth as the arbiter of Science. Let it be
remembered that the exposure of the true character of
these books has been made, not by captious enemies,
but by pious and learned churchmen, some of them of
the highest dignity.
While thus the Protestant churches have insisted on
the acknowledgment of the Scriptures as the criterion
of truth, the Catholic has, in our own times, declared
the infallibility of the pope. It may be said that this
infallibility applies only to moral or religious things;
but where shall the line of separation be drawn 7 Omnis-
cience cannot be limited to a restricted group of ques-
tions; in its very nature it implies the knowledge of all,
and infallibility means omniscience.
Doubtless, if the fundamental principles of Italian
Christianity be admitted, their logical issue is an infal-
lible pope. There is no need to dwell on the unphilo-
Sophical nature of this conception; it is destroyed by
an examination of the political history of the papacy,
and the biography of the popes. The former exhibits
all the errors and mistakes to which institutions of a
226 INFALLIBILITY.
confessedly human character have been found liable; the
latter is only too frequently a story of sin and shame.
It was not possible that the authoritative promulga-
tion of the dogma of papal infallibility should meet
among enlightened Catholics universal acceptance. Se-
rious and wide-spread dissent has been produced. A
doctrine so revolting to common-sense could not find
any other result. There are many who affirm that, if
infallibility exists anywhere, it is in oecumenical coun-
cils, and yet such councils have not always agreed with
each other. There are also many who remember that
councils have deposed popes, and have passed judgment
on their clamors and contentions. Not without reason
do Protestants demand, What proof can be given that
infallibility exists in the Church at all? what proof is
there that the Church has ever been fairly or justly
represented in any council' and why should the truth
be ascertained by the vote of a majority rather than by
that of a minority? How often it has happened that
one man, standing at the right point of view, has de-
scried the truth, and, after having been denounced and
persecuted by all others, they have eventually been con-
strained to adopt his declarations! Of many great dis-
coveries, has not this been the history !
/ It is not for Science to compose these contesting
V claims; it is not for her to determine whether the crite-
rion of truth for the religious man shall be found in
the Bible, or in the oecumenical council, or in the pope.
She only asks the right, which she so willingly accords
to others, of adopting a criterion of her own. If she
regards unhistorical legends with disdain; if she consid-
ers the vote of a majority in the ascertainment of truth
with supreme indifference; if she leaves the claim of
infallibility in any human being to be vindicated by the
THE WOLUME OF NATURE. 227
stern logic of coming events—the cold impassiveness
which in these matters she maintains is what she dis-
plays toward her own doctrines. Without hesitation
she would give up the theories of gravitation or undu-
lations, if she found that they were irreconcilable with
facts. For her the volume of inspiration is the book
of Nature, of which the open scroll is ever spread forth
before the eyes of every man. Confronting all, it needs
no societies for its dissemination. Infinite in extent,
eternal in duration, human ambition and human fanati-
cism have never been able to tamper with it. On the
earth it is illustrated by all that is magnificent and
beautiful, on the heavens its letters are suns and worlds.
CHAPTER IX.
CONTROWERSY RESPECTING THE GOVERNMENT OF TIII)
TJNIVERSE.
There are two conceptions of the government of the world: 1. By Provi.
dence; 2. By Law.—The former maintained by the priesthood.—Sketch
of the introduction of the latter.
Kepler discovers the laws that preside over the solar system.—His works are
denounced by papal authority.— The foundations of mechanical phi-
losophy are laid by Da Vinci—Galileo discovers the fundamental laws
of Dynamics.-Newton applies them to the movements of the celestial
bodies, and shows that the Solar system is governed by mathematical
necessity.—Herschel extends that conclusion to the universe. — The
nebular hypothesis.-Theological exceptions to it.
Evidences of the control of law in the construction of the earth, and in the
development of the animal and plant series.—They arose by Evolu-
tion, not by Creation.
The reign of law is exhibited by the historic career of human Societies, and
in the case of individual man. -
Partial adoption of this view by some of the Reformed Churches.
Two interpretations may be given of the mode of
government of the world. It may be by incessant di-
vine interventions, or by the operation of unvarying law.
To the adoption of the former a priesthood will al-
ways incline, since it must desire to be considered as
standing between the prayer of the Votary and the provi.
dential act. Its importance is magnified by the power
it claims of determining what that act shall be. In the
pre-Christian (Roman) religion, the grand office of the
GOVERNMENT BY LAW. 229
priesthood was the discovery of future events by oracles,
omens, or an inspection of the entrails of animals, and
by the offering of sacrifices to propitiate the gods. In
the later, the Christian times, a higher power was
claimed; the clergy asserting that, by their interces.
sions, they could regulate the course of affairs, avert
dangers, secure benefits, work miracles, and even change
the order of Nature.
Not without reason, therefore, did they look upon
the doctrine of government by unvarying law with dis-
favor. It seemed to depreciate their dignity, to lessen
their importance. To them there was something shock-
ing in a God who cannot be swayed by human entreaty,
a cold, passionless divinity—something frightful in fa-
talism, destiny.
But the orderly movement of the heavens could not
fail in all ages to make a deep impression on thought-
ful observers—the rising and setting of the sun; the
increasing or diminishing light of the day; the waxing
and waning of the moon; the return of the seasons in
their proper courses; the measured march of the wander-
ing planets in the sky—what are all these, and a thou-
Sand such, but manifestations of an orderly and un-
changing procession of events? The faith of early ob-
servers in this interpretation may perhaps have been
shaken by the occurrence of such a phenomenon as an
eclipse, a sudden and mysterious breach of the ordinary
course of natural events; but it would be restimed in
tenfold strength as soon as the discovery was made that
eclipses themselves recur, and may be predicted.
Astronomical predictions of all kinds depend upon
the admission of this fact—that there never has been
and never will be any intervention in the operation of
natural laws. The Scientific philosopher affirms that
230 KEPLER.
the condition of the world at any given moment is the .
direct result of its condition in the preceding moment,
and the direct cause of its condition in the subsequent
moment. Law and chance are only different names for
mechanical necessity. *
About fifty years after the death of Copernicus,
John Kepler, a native of Würtemberg, who had adopted
the heliocentric theory, and who was deeply impressed
with the belief that relationships exist in the revolutions
of the planetary bodies round the Sun, and that these if
correctly examined would reveal the laws under which
those movements take place, devoted himself to the
study of the distances, times, and velocities of the plan-
ets, and the form of their orbits. His method was, to
submit the observations to which he had access, such
as those of Tycho Brahe, to computations based first on
one and then on another hypothesis, rejecting the hy-
pothesis if he found that the calculations did not accord
with the observations. The incredible labor he had
undergone (he says, “I considered, and I computed,
until I almost went mad”) was at length rewarded, and
in 1609 he published his book, “On the Motions of the
Planet Mars.” In this he had attempted to reconcile
the movements of that planet to the hypothesis of eccen-
trics and epicycles, but eventually discovered that the
orbit of a planet is not a circle but an ellipse, the sun
being in one of the foci, and that the areas swept over
by a liné drawn from the planet to the Sun are propor-
tional to the times. These constitute what are now
known as the first and second laws of Kepler. Eight
years subsequently, he was rewarded by the discovery
of a third law, defining the relation between the mean
distances of the planets from the Sun and the times of
their revolutions; “the squares of the periodic times are
KEPLER, 231
proportional to the cubes of the distances.” In “An
Epitome of the Copernican System,” published in 1618,
he announced this law, and showed that it holds good'
for the satellites of Jupiter as regards their primary.
Hence it was inferred that the laws which preside over
the grand movements of the Solar system preside also
over the less movements of its constituent parts.
The conception of law which is unmistakably con-
veyed by Kepler's discoveries, and the evidence they
gave in support of the heliocentric as against the geo-
centric theory, could not fail to incur the reprehension
of the Roman authorities. The congregation of the
Index, therefore, when they denounced the Copernican
system as utterly contrary to the Holy Scriptures, pro-
hibited Kepler’s “Epitome” of that system. It was on
this occasion that Kepler submitted his celebrated re-
monstrance: “Eighty years have elapsed during which
the doctrines of Copernicus regarding the movement of
the earth and the immobility of the sun have been pro-
mulgated without hinderance, because it was deemed
allowable to dispute concerning natural things, and to
elucidate the works of God, and now that new testimony
is discovered in proof of the truth of those doctrines—
testimony which was not known to the spiritual judges
—ye would prohibit the promulgation of the true sys-
tem of the structure of the universe.”
None of Kepler's contemporaries believed the law
of the areas, nor was it accepted until the publication
of the “Principia” of Newton. In fact, no one in those
times understood the philosophical meaning of Kepler’s
laws. He himself did not foresee what they must in-
evitably lead to. His mistakes showed how far he was
from perceiving their result. Thus he thought that
each planet is the seat of an intelligent principle, and
232 REPLER,
that there is a relation between the magnitudes of the
orbits of the five principal planets and the five regular
solids of geometry. At first he inclined to believe that
the orbit of Mars is oval, nor was it until after a wea-
risome study that he detected the grand truth, its ellip-
tical form. An idea of the incorruptibility of the celes-
tial objects had led to the adoption of the Aristotelian
doctrine of the perfection of circular motions, and to
the belief that there were none but circular motions in
the heavens. He bitterly complains of this as having
been a fatal “thief of his time.” His philosophical
daring is illustrated in his breaking through this time-
honored tradition.
In some most important particulars Kepler antici-
pated Newton. He was the first to give clear ideas re-
specting gravity. He says every particle of matter will
rest until it is disturbed by some other particle—that
the earth attracts a stone more than the stone attracts
the earth, and that bodies move to each other in propor-
tion to their masses; that the earth would ascend to the
moon one-fifty-fourth of the distance, and the moon
would move toward the earth the other fifty-three. He
affirms that the moon's attraction causes the tides, and
that the planets must impress irregularities on the
moon’s motions. &
The progress of astronomy is obviously divisible
into three periods:
* 1. The period of observation of the apparent mo
tions of the heavenly bodies.
2. The period of discovery of their real motions, and
particularly of the laws of the planetary revolutions;
this was signally illustrated by Copernicus and Kepler.
3. The period of the ascertainment of the causes of
those laws. It was the epoch of Newton. •
DA. WINCI. 233
The passage of the second into the third period de-
pended on the development of the Dynamical branch
of mechanics, which had been in a stagnant condition
from the time of Archimedes or the Alexandrian
School.
In Christian Europe there had not been a cultiva-
tor of mechanical philosophy until Leonardo da Vinci,
who was born A. D. 1452. To him, and not to Lord
Bacon, must be attributed the renaissance of Science.
Dacon was not only ignorant of mathematics, but de-
preciated its application to physical inquiries. He
contemptuously rejected the Copernican system, alleg-
ing absurd objections to it. While Galileo was on the
brink of his great telescopic discoveries, Bacon was pub-
lishing doubts as to the utility of instruments in scien-
tific investigations. To ascribe the inductive method to
him is to ignore history. His fanciful philosophical
suggestions have never been of the slightest practical
use. No One has ever thought of employing them.
Except among English readers, his name is almost un-
known. -
To Da Vinci I shall have occasion to allude more
particularly on a subsequent page. Of his works still
remaining in manuscript, two volumes are at Milan, and
one in Paris, carried there by Napoleon. After an in-
terval of about seventy years, Da Vinci was followed by
the Dutch engineer, Stevinus, whose work on the prin-
ciples of equilibrium was published in 1586. Six years
afterward appeared Galileo's treatise on mechanics.
To this great Italian is due the establishment of the
three fundamental laws of dynamics, known as the Laws
of Motion.
The consequences of the establishment of these laws
were very important.
234. - GALILEO.
It had been supposed that continuous movements,
such, for instance, as those of the celestial bodies, could
only be maintained by a perpetual consumption and per-
petual application of force, but the first of Galileo's laws
declared that every body will persevere in its state of
rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, until it is
compelled to change that state by disturbing forces. A
clear perception of this fundamental principle is essen-
tial to a comprehension of the elementary facts of
physical astronomy. Since all the motions that we wit.
ness taking place on the surface of the earth soon come
to an end, we are led to infer that rest is the natural
condition of things. We have made, then, a very great
advance when we have become satisfied that a body is
equally indifferent to rest as to motion, and that it
equally perseveres in either state until disturbing forces
are applied. Such disturbing forces in the case of com-
mon movements are friction and the resistance of the
air. When no such resistances exist, movement must be
perpetual, as is the case with the heavenly bodies, which
are moving in a void.
Forces, no matter what their difference of magni-
tude may be, will exert their full influence conjointly,
each as though the other did not exist. Thus, when a
ball is suffered to drop from the mouth of a cannon, it
falls to the ground in a certain interval of time through
the influence of gravity upon it. If, then, it be fired
from the cannon, though now it may be projected Some
thousands of feet in a second, the effect of gravity upon
it will be precisely the same as before. In the inter-
mingling of forces there is no deterioration; each pro-
duces its own specific effect.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, through
the works of Borelli, Hooke, and Huyghens, it had be-
NEWTON. 235
Bome plain that circular motions could be accounted for
by the laws of Galileo. Borelli, treating of the mo-
tions of Jupiter's satellites, shows how a circular move-
ment may arise under the influence of a central force.
Hooke exhibited the inflection of a direct motion into a
circular by a supervening central attraction.
The year 1687 presents, not only an epoch in Euro-
pean science, but also in the intellectual development of
man. It is marked by the publication of the “Prin-
cipia” of Newton, an incomparable, an immortal
work.
On the principle that all bodies attract each other
with forces directly as their masses, and inversely as the
squares of their distances, Newton showed that all the
movements of the celestial bodies may be accounted for,
and that Kepler's laws might all have been predicted—
the elliptic motions—the described areas—the relation
of the times and distances. As we have seen, Newton’s
contemporaries had perceived how circular motions
could be explained; that was a special case, but Newton
furnished the solution of the general problem, contain-
ing all special cases of motion in circles, ellipses, para-
bolas, hyperbolas—that is, in all the conic sections.
The Alexandrian mathematicians had shown that the
direction of movement of falling bodies is toward the
centre of the earth. Newton proved that this must
necessarily be the case, the general effect of the attrac-
tion of all the particles of a sphere being the same as
if they were all concentrated in its centre.
To this central force, thus determining the fall of
bodies, the designation of gravity was given. Up to
this time, no one, except Kepler, had considered how far
its influence reached. It seemed to Newton possible
that it might extend as far as the moon, and be the
236 DNIVERSAL GRAVITATION.
force that deflects her from a rectilinear path, and
makes her revolve in her orbit round the earth. It
was easy to compute, on the principle of the law of
inverse Squares, whether the earth’s attraction was suffi-
cient to produce the observed effect. Employing the
measures of the size of the earth accessible at the time,
Newton, found that the moon’s deflection was only thir-
teen feet in a minute; whereas, if his hypothesis of grav-
itation were true, it should be fifteen feet. But in
1669 Picard, as we have seen, executed the measure-
ment of a degree more carefully than had previously
been done; this changed the estimate of the magnitude
of the earth, and, therefore, of the distance of the moon;
and, Newton’s attention having been directed to it by
some discussions that took place at the Royal Society in
1679, he obtained Picard’s results, went home, took out
his old papers, and resumed his calculations. As they
drew to a close, he became so much agitated that he
was obliged to desire a friend to finish them. The ex-
pected coincidence was established. It was proved that
the moon is retained in her orbit and made to revolve
round the earth by the force of terrestrial gravity. The
genii of Kepler had given place to the vortices of Des-
cartes, and these in their turn to the central force of ,
Newton.
In like manner the earth, and each of the planets,
are made to move in an elliptic orbit round the Sun by
his attractive force, and perturbations arise by reason
of the disturbing action of the planetary masses on One
another. Knowing the masses and the distances, these
disturbances may be computed. Later astronomers have
even succeeded with the inverse problem, that is, know-
ing the perturbations or disturbances, to find the place
and the mass of the disturbing body. Thus, from the
NEWTON. 237
deviations of Uranus from his theoretical position, the
discovery of Neptune was accomplished.
Newton’s merit consisted in this, that he applied the
laws of dynamics to the movements of the celestial
bodies, and insisted that Scientific theories must be sub-
stantiated by the agreement of observations with calcu-
lations.
When Kepler announced his three laws, they were
received with condemnation by the spiritual authorities,
not because of any error they were supposed to present
or to contain, but partly because they gave support to
the Copernican system, and partly because it was judged
inexpedient to admit the prevalence of law of any kind
as opposed to providential intervention. The world
was regarded as the theatre in which the divine will was
daily displayed; it was considered derogatory to the ma-
jesty of God that that will should be fettered in any way.
The power of the clergy was chiefly manifested in the
influence they were alleged to possess in changing his
arbitrary determinations. It was thus that they could
abate the baleful action of comets, secure fine weather or
rain, prevent eclipses, and, arresting the course of Na-
ture, work all manner of miracles; it was thus that the
shadow had been made to go back on the dial, and the
Sun and the moon stopped in mid-career.
In the century preceding the epoch of Newton, a
great religious and political revolution had taken place
—the Teformation. Though its effect had not been the
Securing of complete liberty for thought, it had weak-
ened many qf the old ecclesiastical bonds. In the re-
formed countries there was no power to express a con-
demnation of Newton’s works, and among the clergy
there was no disposition to give themselves any concern
about the matter. At first the attention of the Protes.
238 THE HERSCHELS.
tant was engrossed by the movements of his great enemy
the Catholic, and when that source of disquietude ceased,
and the inevitable partitions of the Reformation arose,
that attention was fastened upon the rival and antag-
onistic Churches. The Lutheran, the Calvinist, the
Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, had something more
urgent on hand than Newton’s mathematical demon-
strations.
So, uncondemned, and indeed unobserved, in this
clamor of fighting sects, Newton's grand theory solidly
established itself. Its philosophical significance was
infinitely more momentous than the dogmas that these
persons were quarreling about. It not only accepted
the heliocentric theory and the laws discovered by Kep-
ler, but it proved that, no matter what might be the
weight of opposing ecclesiastical authority, the sun must
be the centre of our system, and that Kepler's laws are
the result of a mathematical necessity. It is impossible
that they should be other than they are.
But what is the meaning of all this? Plainly that
the Solar system is not interrupted by providential inter-
ventions, but is under the government of irreversible
law—law that is itself the issue of mathematical neces-
sity.
The telescopic observations of Herschel I. Satisfied
him that there are very many double stars—double
not merely because they are accidentally in the same
line of view, but because they are connected physically,
revolving round each other. These observations were
continued and greatly extended by Herschel II. The
elements of the elliptic orbit of the double star # of the
Great Bear were determined by Savary, its period being
fifty-eight and one-quarter years; those of another, G"
Coronae, were determined by Hind, its period being more
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 239
than seven hundred and thirty-six years. The orbital
movement of these double Suns in ellipses compels us
to admit that the law of gravitation holds good far be-
yond the boundaries of the solar system; indeed, as far
as the telescope can reach, it demonstrates the reign of
law. D'Alembert, in the Introduction to the Encyclo-
paedia, says: “The universe is but a single fact ; it is only
one great truth.”
Shall we, then, conclude that the Solar and the starry
systems have been called into existence by God, and
that he has then imposed upon them by his arbitrary
will laws under the control of which it was his pleasure
that their movements should be made &
Or are there reasons for believing that these several
systems came into existence not by such an arbitrary fiat,
but through the operation of law . -
The following are some peculiarities displayed by
the solar system as enumerated by Laplace. All the
planets and their satellites move in ellipses of such small
eccentricity that they are nearly circles. All the planets
move in the same direction and nearly in the same
plane. The movements of the satellites are in the same
direction as those of the planets. The movements of
rotation of the Sun, of the planets, and the satellites, are
in the same direction as their orbital motions, and in
planes little different.
It is impossible that so many coincidences could be
the result of chancel Is it not plain that there must
have been a common tie among all these bodies, that
they are only parts of what must once have been a sin-
gle mass?
But if we admit that the substance of which the
Solar system consists once existed in a nebulous con-
dition, and was in rotation, all the above peculiarities
240 NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
follow as necessary mechanical consequences. Nay,
more, the formation of planets, the formation of satel-
lites and of asteroids, is accounted for. We see why
the Outer planets and Satellites are larger than the in-
terior ones; why the larger planets rotate rapidly, and
the small ones slowly; why of the satellites the outer
planets have more, the inner fewer. We are furnished
with indications of the time of revolution of the planets
in their orbits, and of the satellites in theirs; we per-
ceive the mode of formation of Saturn's rings. We
find an explanation of the physical condition of the Sun,
and the transitions of condition through which the earth
and moon have passed, as indicated by their geology.
But two exceptions to the above peculiarities have
been noted; they are in the cases of Uranus and Nep-
tune.
The existence of such a nebulous mass once admit-
ted, all the rest follows as a matter of necessity. Is
there not, however, a most serious objection in the way?
Is not this to exclude Almighty God from the worlds
he has made 4
First, we must be satisfied whether there is any solid
evidence for admitting the existence of such a nebulous
Iſla SS.
The nebular hypothesis rests primarily on the tele-
scopic discovery made by Herschel I., that there are
scattered here and there in the heavens pale, gleaming
patches of light, a few of which are large enough to be
visible to the naked eye. Of these, many may be re-
Solved by a sufficient telescopic power into a congeries
of stars, but some, such as the great nebula in Orion,
have resisted the best instruments hitherto made.
It was asserted by those who were indisposed to ac-
cept the nebular hypothesis, that the non-resolution was
NEBULAR FIYPOTHESIS. 241
due to imperfection in the telescopes used. In these
instruments two distinct functions may be observed:
their light-gathering power depends on the diameter of
their object mirror or lens, their defining power depends
on the exquisite correctness of their optical surfaces.
Grand instruments may possess the former quality in
perfection by reason of their size, but the latter very
imperfectly, either through want of original configura-
tion, or distortion arising from flexure through their
own weight. But, unless an instrument be perfect in
this respect, as well as adequate in the other, it may fail
to decompose a nebula into discrete points.
Fortunately, however, other means for the settle-
ment of this question are available. In 1846, it was
discovered by the author of this book that the spectrum
of an ignited solid is continuous—that is, has neither
dark nor bright lines. Fraunhofer had previously made
known that the spectrum of ignited gases is discontin-
uous. Here, then, is the means of determining whether
the light emitted by a given nebula comes from an in-
candescent gas, or from a congeries of ignited solids,
stars, or Suns. If its spectrum be discontinuous, it is a
true nebula or gas; if continuous, a congeries of stars.
In 1864, Mr. Huggins made this examination in the
case of a nebula in the constellation Draco. It proved
to be gaseous.
Subsequent observations have shown that, of sixty
nebulae examined, nineteen give discontinuous or gas-
eous spectra——the remainder continuous ones.
It may, therefore, be admitted that physical evidence
has at length been obtained, demonstrating the exist-
ence of vast masses of matter in a gaseous condition,
and at a temperature of incandescence. The hypothesis
of Taplace has thus a firm basis. In such a nebular
11
242 NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
mass, cooling by radiation is a necessary incident, and
condensation and rotation the inevitable results. There
must be a separation of rings all lying in one plane, a
generation of planets and satellites all rotating alike,
a central Sun and engirdling globes. From a chaotic
mass, through the operation of natural laws, an organ-
ized system has been produced. An integration of
matter into worlds has taken place through a decline
of heat.
If such be the cosmogony of the Solar system, such
the genesis of the planetary worlds, we are constrained
to extend our views of the dominion of law, and to
recognize its agency in the creation as well as in the
conservation of the innumerable orbs that throng the
TIIA1VéI’Sé.
But, again, it may be asked: “Is there not some-
thing profoundly impious in this? Are we not exclud-
ing Almighty God from the world he has made 2°
We have often witnessed the formation of a cloud
in a serene sky. A hazy point, barely perceptible—a
little wreath of mist—increases in Volume, and becomes
darker and denser, until it obscures a large portion of
the heavens. It throws itself into fantastic shapes, it
gathers a glory from the sun, is borne onward by the
wind, and, perhaps, as it gradually came, So it gradually
disappears, melting away in the untroubled air.
Now, we say that the little vesicles of which this
cloud was composed arose from the condensation of
water-vapor prečxisting in the atmosphere, through re-
duction of temperature; we show how they assumed
the form they present. We assign optical reasons for
the brightness or blackness of the cloud; we explain,
on mechanical principles, its drifting before the wind;
for its disappearance we account on the principles of
NEBULAR IIYPOTHESIS. 243
chemistry. It never occurs to us to invoke the inter-
position of the Almighty in the production and fashion-
ing of this fugitive form. We explain all the facts con-
nected with it by physical laws, and perhaps should
reverentially hesitate to call into operation the finger
of God.
But the universe is nothing more than such a cloud—
a cloud of Suns and worlds. Supremely grand though
it may seem to us, to the Infinite and Eternal Intellect
it is no more than a fleeting mist. If there be a multi-
plicity of worlds in infinite space, there is also a suc-
cession of worlds in infinite time. As one after another
cloud replaces cloud in the skies, so this starry system,
the universe, is the successor of countless others that
have preceded it—the predecessor of countless others
that will follow. There is an unceasing metamorpho-
sis, a sequence of events, without beginning or end.
If, on physical principles, we account for minor me-
teorological incidents, mists and clouds, is it not permis-
sible for us to appeal to the same principle in the origin
of world-systems and universes, which are only clouds
On a space-scale Somewhat larger, mists on a time-scale
Somewhat less transient' Can any man place the line
which bounds the physical on one side, the supernatural
on the other ? Do not our estimates of the extent and
the duration of things depend altogether on our point
of view 7 Were we set in the midst of the great nebula
of Orion, how transcendently magnificent the scene! The
vast transformations, the condensations of a fiery mist
into worlds, might seem worthy of the immediate pres-
ence, the Supervision of God; here, at our distant sta-
tion, where millions of miles are inappreciable to our
eyes, and Suns seem no bigger than motes in the air,
that nebula is more insignificant than the faintest cloud.
244 DECLINE OF HEAT IN THE EARTH.
Galileo, in his description of the constellation of Orion,
did not think it worth while so much as to mention it.
The most rigorous theologian of those days would have
seen nothing to blame in imputing its origin to second-
ary causes, nothing irreligious in failing to invoke the
arbitrary interference of God in its metamorphoses. If
such be the conclusion to which we come respecting it,
what would be the conclusion to which an Intelligence
seated in it might come respecting us? It occupies an
extent of space millions of times greater than that of our
Solar system; we are invisible from it, and therefore
absolutely insignificant. Would such an Intelligence
think it necessary to require for our origin and main-
tenance the immediate intervention of God?
From the solar system let us descend to what is still
more insignificant—a little portion of it; let us descend
to our own earth. In the lapse of time it has expe-
rienced great changes. Have these been due to inces-
Sant divine interventions, or to the continuous operation
of unfailing law The aspect of Nature perpetually
varies under our eyes, still more grandly and strikingly
has it altered in geological times. But the laws guiding
those changes never exhibit the slightest variation. In
the midst of immense vicissitudes they are immutable.
The present order of things is only a link in a vast con-
nected chain reaching back to an incalculable past, and
forward to an infinite future.
There is evidence, geological and astronomical, that
the temperature of the earth and her satellite was in
the remote past very much higher than it is now. A
decline so slow as to be imperceptible at short intervals,
but manifest enough in the course of many ages, has oc-
curred. The heat has been lost by radiation into Space.
COOLING TAKES PLACE UNDER LAW. 245,
The cooling of a mass of any kind, no matter whether
large or small, is not discontinuous; it does not go on by
fits and starts; it takes place under the operation of a
mathematical law, though for such mighty changes as
are here contemplated neither the formula of Newton,
nor that of Dulong and Petit, may apply. It signifies
nothing that periods of partial decline, glacial periods,
or others of temporary elevation, have been intercalated;
it signifies nothing whether these variations may have
arisen from topographical variations, as those of level,
or from periodicities in the radiation of the sun. A
periodical sun would act as a mere perturbation in the
gradual decline of heat. The perturbations of the
planetary motions are a confirmation, not a disproof, of
gravity.
Now, such a decline of temperature must have been
attended by innumerable changes of a physical character
in our globe. Her dimensions must have diminished
through contraction, the length of her day must have
lessened, her surface must have collapsed, and fractures
taken place along the lines of least resistance; the density
of the sea must have increased, its volume must have
become less; the constitution of the atmosphere must
have varied, especially in the amount of water-vapor
and carbonic acid that it contained; the barometric press-
ure must have declined.
These changes, and very many more that might be
mentioned, must have taken place not in a discontinuous
but in an orderly manner, since the master-fact, the
decline of heat, that was causing them, was itself follow-
ing a mathematical law.
But not alone did lifeless Nature submit to these
inevitable mutations; living Nature was also simultane-
ously affected.
246 CONSEQUENT WARIATIONS OF ORGANISMS.
An organic form of any kind, vegetable or animal,
Will remain unchanged only so long as the environment
in which it is placed remains unchanged. Should an
alteration in the environment occur, the organism will
either be modified or destroyed.
Destruction is more likely to happen as the change
in the environment is more sudden; modification or
transformation is more possible as that change is more
gradual.
Since it is demonstrably certain that lifeless Nature
has in the lapse of ages undergone vast modifications;
since the crust of the earth, and the sea, and the atmos-
phere, are no longer such as they once were; since the
distribution of the land and the ocean and all manner
of physical conditions have varied; since there have been
such grand changes in the environment of living things
on the surface of our planet—it necessarily follows that
organic Nature must have passed through destructions
and transformations in correspondence thereto.
That such extinctions, such modifications, have taken
place, how copious, how convincing, is the evidence 1
Here, again, we must observe that, since the disturb-
ing agency was itself following a mathematical law,
these its results must be considered as following that law
too.
Such considerations, then, plainly force upon us the
conclusion that the organic progress of the world has
been guided by the operation of immutable law—not
determined by discontinuous, disconnected, arbitrary in-
terventions of God. ' They incline us to view favorably
the idea of transmutations of one form into another,
rather than that of sudden creations.
Creation implies an abrupt appearance, transforma-
tion a gradual change.
THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 247
In this manner is presented to our contemplation
the great theory of Evolution. Every organic being
has a place in a chain of events. It is not an isolated,
a capricious fact, but an unavoidable phenomenon. It
has its place in that vast, orderly concourse which has
successively risen in the past, has introduced the pres-
ent, and is preparing the way for a predestined future.
From point to point in this vast progression there has
been a gradual, a definite, a continuous unfolding, a
resistless order of evolution. But in the midst of these
mighty changes stand forth immutable the laws that are
dominating over all. !
If we examine the introduction of any type of life
in the animal series, we find that it is in accordance
with transformation, not with creation. Its beginning
is under an imperfect form in the midst of other forms,
of which the time is nearly complete, and which are
passing into extinction. By degrees, one species after
another in succession more and more perfect arises, un-
til, after many ages, a culmination is reached. From
that there is, in like manner, a long, a gradual decline.
Thus, though the mammal type of life is the charac-
teristic of the Tertiary and post-Tertiary periods, it does
not suddenly make its appearance without premonition
in those periods. Far back, in the Secondary, we find
it under imperfect forms, struggling, as it were, to make
good a foothold. At length it gains a predominance
under higher and better models.
So, too, of reptiles, the characteristic type of life of
the Secondary period. As we see in a dissolving view,
out of the fading outlines of a scene that is passing
away, the dim form of a new one emerging, which grad-
ually gains strength, reaches its culmination, and then
melts away in Some other that is displacing it, so rep-
248 DEVELOPMENT BY L.A.W.
tile-life doubtfully appears, reaches its culmination, and
gradually declines. In all this there is nothing abrupt;
the changes shade into each other by insensible degrees.
How could it be otherwise? The hot-blooded ani-
mals could not exist in an atmosphere so laden with
carbonic acid as was that of the primitive times. Dut
the removal of that noxious ingredient from the air
by the leaves of plants under the influence of sunlight,
the enveloping of its carbon in the earth under the form
of coal, the disengagement of its oxygen, permitted their
life. As the atmosphere was thus modified, the sea was
involved in the change; it surrendered a large part of its
carbonic acid, and the limestone hitherto held in Solu-
tion by it was deposited in the solid form. For every
equivalent of carbon buried in the earth, there was an
equivalent of carbonate of lime separated from the Sea
—not necessarily in an amorphous condition, most fre-
quently under an organic form. The Sunshine kept up
its work day by day, but there were demanded myriads
of days for the work to be completed. It was a slow
passage from a noxious to a purified atmosphere, and
an equally slow passage from a cold-blooded to a hot-
blooded type of life. But the physical changes were
taking place under the control of law, and the organic
transformations were not sudden or arbitrary providen-
tial acts. They were the immediate, the inevitable con-
sequences of the physical changes, and therefore, like
them, the necessary issue of law.
|For a more detailed consideration of this subject, I
Inay refer the reader to Chapters I., II, VII., of the
second book of my “Treatise on Human Physiology,”
published in 1856.
Is the world, then, governed by law or by providen-
DEVELOPMENT IN MAN. 249
tial interventions, abruptly breaking the proper Sequence
of events? __-- ~~~~
To complete our view of this question, we turn
finally to what, in one sense, is the most insignificant,
in another the most important, case that can be consid-
ered. Do human societies, in their historic career,
exhibit the marks of a predetermined progress in an
unavoidable track? Is there any evidence that the life
of nations is under the control of immutable law?
May we conclude that, in Society, as in the individ-
ual man, parts never spring from nothing, but are evolved
or developed from parts that are already in existence %
If any one should object to or deride the doctrine
of the evolution or successive development of the ani-
mated forms which constitute that unbroken organic
chain reaching from the beginning of life on the globe
to the present times, let him reflect that he has himself
passed through modifications the counterpart of those
he disputes. For nine months his type of life was
aquatic, and during that time he assumed, in succession,
many distinct but correlated forms. At birth his type
of life became aérial; he began respiring the atmospher-
ic air; new elements of food were supplied to him; the
mode of his nutrition changed ; but as yet he could see
nothing, hear nothing, notice nothing. By degrees
conscious existence was assumed; he became aware that
there is an external world. In due time organs adapted to
another change of food, the teeth, appeared, and a change
of food ensued. He then passed through the stages of
childhood and youth, his bodily form developing, and
with it his intellectual powers. At about fifteen years,
in consequence of the evolution which special parts of
his system had attained, his moral character changed.
New ideas, new passions, influenced him. And that
250 DEVELOPMENT IN MAN.
that was the cause, and this the effect, is demonstrated
when, by the skill of the surgeon, those parts have been
interfered with. Nor does the development, the meta-
morphosis, end here; it requires many years for the body
to reach its full perfection, many years for the mind.
A culmination is at length reached, and then there is a
decline. I need not picture its mournful incidents—
the corporeal, the intellectual enfeeblement. Perhaps
there is little exaggeration in Saying that in less than a
century every human being on the face of the globe, if
not cut off in an untimely manner, has passed through
all these changes.
Is there for each of us a providential intervention as
we thus pass from stage to stage of life? or shall we
not rather believe that the countless myriads of human
beings who have peopled the earth have been under the
guidance of an unchanging, a universal law §
but individuals are the elementary constituents of
communities—nations. They maintain therein a rela-
tion like that which the particles of the body maintain
to the body itself. These, introduced into it, commence
and complete their function; they die, and are dismissed.
Like the individual, the nation comes into existence
without its own knowledge, and dies without its own
consent, often against its own will. National life differs
in no particular from individual, except in this, that it
is spread over a longer span, but no nation can escape its
inevitable term. Each, if its history be well considered,
shows its time of infancy, its time of youth, its time of
maturity, its time of decline, if its phases of life be com-
|leted.
In the phases of existence of all, so far as those
phases are completed, there are common characteristics,
and, as like accordances in individuals point out that all
INTERVENTION AND LAW. 251
are living under a reign of law, we are justified in in-
ferring that the course of nations, and indeed the prog-
ress of humanity, does not take place in a chance or
random way, that supernatural interventions never break
the chain of historic acts, that every historic event has
its warrant in Some preceding event, and gives war-
rant to others that are to follow.
JBut this conclusion is the essential principle of Stoi-
cism—that Grecian philosophical system which, as I
have already said, offered a support in their hour of
trial and an unwavering guide in the vicissitudes of life,
not only to many illustrious Greeks, but also to some of
the great philosophers, statesmen, generals, and emper-
ors of Rome; a system which excluded chance from
every thing, and asserted the direction of all events by
irresistible necessity, to the promotion of perfect good;
a system of earnestness, sternness, austerity, virtue—
a protest in favor of the common-sense of mankind.
And perhaps we shall not dissent from the remark of
Montesquieu, who affirms that the destruction of the
Stoics was a great calamity to the human race; for they
alone made great citizens, great men.
To the principle of government by law, Latin Chris-
tianity, in its papal form, is in absolute contradiction.
The history of this branch of the Christian Church is
almost a diary of miracles and supernatural interven-
tions. These show that the supplications of holy men
have often arrested the course of Nature—if, indeed,
there be any such course; that images and pictures have
worked wonders; that bones, hairs, and other sacred rel-
ics, have wrought miracles. The criterion or proof of
the authenticity of many of these objects is, not an un-
challengeable record of their origin and history, but an
exhibition of their miracle-working powers.
252 INTERVENTION AND LAW.
Is not that a strange logic which finds proof of an
asserted fact in an inexplicable illustration of something
else?
Even in the darkest ages intelligent Christian men
must have had misgivings as to these alleged providen-
tial or miraculous interventions. There is a solemn
grandeur in the orderly progress of Nature which pro-
foundly impresses us; and such is the character of con-
tinuity in the events of our individual life that we in-
stinctively doubt the occurrence of the supernatural in
that of our neighbor. The intelligent man knows well
that, for his personal behoof, the course of Nature has
never been checked; for him no miracle has ever been
worked; he attributes justly every event of his life to
Some antecedent event; this he looks upon as the cause,
that as the consequence. When it is affirmed that, in
his neighbor's behalf, such grand interventions have been
vouchsafed, he cannot do otherwise than believe that his
neighbor is either deceived, or practising deception.
As might, then, have been anticipated, the Catho-
lic doctrine of miraculous intervention received a rude
shock at the time of the Reformation, when predestina-
tion and election were upheld by some of the greatest
theologians, and accepted by some of the greatest Prot-
estant Churches. With stoical austerity Calvin declares:
“We were elected from eternity, before the foundation
of the world, from no merit of our own, but according
to the purpose of the divine pleasure.” In affirming
this, Calvin was resting on the belief that God has from
all eternity decreed whatever comes to pass. Thus,
after the lapse of many ages, were again emerging into
prominence the ideas of the Basilidians and Valen-
tinians, Christian sects of the second century, whose
Gnostical views led to the engraftment of the great
PREDESTINATION. 253
doctrine of the Trinity upon Christianity. They assert-
ed that all the actions of men are necessary, that even
faith is a natural gift, to which men are forcibly deter-
mined, and must therefore be saved, though their lives
be ever so irregular. From the Supreme God all things
proceeded. Thus, also, came into prominence the views
which were developed by Augustine in his work, “De
dono perseverantiae.” These were: that God, by his
arbitrary will, has selected certain persons without re-
spect to foreseen faith or good works, and has infallibly
ordained to bestow upon them eternal happiness; other
persons, in like manner, he has condemned to eternal
reprobation. The Sublapsarians believed that “God
permitted the fall of Adam;” the Supralapsarians that
“he predestinated it, with all its pernicious conse-
quences, from all eternity, and that our first parents
had no liberty from the beginning.” In this, these
Sectarians disregarded the remark of St. Augustine:
“Nefas est dicere Deum aliquid nisi bonum predesti-
nare.”
Is it true, then, that “predestination to eternal hap-
piness is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby, be-
fore the foundations of the world were laid, he hath
constantly decreed by his council, secret to us, to de-
liver from curse and damnation those whom he hath
chosen out of mankind?” Is it true that of the hu-
man family there are some who, in view of no fault of
their own, Almighty God has condemned to unending
torture, eternal misery :
In 1595 the Lambeth Articles asserted that “God
from eternity hath predestinated certain men unto life;
certain he hath reprobated.” In 1618 the Synod of
Dort decided in favor of this view. It condemned the
remonstrants against it, and treated them with such se.
254 PREDESTINATION.
verity, that many of them had to flee to foreign coun-
tries. Even in the Church of England, as is manifested
by its Seventeenth Article of Faith, these doctrines have
found favor.
Probably there was no point which brought down
from the Catholics on the Protestants severer condemna-
tion than this, their partial acceptance of the govern-
ment of the world by law. In all Reformed Europe
miracles ceased. But, with the cessation of shrine-cure,
relic-cure, great pecuniary profits ended. Indeed, as is
well known, it was the sale of indulgences that pro-
voked the Reformation—indulgences which are essen-
tially a permit from God for the practice of sin, condi-
tioned on the payment of a certain sum of money to the
priest.
Philosophically, the Reformation implied a protest
against the Catholic doctrine of incessant divine inter-
vention in human affairs, invoked by Sacerdotal agency;
but this protest was far from being fully made by all
the Reforming Churches. The evidence in behalf of
government by law, which has of late years been offered
by science, is received by many of them with suspicion,
perhaps with dislike; sentiments which, however, must
eventually give way before the hourly-increasing weight
of evidence.
Shall we not, then, conclude with Cicero, who,
quoted by Lactantius, says: “One eternal and immu-
table law embraces all things and all times?”
CHAPTER X.
LATIN CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO MODERN CIVILI-
ZATION.
For more than a thousand years Latin Christianity controlled the intelli-
gence of Europe, and is responsible for the result.
That result is manifested by the condition of the city of Rome at the Ref.
ormation, and by the condition of the Continent of Europe in domes-
tic and social life.—European nations suffered under the coexistence
of a dual government, a spiritual and a temporal,—They were im-
mersed in ignorance, superstition, discomfort.—Baplanation of the
failure of Catholicism.—Political history of the papacy: it was
transmuted from a spiritual confederacy into an absolute monarchy.
—Action of the College of Cardinals and the Curia.--Demoraliza-
tion that ensued from the necessity of raising large revenues.
The advantages accruing to Europe during the Catholic rule arose not from
direct intention, but were incidental.
The general result is, that the political influence of Catholicism was preju-
dicial to modern civilization.
LATIN Christianity is responsible for the condition
and progress of Europe from the fourth to the sixteenth
century. We have now to examine how it discharged
its trust.
It will be convenient to limit to the case of Europe
what has here to be presented, though, from the claim
of the papacy to superhuman origin, and its demand for
universal obedience, it should strictly be held to account
for the condition of all mankind. Its inefficacy against
the great and venerable religions of Southern and East.
256 ROME AT THE REFORMATION.
ern Asia would furnish an important and instructive
theme for consideration, and lead us to the conclusion
that it has impressed itself only where Roman imperial
influences have prevailed; a political conclusion which,
however, it contemptuously rejects.
Doubtless at the inception of the Reformation there
were many persons who compared the existing Social
condition with what it had been in ancient times. Mor.
als had not changed, intelligence had not advanced, S0-
ciety had little improved. From the Eternal City itself
its splendors had vanished. The marble streets, of
which Augustus had once boasted, had disappeared.
Temples, broken columns, and the long, arcaded vistas
of gigantic aqueducts bestriding the desolate Campagna,
presented a mournful scene. From the uses to which
they had been respectively put, the Capitol had been
known as Goats' Hill, and the site of the Toman Fo-
rum, whence laws had been issued to the world, as Cows'
Field. The palace of the Caesars was hidden by mounds
of earth, crested with flowering shrubs. The baths of
Caracalla, with their porticoes, gardens, reservoirs, had
long ago become useless through the destruction of their
supplying aqueducts. On the ruins of that grand edi-
fice, “flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous trees
extended in ever-winding labyrinths upon immense
platforms, and dizzy arches suspended in the air.” Of
the Coliseum, the most colossal of Toman ruins, only
about one-third remained. Once capable of accommo-
dating nearly ninety thousand spectators, it had, in suc.
cession, been turned into a fortress in the middle ages,
and then into a stone-quarry to furnish material for the
palaces of degenerate Roman princes...Some of the popes
had occupied it as a woollen-mill, some as a saltpetre-
factory; some had planned the conversion of its mag.
ROME AT THE REFORMATION. 257
nificent arcades into shops for tradesmen. The iron
clamps which bound its stones together had been stolen.
The walls were fissured and falling. Even in our own
times botanical works have been composed on the plants
which have made this noble wreck their home. “The
Elora of the Coliseum ” contains four hundred and
twenty species. Among the ruins of classical buildings
might be seen broken columns, cypresses, and mouldy
frescoes, dropping from the walls. Even the vegetable
world participated in the melancholy change: the myrtle,
which once flourished on the Aventine, had nearly be-
come extinct; the laurel, which once gave its leaves to
encircle the brows of emperors, had been replaced by
ivy—the companion of death.
But perhaps it may be said the popes were not re-
sponsible for all this. Let it be remembered that in
less than one hundred and forty years the city had been
successively taken by Alaric, Genseric, Ticiner, Viti-
ges, Totila ; that many of its great edifices had been
converted into defensive works. The aqueducts were
destroyed by Vitiges, who ruined the Campagna; the
palace of the Caesars was ravaged by Totila; then there
had been the Lombard sieges; then Robert Guiscard
and his Normans had burnt the city from the Antonine
Column to the Flaminian Gate, from the Lateran to the
Capitol; then it was sacked and mutilated by the Con-
stable Bourbon; again and again it was flooded by in-
undations of the Tiber and shattered by earthquakes.
We must, however, bear in mind the accusation of
Machiavelli, who says, in his “History of Florence,”
that nearly all the barbarian invasions of Italy were by
the invitations of the pontiffs, who called in those
hordes' It was not the Goth, nor the Wandal, nor the
Norman, nor the Saracen, but the popes and their neph
258 ROME AT THE REFORMATION.
ews, who produced the dilapidation of Rome! Lime-
kilns had been fed from the ruins, classical buildings
had become stone-quarries for the palaces of Italian
princes, and churches were decorated from the old
temples.
Churches decorated from the temples It is for
this and such as this that the popes must be held respon-
sible. Superb Corinthian columns had been chiseled
into images of the Saints. Magnificent Egyptian obe-
lisks had been dishonored by papal inscriptions. The
Septizonium of Severus had been demolished to furnish
materials for the building of St. Peter's; the bronze
roof of the Pantheon had been melted into columns to
ornament the apostle's tomb.
The great bell of Viterbo, in the tower of the Capi-
tol, had announced the death of many a pope, and still
desecration of the buildings and demoralization of the
people went on. Papal Rome manifested no consider-
ation, but rather hatred, for classical Rome. The pon-
tiffs had been subordinates of the Byzantine sovereigns,
then lieutenants of the Frankish kings, then arbiters of
Europe; their government had changed as much as
those of any of the surrounding nations; there had
been complete metamorphOSes in its maxims, objects,
claims. In one point only it had never changed—in-
tolerance. Claiming to be the centre of the religious
life of Europe, it steadfastly refused to recognize any
religious existence outside of itself, yet both in a polit-
ical and theological sense it was rotten to the core,
Erasmus and Luther heard with amazement the blas-
phemies and witnessed with a shudder the atheism of
the city.
The historian Ranke, to whom I am indebted for
many of these facts, has depicted in a very graphic man-
ITS POLITICAL CONDITION. 259
ner the demoralization of the great metropolis. The
popes were, for the most part, at their election, aged
men. Power was, therefore, incessantly passing into
new hands. Every election was a revolution in pros.
pects and expectations. In a community where all
might rise, where all might aspire to all, it necessarily
followed that every man was occupied in thrusting some
other into the background. Though the population of
the city at the inception of the Reformation had sunk
to eighty thousand, there were vast crowds of placemen,
and still greater ones of aspirants for place. The suc-
cessful occupant of the pontificate had thousands of offices
to give away—offices from many of which the incum-
bents had been remorselessly ejected; many had been
created for the purpose of Sale. The integrity and
capacity of an applicant were never inquired into; the
points considered were, what services has he rendered or
can he render to the party? how much can he pay for
the preferment? An American reader can thoroughly
realize this state of things. At every presidential elec-
tion he witnesses similar acts. The election of a pope
by the Conclave is not unlike the nomination of an
American president by a convention. In both cases
there are many offices to give away.
William of Malmesbury says that in his day the Ro-
mans made a Sale of whatever was righteous and sacred
for gold. After his time there was no improvement;
the Church degenerated into an instrument for the ex-
ploitation of money. Vast sums were collected in Italy;
vast sums were drawn under all manner of pretenses
from surrounding and reluctant countries. Of these
the most nefarious was the sale of indulgences for the
perpetration of sin. Italian religion had become the
art of plundering the people.
260 SOCIAL CONDITION OF ROME.
For more than a thousand years the sovereign pon-
tiffs had been rulers of the city. True, it had witnessed
many scenes of devastation for which they were not re-
sponsible; but they were responsible for this, that they
had never made any vigorous, any persistent effort for
its material, its moral improvement. Instead of being
in these respects an exemplar for the imitation of the
World, it became an exemplar of a condition that ought
to be shunned. Things steadily went on from bad to
worse, until at the epoch of the Reformation no pious
stranger could visit it without being shocked.
The papacy, repudiating science as absolutely incom-
patible with its pretensions, had in later years addressed
itself to the encouragement of art. But music and
painting, though they may be exquisite adornments of
life, contain no living force that can develop a weak
nation into a strong one; nothing that can permanently
assure the material well-being or happiness of communi-
ties; and hence at the time of the Reformation, to one
who thoughtfully considered her condition, Rome had
lost all living energy. She was no longer the arbiter of
the physical or the religious progress of the world. Tor
the progressive maxims of the republic and the empire,
she had substituted the stationary maxims of the papacy.
She had the appearance of piety and the possession of art.
In this she resembled one of those friar-corpses which
we still see in their brown cowls in the vaults of the
Cappuccini, with a breviary or some withered flowers in
its hands.
From this view of the Eternal City, this survey of
what Latin Christianity had done for Rome itself, let us
turn to the whole European Continent. Let us try to
determine the true value of the system that was guiding
Society; let us judge it by its fruits.
POPULATION. 261
The condition of nations as to their well-being is
most precisely represented by the variations of their
population. Forms of government have very little
influence on population, but policy may control it com-
pletely.
It has been very satisfactorily shown by authors who
have given attention to the subject, that the variations
of population depend upon the interbalancing of the
generative force of society and the resistances to life.
By the generative force of Society is meant that in-
stinct which manifests itself in the multiplication of the
race. To some extent it depends on climate; but, since
the climate of Europe did not sensibly change between
the fourth and the sixteenth centuries, we may regard
this force as having been, on that continent, during the
period under consideration, invariable.
I3y the resistances to life is meant whatever tends
to make individual existence more difficult of support.
Among such may be enumerated insufficient food, inade-
quate clothing, imperfect shelter. .
It is also known that, if the resistances become in-
appreciable, the generative force will double a popula-
tion in twenty-five years.
The resistances operate in two modes: 1. Physically;
since they diminish the number of births, and shorten
the term of the life of all. 2. Intellectually; since, in
a moral, and particularly in a religious community, they
postpone marriage, by causing individuals to decline its
responsibilities until they feel that they are competent
to meet the charges and cares of a family. Hence the
explanation of a long-recognized fact, that the number
of marriages during a given period has a connection
with the price of food. **
The increase of population keeps pace with the in-
262 WARIATIONS OF POPULATION.
crease of food; and, indeed, such being the power of
the generative force, it overpasses the means of Sub-
sistence, establishing a constant pressure upon them.
Under these circumstances, it necessarily happens that
a certain amount of destitution must occur. Individu-
als have come into existence who must be starved.
As illustrations of the variations that have occurred
in the population of different countries, may be men-
tioned the immense diminution of that of Italy in con-
sequence of the wars of Justinian; the depopulation of
North Africa in consequence of theological quarrels;
its restoration through the establishment of Moham-
medanism ; the increase of that of all Europe through
the feudal system, when estates became more valuable
in proportion to the number of retainers they could sup-
ply. The crusades caused a sensible diminution, not
only through the enormous army losses, but also by rea-
son of the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men from
marriage-life. Similar variations have occurred on the
American Continent. The population of Mexico was
very quickly diminished by two million through the
rapacity and atrocious cruelty of the Spaniards, who
drove the civilized Indians to despair. The same hap-
pened in Peru.
The population of England at the Norman conquest
was about two million. In five hundred years it had
scarcely doubled. It may be supposed that this sta-
tionary condition was to some extent induced by the pa-
pal policy of the enforcement of celibacy in the clergy.
The “legal generative force” was doubtless affected by
that policy, the “actual generative force” was not. For
those who have made this subject their study have long
ago been satisfied that public celibacy is private wick-
edness. This mainly determined the laity, as well as
WARIATIONS OF POPULATION. 263
the government in England, to suppress the monas-
teries. It was openly asserted that there were one hun-
dred thousand women in England made dissolute by
the clergy.
In my history of the “American Civil War,” I have
presented some reflections on this point, which I will
take the liberty of quoting here: “What, then, does this
stationary condition of the population mean? It means,
food obtained with hardship, insufficient clothing, per-
Sonal uncleanness, cabins that could not keep out the
weather, the destructive effects of cold and heat, miasm,
want of Sanitary provisions, absence of physicians, use-
lessness of shrine-cure, the deceptiveness of miracles, in
which Society was putting its trust; or, to sum up a long
Catalogue of Sorrows, wants, and sufferings, in one term
—it means a high death-rate.
“But more; it means deficient births. And what
does that point out? Marriage postponed, licentious
life, private wickedness, demoralized society.
“To an American, who lives in a country that was
yesterday an interminable and impenetrable desert, but
which to-day is filling with a population doubling itself
every twenty-five years at the prescribed rate, this awful
waste of actual and contingent life cannot but be a most
surprising fact. His curiosity will lead him to inquire
what kind of system that could have been which was
pretending to guide and develop society, but which must
be held responsible for this prodigious destruction, ex-
celling, in its insidious result, war, pestilence, and fam-
ine combined; insidious, for men were actually believing
that it secured their highest temporal interests. How
different now ! In England, the same geographical sur-
face is sustaining ten times the population of that day,
and sending forth its emigrating swarms. Let him, who
264 CONDITION OF EUROPE.
looks back with veneration on the past, settle in his own
mind what such a system could have been worth.”
These variations in the population of Europe have
been attended with changes in distribution. The cen-
tre of population has passed northward since the estab-
lishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire. It has
since passed westward, in consequence of the develop-
ment of manufacturing industry.
We may now examine somewhat more minutely the
character of the resistances which thus, for a thousand
years, kept the population of Europe stationary. The
surface of the Continent was for the most part covered
With pathless forests; here and there it was dotted with
monasteries and towns. In the lowlands and along
the river-courses were fens, sometimes hundreds of
miles in extent, exhaling their pestiferous miasms, and
spreading agues far and wide. In Paris and London,
the houses were of wood daubed with clay, and thatched
with straw or reeds. They had no windows, and, until
the invention of the saw-mill, very few had wooden
floors. The luxury of a carpet was unknown; some
straw, Scattered in the room, supplied its place. There
were no chimneys; the Smoke of the ill-fed, cheerless
fire escaped through a hole in the roof. In such habi-
tations there was scarcely any protection from the
weather. No attempt was made at drainage, but the
putrefying garbage and rubbish were simply thrown
out of the door. Men, women, and children, slept in
the same apartment; not unfrequently, domestic ani-
mals were their companions; in such a confusion of the
family, it was impossible that modesty or morality could
be maintained. The bed was usually a bag of straw, a
wooden log served as a pillow. Personal cleanliness
EUROPE AT THE REFORMATION. 265
was utterly unknown; great officers of state, even
dignitaries so high as the Archbishop of Canterbury,
swarmed with vermin ; such, it is related, was the con-
dition of Thomas à Becket, the antagonist of an Eng-
lish king. To conceal personal impurity, perfumes were
necessarily and profusely used. The citizen clothed
himself in leather, a garment which, with its ever-accu-
mulating impurity, might last for many years. He
was considered to be in circumstances of ease, if he
could procure fresh meat once a week for his dinner.
The streets had no sewers; they were without pave-
ment or lamps. After nightfall, the chamber-shutters
were thrown open, and slops unceremoniously emptied
down, to the discomfiture of the wayfarer tracking his
path through the narrow streets, with his dismal lantern
in his hand.
AEneas Sylvius, who afterward became Pope Pius
II., and was therefore a very competent and impartial
writer, has left us a graphic account of a journey he
made to the British Islands, about 1430. He describes
the houses of the peasantry as constructed of stones put
together without mortar; the roofs were of turf, a stif-
fened bull’s-hide served for a door. The food consisted
of coarse vegetable products, such as peas, and even
the bark of trees. In some places they were unac-
quainted with bread.
Cabins of reeds plastered with mud, houses of wat-
tled stakes, chimneyless peat-fires from which there was
Scarcely an escape for the Smoke, dens of physical and
moral pollution swarming with vermin, wisps of straw
twisted round the limbs to keep off the cold, the ague-
stricken peasant with no help except shrine-cure How
was it possible that the population could increase? -
Shall we, then, wonder that, in the famine of 1030,
12
266 DUAL GOVERNMENT IN EUROPE.
human flesh was cooked and sold; or that, in that of 1258,
fifteen thousand persons died of hunger in London?
Shall we wonder that, in some of the invasions of the
plague, the deaths were so frightfully numerous that
the living could hardly bury the dead? By that of
1348, which came from the East along the lines of
commercial travel, and spread all over Europe, one-
third of the population of France was destroyed.
Such was the condition of the peasantry, and of the
common inhabitants of cities. Not much better was
that of the nobles. William of Malmesbury, speaking
of the degraded manners of the Anglo-Saxons, says:
“Their nobles, devoted to gluttony and voluptuousness,
never visited the church, but the matins and the mass
were read over to them by a hurrying priest in their
bedchambers, before they rose, themselves not listening.
The common people were a prey to the more powerful;
their property was seized, their bodies dragged away to
distant countries; their maidens were either thrown into
a brothel, or sold for slaves. Trinking, day and night,
was the general pursuit; vices, the companions of ine-
briety, followed, effeminating the manly mind.” The
baronial castles were dens of robbers. The Saxon chroni-
cler records how men and women were caught and drag-
ged into those strongholds, hung up by their thumbs or
feet, fire applied to them, knotted strings twisted round
their heads, and many other torments inflicted to extort
TallSOTY). & -
All over Europe, the great and profitable political
offices were filled by ecclesiastics. In every country
there was a dual government: 1. That of a local kind,
represented by a temporal sovereign; 2. That of a for.
eign kind, acknowledging the authority of the pope.
This Roman influence was, in the nature of things, Su-
DUAL GOVERNMENT IN EUROPE. - 267
perior to the local; it expressed the sovereign will of
one man over all the nations of the continent conjointly,
and gathered overwhelming power from its compact-
ness and unity. The local influence was necessarily of
a feeble nature, since it was commonly weakened by
the rivalries of conterminous states, and the dissensions
dexterously provoked by its competitor. On not a
single occasion could the various European states form
a coalition against their common antagonist. When-
ever a question arose, they were skillfully taken in de-
tail, and commonly mastered. The Ostensible object of
papal intrusion was to secure for the different peoples
moral well-being; the real object was to obtain large
revenues, and give support to vast bodies of ecclesias-
tics. The revenues thus abstracted were not infre-
quently many times greater than those passing into the
treasury of the local power. Thus, on the occasion of
Innocent IV. demanding provision to be made for three
hundred additional Italian clergy by the Church of
England, and that one of his nephews—a mere boy—
should have a stall in Lincoln Cathedral, it was found
that the sum already annually abstracted by foreign
ecclesiastics from England was thrice that which went
into the coffers of the king. -
While thus the higher clergy secured every political
appointment worth having, and abbots vied with counts
in the herds of slaves they possessed—some, it is said,
owned not fewer than twenty thousand—begging friars
pervaded society in all directions, picking up a share of
what still remained to the poor. There was a vast body
of non-producers, living in idleness and owning a foreign
allegiance, who were subsisting on the fruits of the toil
of the laborers. It could not be otherwise than that
Small farms should be unceasingly merged into the
268 SOCIAL CONDITION OF EUROPE.
larger estates; that the poor should steadily become
poorer; that Society, far from improving, should exhibit
a continually increasing demoralization. Outside the
monastic institutions no attempt at intellectual advance-
ment was made; indeed, so far as the laity were con-
cerned, the influence of the Church was directed to an
opposite result, for the maxim universally received was,
that “ignorance is the mother of devotion.” *
The settled practice of republican and imperial
Rome was to have swift communication with all her
outlying provinces, by means of substantial bridges and
roads. One of the prime duties of the legions was to
construct them and keep them in repair. By this, her
military authority was assured. But the dominion of
papal Rome, depending upon a different principle, had
no exigencies of that kind, and this duty accordingly
was left for the local powers to neglect. And So, in all
directions, the roads were almost impassable for a large
part of the year. A common means of transportation
was in clumsy carts drawn by oxen, going at the most
but three or four miles an hour. Where boat-convey-
ance along rivers could not be had, pack-horses and
mules were resorted to for the transportation of mer-
chandise, an adequate means for the slender commerce
of the times. When large bodies of men had to be
moved, the difficulties became almost insuperable. Of
this, perhaps, one of the best illustrations may be found
in the story of the march of the first Crusaders. These
restraints upon intercommunication tended powerfully
to promote the general benighted condition. Journeys
by individuals could not be undertaken without much
risk, for there was scarcely a moor or a forest that had
not its highwaymen.
An illiterate condition everywhere prevailing, gave
SOCIAL CONDITION OF EUROPE. 269
opportunity for the development of superstition. Europe
was full of disgraceful miracles. On all the roads pil-
grims were wending their way to the shrines of Saints,
renowned for the cures they had wrought. It had always
been the policy of the Church to discourage the physi-
cian and his art; he interfered too much with the gifts
and profits of the shrines. Time has brought this once
lucrative imposture to its proper value. How many
shrines are there now in successful operation in Europe?
For patients too sick to move or be moved, there
were no remedies except those of a ghostly kind—the
Pater-noster or the Ave. For the prevention of dis-
eases, prayers were put up in the churches, but no Sani-
tary measures were resorted to. From cities reeking
with putrefying filth it was thought that the plague
might be stayed by the prayers of the priests, by them
rain and dry weather might be secured, and deliverance
obtained from the baleful influences of eclipses and
comets. But when Halley’s comet came, in 1456, so
tremendous was its apparition that it was necessary for
the pope himself to interfere. He exorcised and ex-
pelled it from the skies. It slunk away into the abysses
of space, terror-stricken by the maledictions of Calixtus
III., and did not venture back for seventy-five years!
The physical value of shrine-cures and ghostly reme-
dies is measured by the death-rate. In those days it
was, probably, about one in twenty-three, under the
present more material practice it is about one in forty.
The moral condition of Europe was signally illus-
trated when syphilis was introduced from the West
Indies by the companions of Columbus. It spread with
wonderful rapidity; all ranks of persons, from the Holy
Father Leo X. to the beggar by the wayside, contract-
ing the shameful disease. Many excused their misfor-
270 SOCIAL CONDITION OF EUROPE.
tune by declaring that it was an epidemic proceeding
from a certain malignity in the constitution of the air,
but in truth its spread was due to a certain infirmity in
the constitution of man—an infirmity which had not
been removed by the spiritual guidance under which he
had been living.
To the medical efficacy of shrines must be added
that of special relics. These were sometimes of the
most extraordinary kind. There were several abbeys
that possessed our Savior’s crown of thorns. Eleven had
the lance that had pierced his side. If any person was
adventurous enough to suggest that these could not all
be authentic, he would have been denounced as an
atheist. During the holy wars the Templar-Knights had
driven a profitable commerce by bringing from Jerusa-
lem to the Crusading armies bottles of the milk of the
Blessed Virgin, which they sold for enormous sums;
these bottles were preserved with pious care in many of
the great religious establishments. But perhaps none
of these impostures surpassed in audacity that offered by
a monastery in Jerusalem, which presented to the be-
holder one of the fingers of the Holy Ghost! Modern
Society has silently rendered its verdict on these scan-
dalous objects. Though they once nourished the piety
of thousands of earnest people, they are now considered
too vile to have a place in any public museum.
How shall we account for the great failure we thus
detect in the guardianship of the Church over Europe?
This is not the result that must have occurred had there
been in Rome an unremitting care for the spiritual and
material prosperity of the continent, had the universal
pastor, the successor of Peter, occupied himself with
singleness of purpose for the holiness and happiness of
his flock.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE PAPACY. 271
The explanation is not difficult to find. It is con-
tained in a story of sin and shame. I prefer, therefore,
in the following paragraphs, to offer explanatory facts
derived from Catholic authors, and, indeed, to present
them as nearly as I can in the words of those writers.
The story I am about to relate is a narrative of the
transformation of a confederacy into an absolute mon-
archy.
In the early times every church, without prejudice
to its agreement with the Church universal in all essen-
tial points, managed its own affairs with perfect free-
dom and independence, maintaining its own traditional
usages and discipline, all questions not concerning the
whole Church, or of primary importance, being settled
On the spot.
Until the beginning of the ninth century, there was
no change in the constitution of the Roman Church.
But about 845 the Isidorian Decretals were fabricated
in the west of Gaul—a forgery containing about one
hundred pretended decrees of the early popes, together
with certain spurious writings of other church digni-
taries and acts of synods. This forgery produced an
immense extension of the papal power, it displaced the
old system of church government, divesting it of the
republican attributes it had possessed, and transforming
it into an absolute monarchy. It brought the bishops
into subjection to Rome, and made the pontiff the
Supreme judge of the clergy of the whole Christian
world. It prepared the way for the great attempt, sub-
sequently made by Hildebrand, to convert the states of
Europe into a theocratic priest-kingdom, with the pope
at its head.
Gregory VII., the author of this great attempt, saw -
2
72 CENTRALIZATION OF THE PAPACY.
that his plans would be best carried out through the
agency of synods. He, therefore, restricted the right
of holding them to the popes and their legates. To
aid in the matter, a new system of church law was
devised by Anselm of Lucca, partly from the old Isi-
dorian forgeries, and partly from new inventions. To
establish the Supremacy of Rome, not only had a new
civil and a new canon law to be produced, a new history
had also to be invented. This furnished needful in-
stances of the deposition and excommunication of kings,
and proved that they had always been subordinate to
the popes. The decretal letters of the popes were put
on a par with Scripture. At length it came to be re-
ceived, throughout the West, that the popes had been,
from the beginning of Christianity, legislators for the
whole Church. As absolute sovereigns in later times
cannot endure representative assemblies, so the papacy,
when it wished to become absolute, found that the
synods of particular national churches must be put an
end to, and those only under the immediate control of
the pontiff permitted. This, in itself, constituted a
great revolution.
Another fiction concocted in Rome in the eighth cen-
tury led to important consequences. It feigned that
the Emperor Constantine, in gratitude for his cure from
leprosy, and baptism by Pope Sylvester, had bestowed
Italy and the Western provinces on the pope, and that,
in token of his subordination, he had served the pope
as his groom, and led his horse some distance. This
forgery was intended to work on the Frankish kings,
to impress them with a correct idea of their inferiority,
and to show that, in the territorial concessions they
made to the Church, they were not giving but only re-
storing what rightfully belonged to it.
CENTRALIZATION OF THE PAPACY. 273
The most potent instrument of the new papal system
was Gratian’s Decretum, which was issued about the
middle of the twelfth century. It was a mass of fabrica-
tions. It made the whole Christian world, through the
papacy, the domain of the Italian clergy. It inculcated
that it is lawful to constrain men to goodness, to torture
and execute heretics, and to confiscate their property;
that to kill an excommunicated person is not murder;
that the pope, in his unlimited Superiority to all law,
stands on an equality with the Son of God |
As the new system of centralization developed,
maxims, that in the olden times would have been held to
be shocking, were boldly avowed—the whole Church
is the property of the pope to do with as he will; what
is simony in others is not simony in him; he is above
all law, and can be called to account by none; who-
ever disobeys him must be put to death; every bap-
tized man is his subject, and must for life remain so,
whether he will or not. Up to the end of the twelfth
century, the popes were the vicars of Peter; after Inno-
cent III. they were the vicars of Christ.
But an absolute Sovereign has need of revenues, and
to this the popes were no exception. The institution
of legates was brought in from Hildebrand’s time.
Sometimes their duty was to visit churches, sometimes
they were sent on special business, but always invested
with unlimited powers to bring back money over the
Alps. And since the pope could not only make laws,
but could suspend their operation, a legislation was in-
troduced in view to the purchase of dispensations.
Monasteries were exempted from episcopal jurisdiction
on payment of a tribute to Rome. The pope had now
become “the universal bishop;” he had a concurrent
jurisdiction in all the dioceses, and could bring any
274 CENTRALIZATION OF THE PAPACY.
cases before his own courts. His relation to the bishops
was that of an absolute sovereign to his officials. A
bishop could resign only by his permission, and sees
vacated by resignation lapsed to him. Appeals to him
were encouraged in every way for the sake of the
dispensations; thousands of processes came before the
Curia, bringing a rich harvest to Rome. Often when
there were disputing claimants to benefices, the pope
Would oust them all, and appoint a creature of his own.
Often the candidates had to waste years in Rome, and
either died there, or carried back a vivid impression of
the dominant corruption. Germany suffered more than
other countries from these appeals and processes, and
hence of all countries was best prepared for the Ref-
ormation. During the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies the popes made gigantic strides in the acquisition
of power. Instead of recommending their favorites for
benefices, now they issued mandates. Their Italian parti-
Sans must be rewarded; nothing could be done to satisfy
their clamors, but to provide for them in foreign coun-
tries. Shoals of contesting claimants died in Rome; and,
when death took place in that city, the Pope claimed
the right of giving away the benefices. At length it
was affirmed that he had the right of disposing of all
church-offices without distinction, and that the oath of
obedience of a bishop to him implied political as well
as ecclesiastical subjection. In countries having a dual
government this increased the power of the spiritual
element prodigiously.
Rights of every kind were remorselessly overthrown
to complete this centralization. In this the mendicant
orders were most efficient aids. It was the pope and
those orders on one side, the bishops and the paro-
chial clergy on the other. The Roman court had seized
PECUNIARY NECESSITIES OF THE PAPACY. 275
the rights of synods, metropolitans, bishops, national
churches. Incessantly interfered with by the legates,
the bishops lost all desire to discipline their dioceses;
incessantly interfered with by the begging monks, the
parish priest had become powerless in his own village;
his pastoral influence was utterly destroyed by the pa-
pal indulgences and absolutions they sold. The money
was carried off to Rome.
Pecuniary necessities urged many of the popes to
resort to such petty expedients as to require from a
prince, a bishop, or a grand-master, who had a cause
pending in the court, a present of a golden cup filled
with ducats. Such necessities also gave origin to ju-
bilees. Sixtus IV. established whole colleges, and sold
the places at three or four hundred ducats. Innocent
VIII. pawned the papal tiara. Of Leo X. it was said
that he squandered the revenues of three popes, he
wasted the savings of his predecessor, he spent his own
income, he anticipated that of his successor, he created
twenty-one hundred and fifty new offices and sold them;
they were considered to be a good investment, as they
produced twelve per cent. The interest was extorted
from Catholic countries. Nowhere in Europe could
capital be so well invested as at Rome. Large sums
were raised by the foreclosing of mortgages, and not
only by the sale but the resale of offices. Men were
promoted, for the purpose of selling their offices again.
Though against the papal theory, which denounced
usurious practices, an immense papal banking system
had sprung up, in connection with the Curia, and sums
at usurious interest were advanced to prelates, place.
hunters, and litigants. The papal bankers were privi-
leged; all others were under the ban. The Curia had
discovered that it was for their interest to have ecclesi.
276 THE RAISING OF REVENUES.
astics all over Europe in their debt. They could make
them pliant, and excommunicate them for non-payment
of interest. In 1327 it was reckoned that half the
Christian world was under excommunication: bishops
were excommunicated because they could not meet the
extortions of legates; and persons were excommunicated,
under various pretenses, to compel them to purchase ab-
Solution at an exorbitant price. The ecclesiastical reve-
nues of all Europe were flowing into Rome, a sink of
corruption, Simony, usury, bribery, extortion. The
popes, since 1066, when the great centralizing move-
ment began, had no time to pay attention to the inter-
nal affairs of their own special flock in the city of Rome.
There were thousands of foreign cases, each bringing in
money. “Whenever,” says the Bishop Alvaro Pelayo,
“I entered the apartments of the Roman court clergy, I
found them occupied in counting up the gold-coin,
which lay about the rooms in heaps.” Every opportu-
nity of extending the jurisdiction of the Curia was wel-
come. Exemptions were so managed that fresh grants
were constantly necessary. Bishops were privileged
against cathedral chapters, chapters against their bish-
ops; bishops, convents, and individuals, against the ex-
tortions of legates.
The two pillars on which the papal system now rest-
ed were the College of Cardinals and the Curia. The
cardinals, in 1059, had become electors of the popes.
Up to that time elections were made by the whole body
of the Roman clergy, and the concurrence of the magis-
trates and citizens was necessary. But Nicolas II. re-
stricted elections to the College of Cardinals by a two-
thirds vote, and gave to the German emperor the right
of confirmation. For almost two centuries there was a
struggle for mastery between the cardinal oligarchy and
THE POPE AND THE CARDINALS. 277
papal absolutism. The cardinals were willing enough
that the pope should be absolute in his foreign rule, but
they never failed to attempt, before giving him their
votes, to bind him to accord to them a recognized share
in the government. After his election, and before his
consecration, he swore to observe certain capitulations,
such as a participation of revenues between himself and
the cardinals; an obligation that he would not remove
them, but would permit them to assemble twice a year
to discuss whether he had kept his oath. Tepeatedly
the popes broke their oath. On one side, the cardinals
wanted a larger share in the church government and
emoluments; on the other, the popes refused to surren-
der revenues or power. The cardinals wanted to be
conspicuous in pomp and extravagance, and for this vast
Sums were requisite. In one instance, not fewer than
five hundred benefices were held by one of them; their
friends and retainers must be supplied, their families
enriched. It was affirmed that the whole revenues of
France were insufficient to meet their expenditures. In
their rivalries it sometimes happened that no pope was
elected for several years. It seemed as if they wanted
to show how easily the Church could get on without the
Vicar of Christ.
Toward the close of the eleventh century the Ro-
man Church became the Roman court. In place of the
Christian sheep gently following their shepherd in the
holy precincts of the city, there had arisen a chancery of
Writers, notaries, tax-gatherers, where transactions about
privileges, dispensations, exemptions, were carried on;
and Suitors went with petitions from door to door.
Rome was a rallying-point for place-hunters of every
nation. In presence of the enormous mass of business.
processes, graces, indulgences, absolutions, commands,
278 PECUNIARY DEMORALIZATION.
and decisions, addressed to all parts of Europe and Asia,
the functions of the local church sank into insignifi-
cance. Several hundred persons, whose home was
the Curia, were required. Their aim was to rise in it
by enlarging the profits of the papal treasury. The
whole Christian world had become tributary to it.
Here every vestige of religion had disappeared ; its
members were busy with politics, litigations, and pro-
cesses; not a word could be heard about spiritual con-
cerns. Every stroke of the pen had its price. Bene.
fices, dispensations, licenses, absolutions, indulgences,
privileges, were bought and sold like merchandise. The
suitor had to bribe every one, from the doorkeeper to
the pope, or his case was lost. Poor men could neither
attain preferment, nor hope for it; and the result was,
that every cleric felt he had a right to follow the exam-
ple he had seen at Rome, and that he might make profits
out of his spiritual ministries and Sacraments, having
bought the right to do so at Tome, and having no other
way to pay off his debt. The transference of power
from Italians to Frenchmen, through the removal of
the Curia to Avignon, produced no change—only the
Italians felt that the enrichment of Italian families had
slipped out of their grasp. They had learned to con-
sider the papacy as their appanage, and that they, under
the Christian dispensation, were God’s chosen people,
as the Jews had been under the Mosaic.
At the end of the thirteenth century a new kingdom
was discovered, capable of yielding immense revenues.
This was Purgatory. It was shown that the pope could
empty it by his indulgences. In this there was no need
of hypocrisy. Things were done openly. The original
germ of the apostolic primacy had now expanded into
a colossal monarchy.
NEED OF A GENERAL COUNCIL. 279
The Inquisition had made the papal system irre-
sistible. All opposition must be punished with death
by fire. A mere thought, without having betrayed it-
self by outward sign, was considered as guilt. As time
went on, this practice of the Inquisition became more
and more atrocious. Torture was resorted to on mere
suspicion. The accused was not allowed to know the
name of his accuser. He was not permitted to have
any legal adviser. There was no appeal. The Inquisi-
tion was ordered not to lean to pity. No recantation
was of avail. The innocent family of the accused was
deprived of its property by confiscation; half went to
the papal treasury, half to the inquisitors. Life only,
said Innocent III., was to be left to the sons of misbe-
lievers, and that merely as an act of mercy. The con-
sequence was, that popes, such as Nicolas III., enriched
their families through plunder acquired by this tribunal.
Inquisitors did the same habitually.
The struggle between the French and Italians for
the possession of the papacy inevitably led to the schism
of the fourteenth century. For more than forty years
two rival popes were now anathematizing each other,
two rival Curias were squeezing the nations for money.
Eventually, there were three obediences, and triple
revenues to be extorted. Nobody, now, could guarantee
the validity of the sacraments, for nobody could be sure
which was the true pope. Men were thus compelled to
think for themselves. They could not find who was the
legitimate thinker for them. They began to see that
the Church must rid herself of the curialistic chains,
and resort to a General Council. That attempt was
again and again made, the intention being to raise the
Council into a Parliament of Christendom, and make
the pope its chief executive officer. But the vast inter
280 HOPELESSNESS OF THE CONDITION.
ests that had grown out of the corruption of ages could
not so easily be overcome; the Curia again recovered its
ascendency, and ecclesiastical trading was resumed. The
Germans, who had never been permitted to share in the
Curia, took the leading part in these attempts at reform.
As things went on from bad to worse, even they at last
found out that all hope of reforming the Church by
means of councils was delusive. Erasmus exclaimed,
“If Christ does not deliver his people from this multi-
form ecclesiastical tyranny, the tyranny of the Turk will
become less intolerable.” Cardinals' hats were now
sold, and under Leo X. ecclesiastical and religious offices
were actually put up to auction. The maxim of life had
become, interest first, honor afterward. Among the
officials, there was not one who could be honest in the
dark, and virtuous without a witness. The violet-colored
velvet cloaks and white ermine capes of the cardinals
were truly a cover for wickedness.
The unity of the Church, and therefore its power, re-
quired the use of Latin as a Sacred language. Through
this, Rome had stood in an attitude strictly European,
and was enabled to maintain a general international re-
lation. It gave her far more power than her asserted
celestial authority, and, much as she claims to have done,
she is open to condemnation that, with such a signal ad-
vantage in her hands, never again to be enjoyed by any
successor, she did not accomplish much more. Had not
the sovereign pontiffs been so completely occupied with
maintaining their emoluments and temporalities in Italy,
they might have made the whole continent advance like
one man. Their officials could pass without difficulty
into every nation, and communicate without embarrass,
ment with each other, from Ireland to Bohemia, from
Italy to Scotland. The possession of a common tongue
LATIN AS A SACRED LANGUAGE. 281
gave them the administration of international affairs
with intelligent allies everywhere, speaking the same
language. *
Not without cause was the hatred manifested by
Rome to the restoration of Greek and introduction of
Hebrew, and the alarm with which she perceived the
modern languages forming out of the vulgar dialects.
Not without reason did the Faculty of Theology in Paris
reécho the sentiment that was prevalent in the time of
Ximenes, “What will become of religion if the study of
Greek and Hebrew be permitted?” The prevalence of
Latin was the condition of her power; its deterioration,
the measure of her decay; its disuse, the signal of her
limitation to a little principality in Italy. In fact, the
development of European languages was the instrument
of her overthrow. They formed an effectual communica-
tion between the mendicant friars and the illiterate pop-
ulace, and there was not one of them that did not dis-
play in its earliest productions a sovereign contempt for
her.
The rise of the many-tongued European literature
was therefore coincident with the decline of papal Chris-
tianity; European literature was impossible under Cath-
olic rule. A grand, a Solemn, an imposing religious
unity enforced the literary unity which is implied in the
use of a single tongue.
While thus the possession of a universal language
So signally Secured her power, the real secret of much of
the influence of the Church lay in the control she had
So skillfully obtained over domestic life. Her influence
diminished as that declined. Coincident with this was
her displacement in the guidance of international rela-
tions by diplomacy. *
In the old times of Roman domination the encamp- .
p
282 CATHOLICITY AND CIVILIZATION.
ments of the legions in the provinces had always proved
to be foci of civilization. The industry and order ex-
hibited in them presented an example not lost on the
Surrounding barbarians of Britain, Gaul, and Germany.
And, though it was no part of their duty to occupy
themselves actively in the betterment of the conquered
tribes, but rather to keep them in a depressed condition,
that aided in maintaining subjection, a steady improve-
ment both in the individual and social condition took
place.
Under the ecclesiastical domination of Rome similar
effects occurred. In the open country the monastery
replaced the legionary encampment; in the village or
town, the church was a centre of light. A powerful
effect was produced by the elegant luxury of the former,
and by the sacred and solemn monitions of the latter.
In extolling the papal system for what it did in the
organization of the family, the definition of civil policy,
the construction of the states of Europe, our praise
must be limited by the recollection that the chief object
of ecclesiastical policy was the aggrandizement of the
Church, not the promotion of civilization. The benefit
obtained by the laity was not through any special inten-
tion, but incidental or collateral.
There was no far-reaching, no persistent plan to
ameliorate the physical condition of the nations. Noth-
ing was done to favor their intellectual development;
indeed, on the contrary, it was the settled policy to keep
them not merely illiterate, but ignorant. Century after
century passed away, and left the peasantry but little
better than the cattle in the fields. Intercommunica-
tion and locomotion, which tend so powerfully to expand
the ideas, received no encouragement; the majority of
men died without ever having ventured out of the
CATHOLICITY AND CIVILIZATION. 283
neighborhood in which they were born. For them
there was no hope of personal improvement, none of
the bettering of their lot; there were no comprehensive
schemes for the avoidance of individual want, none for
the resistance of famines. Pestilences were permitted to
stalk forth unchecked, or at best opposed only by mum-
meries. Bad food, wretched clothing, inadequate shel-
ter, were suffered to produce their result, and at the end
of a thousand years the population of Europe had not
doubled.
If policy may be held accountable as much for the
births it prevents as for the deaths it occasions, what a
great responsibility there is here!
In this investigation of the influence of Catholicism,
we must carefully keep separate what it did for the
people and what it did for itself. When we think of
the stately monastery, an embodiment of luxury, with
its closely-mown lawns, its gardens and bowers, its foun-
tains and many murmuring streams, we must connect it
not with the ague-stricken peasant dying without help
in the fens, but with the abbot, his ambling palfrey,
his hawk and hounds, his well-stocked cellar and larder.
He is part of a system that has its centre of authority
in Italy. To that his allegiance is due. For its behoof
are all his acts. When we survey, as still we may, the
magnificent churches and cathedrals of those times,
miracles of architectural skill—the only real miracles
of Catholicism—when in imagination we restore the
transcendently imposing, thenoble services of which they
were once the scene, the dim, religious light streaming
in through the many-colored windows, the sounds of
voices not inferior in their melody to those of heaven,
the priests in their sacred vestments, and above all the
prostrate worshipers listening to litanies and prayers in
284. CATHOLICITY AND CIVILIZATION.
a foreign and unknown tongue, shall we not ask our-
selves, Was all this for the sake of those worshipers, or
for the glory of the great, the overshadowing authority
at Rome?
But perhaps some one may say, Are there not limits
to human exertion—things which no political system,
no human power, no matter how excellent its intention,
can accomplish : Men cannot be raised from barbarism,
a continent cannot be civilized, in a day !
The Catholic power is not, however, to be tried by
any such standard. It scornfully rejected and still re-
jects a human origin. It claims to be accredited super-
naturally. The Sovereign pontiff is the Vicar of God
upon earth. Infallible in judgment, it is given to him
to accomplish all things by miracle if need be. He had
exercised an autocratic tyranny over the intellect of
Europe for more than a thousand years; and, though on
Some occasions he had encountered the resistances of
disobedient princes, these, in the aggregate, were of So
little moment, that the physical, the political power of
the continent may be affirmed to have been at his dis-
posal.
Such facts as have been presented in this chapter
were, doubtless, well weighed by the Protestant Reform-
ers of the sixteenth century, and brought them to the
conclusion that Catholicism had altogether failed in its
mission; that it had become a vast system of delusion and
imposture, and that a restoration of true Christianity
could only be accomplished by returning to the faith
and practices of the primitive times. This was no deci-
sion suddenly arrived at ; it had long been the opinion of
many religious and learned men. The pious Fratricelli
in the middle ages had loudly expressed their belief that
the fatal gift of a Roman emperor had been the doom
CATHOLICITY AND CIVILIZATIQN. 285
of true religion. It wanted nothing more than the
voice of Luther to bring men throughout the north of
Europe to the determination that the worship of the
Virgin Mary, the invocation of Saints, the working of
miracles, supernatural cures of the sick, the purchase of
indulgences for the perpetration of sin, and all other
evil practices, lucrative to their abettors, which had been
fastened on Christianity, but which were no part of it,
should come to an end. Catholicism, as a system for
promoting the well-being of man, had plainly failed in
justifying its alleged origin; its performance had not
corresponded to its great pretensions; and, after an op-
portunity of more than a thousand years' duration, it
had left the masses of men submitted to its influences,
both as regards physical well-being and intellectual cult-
ure, in a condition far lower than what it ought to have
been.
CHAPTER XI.
SCIENCE IN RELATION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.
Illustration of the general influences of Science from the history of America.
THE INTRODUCTION OF SCIENCE INTO EUROPE.—It passed from Moorish Spain
to Upper Italy, and was favored by the absence of the popes at Avignon.
—The effects of printing, of marilime adventure, and of the Refor-
mation.—Establishment of the Italian scientific societies.
THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE.-It changed the mode and the
direction of thought in Europe.—The transactions of the Royal So-
ciety of London, and other scientific societies, furnish an illustration
of this. sº
THE ECONOMICAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE is illustrated by the numerous me-
chanical and physical inventions, made since the fourteenth century.—
Their influence on health and domestic life, on the arts of peace and
of war.
Answer to the question, What has Science done for humanity?
EUROPE, at the epoch of the Reformation, furnishes
us with the result of the influences of Roman Christian-
ity in the promotion of civilization. America, examined
in like manner at the present time, furnishes us with an
illustration of the influences of Science.
In the course of the seventeenth century a sparse
European population had settled along the western At-
lantic coast. Attracted by the cod-fishery of Newfound-
land, the French had a little colony north of the St.
Lawrence; the English, Dutch, and Swedes, occupied
the shore of New England and the Middle States; some
SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION. 28'ſ
Huguenots were living in the Carolinas. Rumors of a
spring that could confer perpetual youth—a fountain of
life—had brought a few Spaniards into Florida. Be-
hind the fringe of villages which these adventurers had
built, lay a vast and unknown country, inhabited by
wandering Indians, whose numbers from the Gulf of
Mexico to the St. Lawrence did not exceed one hundred
and eighty thousand. From them the European stran-
gers had learned that in those solitary regions there
were fresh-water seas, and a great river which they
called the Mississippi. Some said that it flowed through
Virginia into the Atlantic, some that it passed through
Florida, some that it emptied into the Pacific, and some
that it reached the Gulf of Mexico. Parted from their
native countries by the stormy Atlantic, to cross which
implied a voyage of many months, these refugees seemed
lost to the world.
But before the close of the nineteenth century the
descendants of this feeble people had become one of
the great powers of the earth. They had established a
republic whose sway extended from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. With an army of more than a million men, not
on paper, but actually in the field, they had overthrown
a domestic assailant. They had maintained at sea a
war-fleet of nearly seven hundred ships, carrying five
thousand guns, some of them the heaviest in the world.
The tonnage of this navy amounted to half a million.
In the defense of their national life they had expended
in less than five years more than four thousand million
dollars. Their census, periodically taken, showed that
the population was doubling itself every twenty-five
years; it justified the expectation that at the close of
that century it would number nearly one hundred mill-
ion Souls.
288 KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.
A silent continent had been changed into a scene of
industry; it was full of the din of machinery and the
restless moving of men. Where there had been an un-
broken forest, there were hundreds of cities and towns.
To commerce were furnished in profusion some of the
most important staples, as cotton, tobacco, breadstuffs.
The mines yielded incredible quantities of gold, iron,
coal. Countless churches, colleges, and public schools,
testified that a moral influence vivified this material ac-
tivity. Locomotion was effectually provided for. The
railways exceeded in aggregate length those of all Eu-
rope combined. In 1873 the aggregate length of the
European railways was sixty-three thousand three hun-
dred and sixty miles, that of the American was seventy
thousand six hundred and fifty miles. One of them,
built across the continent, connected the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans.
But not alone are these material results worthy of
notice. Others of a moral and social kind force them-
selves on our attention. Four million negro slaves
had been set free. Legislation, if it inclined to the
advantage of any class, inclined to that of the poor.
Its intention was to raise them from poverty, and bet-
ter their lot. A career was open to talent, and that
without any restraint. Every thing was possible to in-
telligence and industry. Many of the most important
public offices were filled by men who had risen from
the humblest walks of life. If there was not Social
equality, as there never can be in rich and prosperous
communities, there was civil equality, rigorously main-
tained.
It may perhaps be said that much of this material
prosperity arose from special conditions, such as had
never occurred in the case of any people before. There
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM AMERICAN HISTORY. 289
was a vast, an open theatre of action, a whole continent
ready for any who chose to take possession of it. Noth-
ing more than courage and industry was needed to over-
come Nature, and to seize the abounding advantages
she offered.
But must not men be animated by a great principle
who successfully transform the primeval Solitudes into
an abode of civilization, who are not dismayed by gloomy
forests, or rivers, mountains, or frightful deserts, who
push their conquering way in the course of a century
across a continent, and hold it in subjection? Let us
contrast with this the results of the invasion of Mexico
and Peru by the Spaniards, who in those countries over-
threw a wonderful civilization, in many respects superior
to their own—a civilization that had been accomplished
without iron and gunpowder—a civilization resting on
an agriculture that had neither horse, nor ox, nor plough.
The Spaniards had a clear base to start from, and no
obstruction whatever in their advance. They ruined all
that the aboriginal children of America had accom-
plished. Millions of those unfortunates were destroyed
by their cruelty. Nations that for many centuries had
been living in contentment and prosperity, under in-
stitutions shown by their history to be suitable to them,
were plunged into anarchy; the people fell into a bane-
ful Superstition, and a greater part of their landed and
other property found its way into the possession of the
Roman Church.
I have selected the foregoing illustration, drawn
from American history, in preference to many others
that might have been taken from European, because
it furnishes an instance of the operation of the acting
principle least interfered with by extraneous conditions.
European political progress is less simple than American.
13
290 QUARREL BETWEEN FRANCE AND THE PAPACY.
Before considering its manner of action, and its re-
sults, I will briefly relate how the scientific principle
found an introduction into Europe.
INTRODUCTION OF SCIENCE INTO EUROPE.
Not only had the Crusades, for many years, brought
vast sums to Rome, extorted from the fears or the piety
of every Christian nation; they had also increased the
papal power to a most dangerous extent. In the dual
governments everywhere prevailing in Europe, the spir-
itual had obtained the mastery; the temporal was little
better than its servant. -
From all quarters, and under all kinds of pretenses,
streams of money were steadily flowing into Italy. The
temporal princes found that there were left for them in-
adequate and impoverished revenues. Philip the Fair,
King of France (A.D. 1300), not only determined to check
this drain from his dominions, by prohibiting the export
of gold, and silver without his license; he also resolved
that the clergy and the ecclesiastical estates should pay
their share of taxes to him. This brought on a mortal
contest with the papacy. The king was excommuni-
cated, and, in retaliation, he accused the pope, Boniface
VIII., of atheism; demanding that he should be triod
by a general council. He sent some trusty persons into
Italy, who seized Boniface in his palace at Anagni, and
treated him with so much severity, that in a few days
he died. The succeeding pontiff, Benedict XI., was
poisoned. :
The French king was determined that the papacy
should be purified and reformed; that it should no longer
be the appanage of a few Italian families, who were
dexterously transmuting the credulity of Europe into
coin—that French influence should prevail in it. He
MOORISII SCIENCE INTRODUCED THROUGH FRANCE. 291
therefore came to an understanding with the cardinals;
a French archbishop was elevated to the pontificate;
he took the name of Clement W. The papal court was
removed to Avignon, in France, and Tome was aban-
doned as the metropolis of Christianity.
Seventy years elapsed before the papacy was restored
to the Eternal City (A. D. 1376). The diminution of its
influence in the peninsula, that had thus occurred, gave
opportunity for the memorable intellectual movement
which soon manifested itself in the great commercial
cities of Upper Italy. Contemporaneously, also, there
were other propitious events. The result of the Cru-
sades had shaken the faith of all Christendom. In an
age when the test of the ordeal of battle was universally
accepted, those wars had ended in leaving the Holy
Land in the hands of the Saracens; the many thousand
Christian warriors who had returned from them did not
hesitate to declare that they had found their antagonists
not such as had been pictured by the Church, but val-
iant, courteous, just. Through the gay cities of the
south of France a love of romantic literature had been
spreading; the wandering troubadours had been singing
their songs—songs far from being restricted to ladye-
love and feats of war; often their burden was the awful
atrocities that had been perpetrated by papal authority—
the religious massacres of Languedoc ; often their bur-
den was the illicit amours of the clergy. From Moor-
ish Spain the gentle and gallant idea of chivalry had
been brought, and with it the noble sentiment of “per-
sonal honor,” destined in the course of time to give a
code of its own to Europe.
The return of the papacy to Rome was far from
restoring the influence of the popes over the Italian
Peninsula. More than two generations had passed away
292 EFFECT OF THE GREAT SCHISM.
since their departure, and, had they come back even in
their original strength, they could not have resisted the
intellectual progress that had been made during their
absence. The papacy, however, came back not to rule,
but to be divided against itself, to encounter the Great
Schism. Out of its dissensions emerged two rival popes;
eventually there were three, each pressing his claims
upon the religious, each cursing his rival. A sentiment
of indignation soon spread all over Europe, a determi-
nation that the shameful scenes which were then enact-
ing should be ended. How could the dogma of a
Vicar of God upon earth, the dogma of an infallible
pope, be sustained in presence of such scandals? Herein
lay the cause of that resolution of the ablest ecclesiastics
of those times (which, alas for Europe! could not be car-
ried into effect), that a general council should be made
the permanent religious parliament of the whole con-
tinent, with the pope as its chief executive officer. Had
that intention been accomplished, there would have been
at this day no conflict between science and religion;
the convulsion of the Reformation would have been
avoided; there would have been no jarring Protestant
sects. But the Councils of Constance and Basle failed
to shake off the Italian yoke, failed to attain that noble
result.
Catholicism was thus weakening; as its leaden press-
ure lifted, the intellect of man expanded. The Sara-
cens had invented the method of making paper from
linen rags and from cotton. The Venetians had brought
from China to Europe the art of printing. The former
of these inventions was essential to the latter. Hence-
forth, without the possibility of a check, there was in-
tellectual intercommunication among all men.
The invention of printing was a severe blow to
INVENTION OF PRINTING. 293
Catholicism, which had, previously, enjoyed the inap-
preciable advantage of a monopoly of intercommuni-
cation. From its central seat, orders could be dissemi-
nated through all the ecclesiastical ranks, and fulminated
through the pulpits. This monopoly and the amazing
power it conferred were destroyed by the press. In
modern times, the influence of the pulpit has become
insignificant. The pulpit has been thoroughly sup-
planted by the newspaper.
Yet, Catholicism did not yield its ancient advantage
without a struggle. As soon as the inevitable tendency
of the new art was detected, a restraint upon it, under
the form of a censorship, was attempted. It was made
necessary to have a permit, in order to print a book.
For this, it was needful that the work should have been
read, examined, and approved by the clergy. There
must be a certificate that it was a godly and orthodox
book. A bull of excommunication was issued in 1501,
by Alexander VI., against printers who should publish
pernicious doctrines. In 1515 the Lateran Council
ordered that no books should be printed but such as
had been inspected by the ecclesiastical censors, under
pain of excommunication and fine; the censors being
directed “to take the utmost care that nothing should
be printed contrary to the orthodox faith.” There was
thus a dread of religious discussion; a terror lest truth
should emerge.
But these frantic struggles of the powers of igno-
rance were unavailing. Intellectual intercommunica-
tion among men was secured. It culminated in the
modern newspaper, which daily gives its contempora-
neous intelligence from all parts of the world. Reading
became a common occupation. In ancient society that
art was possessed by comparatively few persons. Mod-
2.94. EFFECTS OF MARITIME ENTERPRISE.
ern Society owes some of its most striking characteristics
to this change. *
*Such was the result of bringing into Europe the
manufacture of paper and the printing-press. In like
manner the introduction of the mariner's compass was
followed by imposing material and moral effects. These
were—the discovery of America in consequence of the
rivalry of the Venetians and Genoese about the India
trade; the doubling of Africa by De Gama; and the
circumnavigation of the earth by Magellan. With re-
spect to the last, the grandest of all human undertakings,
it is to be remembered that Catholicism had irrevocably
committed itself to the dogma of a flat earth, with the
sky as the floor of heaven, and hell in the under-world.
Some of the Fathers, whose authority was held to be
paramount, had, as we have previously said, furnished
philosophical and religious arguments against the globu-
lar form. The controversy had now suddenly come to
an end—the Church was found to be in error.
The correction of that geographical error was by no
means the only important result that followed the three
great voyages. The spirit of Columbus, De Gama,
Magellan, diffused itself among all the enterprising men
of Western Europe. Society had been hitherto living
under the dogma of “loyalty to the king, obedience to
the Church.” It had therefore been living for others,
not for itself. The political effect of that dogma had
culminated in the Crusades. Countless thousands had
perished in wars that could bring them no reward, and
of which the result had been conspicuous failure. Ex-
perience had revealed the fact that the only gainers
were the pontiffs, cardinals, and other ecclesiastics in
Rome, and the shipmasters of Venice. But, when it
became known that the wealth of Mexico, Teru, and
INDIVIDUALISM. 295
India, might be shared by any one who had enterprise
and courage, the motives that had animated the restless
populations of Europe suddenly changed. The story of
Cortez and Pizarro found enthusiastic listeners every-
where. Maritime adventure supplanted religious en-
thusiasm.
If we attempt to isolate the principle that lay at
the basis of the wonderful social changes that now took
place, we may recognize it without difficulty. Hereto-
fore each man had dedicated his services to his Supe-
rior—feudal or ecclesiastical ; now he had resolved to
gather the fruits of his exertions himself. Individual-
ism was becoming predominant, loyalty was declining
into a sentiment. We shall now see how it was with
the Church.
Individualism rests on the principle that a man shall
be his own master, that he shall have liberty to form
his own opinions, freedom to carry into effect his re-
solves. He is, therefore, ever brought into competition
with his fellow-men. His life is a display of energy.
To remove the stagnation of centuries from Euro-
pean life, to vivify suddenly what had hitherto been an
inert mass, to impart to it individualism, was to bring
it into conflict with the influences that had been oppress-
ing it. All through the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies uneasy strugglings gave a premonition of what
was coming. In the early part of the sixteenth (1517),
the battle was joined. Individualism found its embodi-
ment in a sturdy German monk, and therefore, perhaps
necessarily, asserted its rights under theological forms.
There were some preliminary skirmishes about indul-
gences and other minor matters, but very soon the real
cause of dispute came plainly into view. Martin Lu-
ther refused to think as he was ordered to do by his ec-
296 THE REFORMATION.
clesiastical Superiors at Rome; he asserted that he had
an inalienable right to interpret the Bible for himself.
At her first glance, Rome saw nothing in Martin
Luther but a vulgar, insubordinate, quarrelsome monk.
Could the Inquisition have laid hold of him, it would
have speedily disposed of his affair; but, as the conflict
went on, it was discovered that Martin was not standing
alone. Many thousands of men, as resolute as himself,
Were coming up to his support; and, while he carried
on the combat with writings and words, they made good
his propositions with the Sword.
The vilification which was poured on Luther and
his doings was So bitter as to be ludicrous. It was de-
clared that his father was not his mother's husband, but
an impish incubus, who had deluded her; that, after ten
years' struggling with his conscience, he had become an
atheist; that he denied the immortality of the Soul;
that he had composed hymns in honor of drunkenness,
a vice to which he was unceasingly addicted; that he
blasphemed the Holy Scriptures, and particularly Moses;
that he did not believe a word of what he preached;
that he had called the Epistle of St. James a thing of
straw; and, above all, that the Reformation was no
work of his, but, in reality, was due to a certain astro-
logical position of the stars. It was, however, a vulgar
saying among the Roman ecclesiastics that Erasmus laid
the egg of the Reformation, and Luther hatched it.
Tome at first made the mistake of supposing that
this was nothing more than a casual outbreak; she failed
to discern that it was, in fact, the culmination of an inter-
nal movement which for two centuries had been going on
in Europe, and which had been hourly gathering force;
that, had there been nothing else, the existence of three
popes—three obediences—would have compelled men to
DECOMPOSITION OF PROTESTANTISM. 297
think, to deliberate, to conclude for themselves. The
Councils of Constance and Basle taught them that there
was a higher power than the popes. The long and
bloody wars that ensued were closed by the Peace of
Westphalia; and then it was found that Central and
Northern Europe had cast off the intellectual tyranny
of Rome, that individualism had carried its point, and
had established the right of every man to think for
himself.
But it was impossible that the establishment of this
right of private judgment should end with the rejection
of Catholicism. Early in the movement some of the
most distinguished men, such as Erasmus, who had been
among its first promoters, abandoned it. They per-
ceived that many of the Reformers entertained a bit-
ter dislike of learning, and they were afraid of being
brought under bigoted caprice. The Protestant party,
having thus established its existence by dissent and Sep-
aration, must, in its turn, submit to the operation of the
same principles. A decomposition into many subordi-
nate sects was inevitable. And these, now that they
had no longer any thing to fear from their great Italian
adversary, commenced partisan warfares on each other.
As, in different countries, first one and then another
sect rose to power, it stained itself with cruelties perpe-
trated upon its competitors. The mortal retaliations
that had ensued, when, in the chances of the times, the
oppressed got the better of their oppressors, convinced
the contending sectarians that they must concede to
their competitors what they claimed for themselves; and
thus, from their broils and their crimes, the great prin-
ciple of toleration extricated itself. But toleration is
only an intermediate stage; and, as the intellectual de-
composition of Protestantism keeps going on, that tran-
298 TOLERATION.
sitional condition will lead to a higher and nobler state
—the hope of philosophy in all past ages of the world—
a social state in which there shall be unfettered freedom
for thought. Toleration, except when extorted by fear,
can only come from those who are capable of entertain-
ing and respecting other opinions than their own. It
can therefore only come from philosophy. History
teaches us only too plainly that fanaticism is stimulated
by religion, and neutralized or eradicated by philoso-
phy. w
The avowed object of the Reformation was, to re-
move from Christianity the pagan ideas and pagan rites
engrafted upon it by Constantine and his successors,
in their attempt to reconcile the Toman Empire to it.
The Protestants designed to bring it back to its primi-
tive purity; and hence, while restoring the ancient doc-
trines, they cast out of it all such practices as the ado-
ration of the Virgin Mary and the invocation of Saints.
The Virgin Mary, we are assured by the Evangelists,
had accepted the duties of married life, and borne to
her husband several children. In the prevailing idola-
try, she had ceased to be regarded as the carpenter's
wife; she had become the queen of heaven, and the
mother of God.
The science of the Arabians followed the invading
track of their literature, which had come into Christen-
dom by two routes—the south of France, and Sicily.
Favored by the exile of the popes to Avignon, and by
the Great Schism, it made good its foothold in Upper
Italy. The Aristotelian or Inductive philosophy, clad
in the Saracenic costume that Averroes had given it,
made many secret and not a few open friends. It found
many minds eager to receive and able to appreciate it.
Among these were Leonardo da Vinci, who proclaimed
DA WINCI. 299
the fundamental principle that experiment and observa-
tion are the only reliable foundations of reasoning in sci-
ence, that experiment is the only trustworthy interpreter
of Nature, and is essential to the ascertainment of laws.
He showed that the action of two perpendicular forces
upon a point is the same as that denoted by the diagonal
of a rectangle, of which they represent the sides. From
this the passage to the proposition of oblique forces was
very easy. This proposition was rediscovered by Ste-
vinus, a century later, and applied by him to the ex-
planation of the mechanical powers. Da Vinci gave a
clear exposition of the theory of forces applied obliquely
on a lever, discovered the laws of friction subsequently
demonstrated by Amontons, and understood the prin-
ciple of virtual velocities. He treated of the conditions
of descent of bodies along inclined planes and circular
arcs, invented the camera-obscura, discussed correctly
several physiological problems, and foreshadowed some
of the great conclusions of modern geology, such as the
nature of fossil remains, and the elevation of continents.
He explained the earth-light reflected by the moon.
With surprising versatility of genius he excelled as a
sculptor, architect, engineer; was thoroughly versed in
the astronomy, anatomy, and chemistry of his times.
In painting, he was the rival of Michel Angelo; in a
competition between them, he was considered to have
established his superiority. His “Last Supper,” on the
wall of the refectory of the Dominican convent of Sta.
Maria delle Grazie, is well known, from the numerous
engravings and copies that have been made of it.
Once firmly established in the north of Italy, Sci-
ence soon extended her sway over the entire penin-
Sula. The increasing number of her devotees is indi-
cated by the rise and rapid multiplication of learned
300 ITALIAN SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES.
Societies. These were reproductions of the Moorish
ones that had formerly existed in Granada and Cordova.
As if to mark by a monument the track through which
civilizing influences had come, the Academy of Tou-
louse, founded in 1345, has survived to our own times.
It represented, however, the gay literature of the south
of France, and was known under the fanciful title of
“the Academy of Floral Games.” The first society for
the promotion of physical Science, the Academia Se-
cretorum Naturae, was founded at Naples, by Baptista
Porta. It was, as Tiraboschi relates, dissolved by the
ecclesiastical authorities. The Lyncean was founded by
Prince Frederic Cesi at Rome; its device plainly indi-
cated its intention: a lynx, with its eyes turned upward
toward heaven, tearing a triple-headed Cerberus with
its claws. The Accademia del Cimento, established at
Florence, 1657, held its meetings in the ducal palace.
It lasted ten years, and was then suppressed at the in-
stance of the papal government; as an equivalent, the
brother of the grand-duke was made a cardinal. It
numbered many great men, such as Torricelli and Cas-
telli, among its members. The condition of admission
into it was an abjuration of all faith, and a resolution to
inquire into the truth. These Societies extricated the
cultivators of science from the isolation in which they
had hitherto lived, and, by promoting their intercom-
munication and union, imparted activity and strength to
them all.
INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE,
Returning now from this digression, this historical
sketch of the circumstances under which Science was in-
troduced into Europe, I pass to the consideration of
its manner of action and its results.
INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE. 301
The influence of science on modern civilization has
been twofold: 1. Intellectual; 2. Economical. Under
these titles we may conveniently consider it.
Intellectually it overthrew the authority of tradi-
tion. It refused to accept, unless accompanied by proof,
the dicta of any master, no matter how eminent or
honored his name. The conditions of admission into
the Italian Accademia del Cimento, and the motto
adopted by the Royal Society of London, illustrate the
position it took in this respect.
It rejected the supernatural and miraculous as evi-
dence in physical discussions. It abandoned sign-proof
such as the Jews in old days required, and denied that
a demonstration can be given through an illustration
of something else, thus casting aside the logic that had
been in vogue for many centuries.
In physical inquiries, its mode of procedure was, to
test the value of any proposed hypothesis, by executing
computations in any special case on the basis or prin-
ciple of that hypothesis, and then, by performing an ex-
periment or making an observation, to ascertain whether
the result of these agreed with the result of the com-
putation. If it did not, the hypothesis was to be re-
jected. * ,
We may here introduce an illustration or two of
this mode of procedure:
Newton, suspecting that the influence of the earth’s
attraction, gravity, may extend as far as the moon, and
be the force that causes her to revolve in her orbit
round the earth, calculated that, by her motion in her
orbit, she was deflected from the tangent thirteen feet
every minute; but, by ascertaining the space through
which bodies would fall in one minute at the earth’s
surface, and supposing it to be diminished in the ratic
302 THEORIES OF GRAVITATION AND PHLOGISTON.
of the inverse Square, it appeared that the attraction at
the moon’s orbit would draw a body through more than
fifteen feet. He, therefore, for the time, considered
his hypothesis as unsustained. But it so happened that
Picard shortly afterward executed more correctly a new
measurement of a degree; this changed the estimated
magnitude of the earth, and the distance of the moon,
which was measured in earth-semidiameters. Newton
now renewed his computation, and, as I have related on
a previous page, as it drew to a close, foreseeing that a
Coincidence was about to be established, was so much
agitated that he was obliged to ask a friend to complete
it. The hypothesis was sustained.
A second instance will sufficiently illustrate the
method under consideration. It is presented by the
chemical theory of phlogiston. Stahl, the author of
this theory, asserted that there is a principle of inflam-
mability, to which he gave the name phlogiston, having
the quality of uniting with substances. Thus, when
what we now term a metallic oxide was united to it,
a metal was produced; and, if the phlogiston were
withdrawn, the metal passed back into its earthy or oxi-
dized state. On this principle, then, the metals were
compound bodies, earths combined with phlogiston.
But during the eighteenth century the balance was
introduced as an instrument of chemical research. Now,
if the phlogistic hypothesis be true, it would follow that
a metal should be the heavier, its oxide the lighter body,
for the former contains something—phlogiston—that
has been added to the latter. But, on weighing a por-
tion of any metal, and also the oxide producible from
it, the latter proves to be the heavier, and here the phlo-
gistic hypothesis fails. Still further, on continuing the
investigation, it may be shown that the oxide or calx, as
SCIENCE AND ECCLESIASTICISM, 303
it used to be called, has become heavier by combining
with one of the ingredients of the air.
To Lavoisier is usually attributed this test experi-
ment; but the fact that the weight of a metal increases
by calcination was established by earlier European ex-
perimenters, and, indeed, was well known to the Ara-
bian chemists. Lavoisier, however, was the first to rec.
ognize its great importance. In his hands it produced a
revolution in chemistry.
The abandonment of the phlogistic theory is an il-
lustration of the readiness with which scientific hypoth-
eses are surrendered, when found to be wanting in ac-
cordance with facts. Authority and tradition pass for
nothing. Every thing is settled by an appeal to Nature.
It is assumed that the answers she gives to a practical
interrogation will ever be true.
Comparing now the philosophical principles on which
Science was proceeding, with the principles on which
ecclesiasticism rested, we see that, while the former re-
pudiated tradition, to the latterit was the main support;
while the former insisted on the agreement of calcula-
tion and observation, or the correspondence of reason-
ing and fact, the latter leaned upon mysteries; while
the former summarily rejected its own theories, if it
saw that they could not be coördinated with Nature, the
latter found merit in a faith that blindly accepted the
inexplicable, a satisfied contemplation of “things above
reason.” The alienation between the two continually
increased. On one side there was a sentiment of dis-
dain, on the other a sentiment of hatred. Impartial
witnesses on all hands perceived that science was rapid
ly undermining ecclesiasticism.
Mathematics had thus become the great instrument
304 MATHEMATICŞ.
of scientific research, it had become the instrument
of Scientific reasoning. In one respect it may be said
that it reduced the operations of the mind to a mechani-
cal process, for its symbols often saved the labor of
thinking. The habit of mental exactness it encouraged
extended to other branches of thought, and produced
an intellectual revolution. No longel was it possible
to be satisfied with miracle-proof, or the logic that had
been relied upon throughout the middle ages. Not
only did it thus influence the manner of thinking,
it also changed the direction of thought. Of this we
may be satisfied by comparing the subjects considered
in the transactions of the various learned societies with
the discussions that had occupied the attention of the
middle ages. -
But the use of mathematics was not limited to the
verification of theories; as above indicated, it also fur-
nished a means of predicting what had hitherto been
unobserved. In this it offered a counterpart to the
prophecies of ecclesiasticism. The discovery of Nep-
tune is an instance of the kind furnished by astronomy,
and that of conical refraction by the optical theory of
undulations.
But, while this great instrument led to such a won-
derful development in natural science, it was itself un-
dergoing development—improvement. Let us in a few
lines recall its progress.
The germ of algebra may be discerned in the works
of Diophantus of Alexandria, who is supposed to have
lived in the second century of our era. In that Egyp.
tian school Euclid had formerly collected the great
truths of geometry, and arranged them in logical Se.
quence. Archimedes, in Syracuse, had attempted the
solution of the higher problems by the method of ex
MATHEMATICS. 305
haustions. Such was the tendency of things that, had
the patronage of Science been continued, algebra would
inevitably have been invented.
To the Arabians we owe our knowledge of the
rudiments of algebra; we owe to them the very name
under which this branch of mathematics passes. They
had carefully added, to the remains of the Alex-
andrian School, improvements obtained in India, and
had communicated to the subject a certain consistency
and form. The knowledge of algebra, as they pos-
sessed it, was first brought into Italy about the begin.
ning of the thirteenth century. It attracted so lit-
tle attention, that nearly three hundred years elapsed
before any European work on the subject appeared. In
1496 Paccioli published his book entitled “Arte Mag-
giore,” or “Alghebra.” In 1501, Cardan, of Milan, gave
a method for the solution of cubic equations; other im-
provements were contributed by Scipio Ferreo, 1508, by
Tartalea, by Vieta. The Germans now took up the
subject. At this time the notation was in an imperfect
State.
The publication of the Geometry of Descartes, which
contains the application of algebra to the definition and
investigation of curve lines (1637), constitutes an epoch
in the history of the mathematical sciences. Two years
previously, Cavalieri's work on Indivisibles had ap-
peared. This method was improved by Torricelli and
others. The way was now open for the development
of the Infinitesimal Calculus, the method of Fluxions of
Newton, and the Differential and Integral Calculus of
Leibnitz. Though in his possession many years previ.
ously, Newton published nothing on Fluxions until
1704; the imperfect notation he employed retarded
very much the application of his method. Meantime,
306 MATHEMATICS,
on the Continent, very largely through the brilliant solu-
tions of some of the higher problems, accomplished by
the Bernouillis, the Calculus of Leibnitz was univer-
Sally accepted, and improved by many mathematicians.
An extraordinary development of the science now took
place, and continued throughout the century. To the
Binomial theorem, previously discóvered by Newton,
Taylor now added, in his “Method of Increments,” the
celebrated theorem that bears his name. This was in
1715. The Calculus of Partial Differences was intro-
duced by Euler in 1734. It was extended by D'Alem-
bert, and was followed by that of Variations, by Euler
and Lagrange, and by the method of Derivative Func-
tions, by Lagrange, in 1772.
But it was not only in Italy, in Germany, in England,
in France, that this great movement in mathematics was
witnessed; Scotland had added a new gem to the intel-
lectual diadem with which her brow is encircled, by the
grand invention of Logarithms, by Napier of Merchis-
ton. It is impossible to give any adequate conception
of the scientific importance of this incomparable inven-
tion. The modern physicist and astronomer will most
cordially agree with Briggs, the Professor of Mathe-
matics in Gresham College, in his exclamation: “I
never saw a book that pleased me better, and that made
me more wonderl” Not without reason did the im-
mortal Kepler regard Napier “to be the greatest man
of his age, in the department to which he had applied
his abilities.” Napier died in 1617. It is no exag.
geration to say that this invention, by shortening the
labors, doubled the life of the astronomer.
But here I must check myself. I must remember
that my present purpose is not to give the history of
mathematics, but to consider what Science has done fol
MATHEMATICS. 307
the advancement of human civilization. And now, at
once, recurs the question, How is it that the Church
produced no geometer in her autocratic reign of twelve
hundred years?
With respect to pure mathematics this remark may
be made: Its cultivation does not demand appliances
that are beyond the reach of most individuals. Astron-
omy must have its observatory, chemistry its labora-
tory; but mathematics asks only personal disposition
and a few books. No great expenditures are called for,
nor the services of assistants. One would think that
nothing could be more congenial, nothing more delight-
ful, even in the retirement of monastic life.
Shall we answer with Eusebius, “It is through con-
tempt of such useless labor that we think so little of
these matters; we turn Our Souls to the exercise of bet-
ter things?” Better things! What can be better than
absolute truth? Are mysteries, miracles, lying impos-
tures, better ? It was these that stood in the way !
The ecclesiastical authorities had recognized, from
the outset of this scientific invasion, that the principles
it was disseminating were absolutely irreconcilable with
the current theology. Directly and indirectly, they
struggled against it. So great was their detestation of
experimental Science, that they thought they had gained
a great advantage when the Accademia del Cimento was
suppressed. Nor was the Sentiment restricted to Cathol.
icism. When the Royal Society of London was found.
ed, theological odium was directed against it with so
much rancor that, doubtless, it would have been extin.
guished, had not King Charles II. given it his open and
avowed support. It was accused of an intention of “de-
stroying the established religion, of injuring the univer.
sities, and of upsetting ancient and solid learning.”
308 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.
We have only to turn over the pages of its Transac-
tions to discern how much this society has done for the
progress of humanity. It was incorporated in 1662,
and has interested itself in all the great scientific move-
ments and discoveries that have since been made. It
published Newton’s “Principia;” it promoted Halley's
voyage, the first scientific expedition undertaken by any
government; it made experiments on the transfusion
of blood, and accepted Harvey’s discovery of the circu-
lation. The encouragement it gave to inoculation led
Queen Caroline to beg six condemned criminals for ex-
periment, and then to submit her own children to that
operation. Through its encouragement Bradley accom-
plished his great discovery, the aberration of the fixed
stars, and that of the nutation of the earth’s axis; to
these two discoveries, Delambre says, we owe the exact-
ness of modern astronomy. It promoted the improve-
ment of the thermometer, the measure of temperature,
and in Harrison's watch, the chronometer, the measure
of time. Through it the Gregorian Calendar was intro-
duced into England, in 1752, against a violent religious
opposition. Some of its Fellows were pursued through
the streets by an ignorant and infuriated mob, who be-
lieved it had robbed them of eleven days of their lives;
it was found necessary to conceal the name of Father
Walmesley, a learned Jesuit, who had taken deep inter-
est in the matter; and, Bradley happening to die during
the commotion, it was declared, that he had suffered a
judgment from Heaven for his crime! -
If I were to attempt to do justice to the merits of
this great society, I should have to devote many pages
to such subjects as the achromatic telescope of Dollond;
the dividing engine of Ramsden, which first gave pre-
cision to astronomical observations; the measurement
THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 309
of a degree on the earth's surface by Mason and Dixon;
the expeditions of Cook in connection with the transit
of Venus; his circumnavigation of the earth; his proof
that scurvy, the curse of long sea-voyages, may be
avoided by the use of vegetable substances; the polar
expeditions; the determination of the density of the
earth by Maskelyne's experiments at Schehallion, and
by those of Cavendish; the discovery of the planet
Uranus by Herschel; the composition of water by Cav-
endish and Watt; the determination of the difference of
longitude between London and Paris; the invention of
the voltaic pile; the surveys of the heavens by the
Herschels; the development of the principle of inter-
ference by Young, and his establishment of the undula-
tory theory of light; the ventilation of jails and other
buildings; the introduction of gas for city illumination;
the ascertainment of the length of the seconds-pendu-
lum; the measurement of the variations of gravity in
different latitudes; the operations to ascertain the cur-
vature of the earth; the polar expedition of Ross; the
invention of the safety-lamp by Davy, and his decom-
position of the alkalies and earths; the electro-magnetic
discoveries of Oersted and Faraday; the calculating-
engines of Babbage; the measures taken at the instance
of Humboldt for the establishment of many magnetic
observatories; the verification of contemporaneous mag-
netic disturbances over the earth’s surface. But it is
impossible, in the limited space at my disposal, to give
even so little as a catalogue of its Transactions. Its
spirit was identical with that which animated the Ac-
cademia del Cimento, and its motto accordingly was,
“Nullius in Verba.” It proscribed superstition, and
permitted only calculation, observation, and experi-
lment.
310 INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE.
Not for a moment must it be supposed that in these
great attempts, these great successes, the Royal Society
stood alone. In all the capitals of Europe there were
Academies, Institutes, or Societies, equal in distinction,
and equally successful in promoting human knowledge
and modern civilization. ---
THE ECONOMICAL INFLUENCES OF SCIENCE.
The scientific study of Nature tends not only to cor-
rect and ennoble the intellectual conceptions of man;
it serves also to ameliorate his physical condition. It
perpetually suggests to him the inquiry, how he may
make, by their economical application, ascertained facts
subservient to his use.
The investigation of principles is quickly followed
by practical inventions. This, indeed, is the character-
istic feature of our times. It has produced a great revo-
lution in national policy.
In former ages wars were made for the procuring
of slaves. A conqueror transported entire populations,
and extorted from them forced labor, for it was only by
human labor that human labor could be relieved. But
when it was discovered that physical agents and mechan-
ical combinations could be employed to incomparably
greater advantage, public policy underwent a change;
when it was recognized that the application of a new
principle, or the invention of a new machine, was better
than the acquisition of an additional slave, peace be-
came preferable to war. And not only so, but nations
possessing great slave or serf populations, as was the
case in America and Russia, found that considerations
of humanity were supported by considerations of inter-
est, and set their bondmen free.
Thus we live in a period of which a characteristic is
SCIENTIFIC INVENTIONS. 311
the supplanting of human and animal labor by machines.
Its mechanical inventions have wrought a social revo-
lution. We appeal to the natural, not to the Super-
natural, for the accomplishment of our ends. It is with
the “modern civilization” thus arising that Catholicism
refuses to be reconciled. The papacy loudly proclaims
its inflexible repudiation of this state of affairs, and
insists on a restoration of the medieval condition of
things.
That a piece of amber, when rubbed, will attract
and then repel light bodies, was a fact known six hun-
dred years before Christ. It remained an isolated, un-
cultivated fact, a mere trifle, until sixteen hundred years
after Christ. Then dealt with by the scientific methods
of mathematical discussion and experiment, and practi-
cal application made of the result, it has permitted men
to communicate instantaneously with each other across
continents and under oceans. It has centralized the
world. By enabling the sovereign authority to trans-
mit its mandates without regard to distance or to time,
it has revolutionized statesmanship and condensed po-
litical power.
In the Museum of Alexandria there was a machine
invented by Hero, the mathematician, a little more than
one hundred years before Christ. It revolved by the
agency of steam, and was of the form that we should
now call a reaction-engine. This, the germ of one of
the most important inventions ever made, was remem-
bered as a mere curiosity for seventeen hundred years.
Chance had nothing to do with the invention of the
modern steam-engine. It was the product of medi-
tation and experiment. In the middle of the seven-
teenth century several mechanical engineers attempted
to utilize the properties of steam ; their labors were
312 SCIENTIFIC INVENTIONS.
brought to perfection by Watt in the middle of the
eighteenth.
The steam-engine quickly became the drudge of
civilization. It performed the work of many millions
of men. It gave, to those who would have been con-
demned to a life of brutal toil, the opportunity of better
pursuits. He who formerly labored might now think.
Its earliest application was in such operations as
pumping, wherein mere force is required. Soon, how-
ever, it windicated its delicacy of touch in the industrial
arts of spinning and weaving. It created vast manu-
facturing establishments, and supplied clothing for the
world. It changed the industry of nations.
In its application, first to the navigation of rivers,
and then to the navigation of the ocean, it more than
quadrupled the speed that had heretofore been attained.
Instead of forty days being requisite for the passage,
the Atlantic might now be crossed in eight. But, in
land transportation, its power was most strikingly dis-
played. The admirable invention of the locomotive
enabled men to travel farther in less than an hour than
they formerly could have done in more than a day.
The locomotive has not only enlarged the field of
human activity, but, by diminishing space, it has in-
creased the capabilities of human life. In the swift
transportation of manufactured goods and agricultural
products, it has become a most efficient incentive to
human industry
The perfection of ocean steam-navigation was
greatly promoted by the invention of the chronometer,
which rendered it possible to find with accuracy the
place of a ship at sea. The great drawback on the ad-
vancement of science in the Alexandrian School was
the want of an instrument for the measurement of
SCIENTIFIC INVENTIONS. 313
time, and one for the measurement of temperature—
the chronometer and the thermometer; indeed, the in-
vention of the latter is essential to that of the former.
Clepsydras, or water-clocks, had been tried, but they
were deficient in accuracy. Of one of them, ornament-
ed with the signs of the zodiac, and destroyed by cer-
tain primitive Christians, St. Polycarp significantly re-
marked, “In all these monstrous demons is seen an art
hostile to God.” Not until about 1680 did the chro-
nometer begin to approach accuracy. Hooke, the con-
temporary of Newton, gave it the balance-wheel, with
the spiral spring, and various escapements in Succession
were devised, such as the anchor, the dead-beat, the
duplex, the remontoir. Provisions for the variation of
temperature were introduced. It was brought to perfec-
tion eventually by Harrison and Arnold, in their hands
becoming an accurate measure of the flight of time.
To the invention of the chronometer must be added
that of the reflecting sextant by Godfrey. This per-
mitted astronomical observations to be made, notwith-
standing the motion of a ship.
Improvements in ocean navigation are exercising
a powerful influence on the distribution of mankind.
They are increasing the amount and altering the char-
acter of colonization.
But not alone have these great discoveries and in-
ventions, the offspring of Scientific investigation, changed
the lot of the human race; very many minor ones, per-
haps individually insignificant, have in their aggregate
accomplished surprising effects. The commencing cul-
tivation of Science in the fourteenth century gave a
wonderful stimulus.to inventive talent, directed mainly
to useful practical results; and this, subsequently, was
greatly encouraged by the system of patents, which
-> J 4 -
314 DOMESTIC IMPROVEMENT.
secure to the originator a reasonable portion of the ben-
efits of his skill. It is sufficient to refer in the most
cursory manner to a few of these improvements; we
appreciate at once how much they have done. The
introduction of the saw-mill gave wooden floors to
houses, banishing those of gypsum, tile, or stone; im-
provements cheapening the manufacture of glass gave
windows, making possible the warming of apartments.
However, it was not until the sixteenth century that
glazing could be well done. The cutting of glass by the
diamond was then introduced. The addition of chim-
neys purified the atmosphere of dwellings, smoky and
Sooty as the huts of Savages; it gave that indescribable
blessing of northern homes—a cheerful fireside. Hith-
erto a hole in the roof for the escape of the smoke, a pit
in the midst of the floor to contain the fuel, and to be
covered with a lid when the curfew-bell sounded or
night came, such had been the cheerless and inadequate
means of warming.
Though not without a bitter resistance on the part
of the clergy, men began to think that pestilences are
not punishments inflicted by God on society for its
religious shortcomings, but the physical consequences
of filth and wretchedness; that the proper mode of
avoiding them is not by praying to the Saints, but by
insuring personal and municipal cleanliness. In the
twelfth century it was found necessary to pave the
streets of Paris, the stench in them was so dreadful.
At once dysenteries and spotted fever diminished; a
sanitary condition approaching that of the Moorish cit-
ies of Spain, which had been paved for centuries, was
attained. In that now beautiful metropolis it was for-
bidden to keep swine, an ordinance resented by the
monks of the abbey of St. Anthony, who demanded that
MUNICIPAL IMPROVEMENTS. 315
the pigs of that saint should go where they chose; the
government was obliged to compromise the matter by
requiring that bells should be fastened to the animals'
necks. King Philip, the son of Louis the Fat, had been
killed by his horse stumbling over a sow. Prohibitions
were published against throwing slops out of the win-
dows. In 1870 an eye-witness, the author of this book,
at the close of the pontifical rule in Rome, found that,
in walking the ordure-defiled streets of that city, it was
more necessary to inspect the earth than to contemplate
the heavens, in order to preserve personal purity. Until
the beginning of the seventeenth century, the streets of
Berlin were never swept. There was a law that every
countryman, who came to market with a cart, should
carry back a load of dirt!
Paving was followed by attempts, often of an imper-
fect kind, at the construction of drains and sewers. It
had become obvious to all reflecting men that these
were necessary to the preservation of health, not only
in towns, but in isolated houses. Then followed the
lighting of the public thoroughfares. At first houses
facing the streets were compelled to have candles or
lamps in their windows; next the system that had been
followed with so much advantage in Cordova and Gra-
nada—of having public lamps—was tried, but this was
not brought to perfection until the present century,
when lighting by gas was invented. Contemporaneous-
ly with public lamps were improved organizations for
night-watchmen and police.
By the sixteenth century, mechanical inventions and
manufacturing improvements were exercising a conspic-
uous influence on domestic and social life. There were
looking-glasses and clocks on the walls, mantels over the
fireplaces. Though in many districts the kitchen-fire
316 1JUMESTIC IMPROVEMENTS.
was still supplied with turf, the use of coal began to
prevail. The table in the dining-room offered new deli-
cacies; commerce was bringing to it foreign products;
the coarse drinks of the North were supplanted by the
delicate wines of the South. Ice-houses were con-
structed. The bolting of flour, introduced at the wind-
mills, had given whiter and finer bread. By degrees
things that had been rarities became common—Indian-
corn, the potato, the turkey, and, conspicuous in the
long list, tobacco. Forks, an Italian invention, displaced
the filthy use of the fingers. It may be said that the
diet of civilized men now underwent a radical change.
Tea came from China, coffee from Arabia, the use of
Sugar from India, and these to no insignificant degree
Supplanted fermented liquors. Carpets replaced on the
floors the layer of straw; in the chambers there ap-
peared better beds, in the wardrobes cleaner and more
frequently-changed clothing. In many towns the aque-
duct was substituted for the public fountain and the
street-pump. Ceilings which in the old days would
have been dingy with soot and dirt, were now decorated
with ornamental frescoes. Baths were more commonly
resorted to; there was less need to use perfumery for
the concealment of personal Odors. An increasing taste
for the innocent pleasures of horticulture was mani-
fested, by the introduction of many foreign flowers in
the gardens—the tuberose, the auricula, the crown im-
perial, the Persian lily, the Tanunculus, and African
marigolds. In the streets there appeared sedans, then
close carriages, and at length hackney-coaches.
Among the dull rustics mechanical improvements
forced their way, and gradually attained, in the imple.
ments for ploughing, sowing, mowing, reaping, thrash.
ing, the perfection of our own times.
MERCANTILE INVENTIONS. 317
It began to be recognized, in spite of the preaching
of the mendicant orders, that poverty is the source of
crime, the obstruction to knowledge; that the pursuit of
riches by commerce is far better than the acquisition
of power by war. For, though it may be true, as Mon-
tesquieu says, that, while commerce unites nations, it
antagonizes individuals, and makes a traffic of morality,
it alone can give unity to the world; its dream, its hope,
is universal peace.
Though, instead of a few pages, it would require vol-
umes to record adequately the ameliorations that took
place in domestic and social life after science began to
exert its beneficent influences, and inventive talent came
to the aid of industry, there are some things which can-
not be passed in silence. From the port of Barcelona
the Spanish khalifs had carried on an enormous com-
merce, and they with their coadjutors—Jewish merchants
—had adopted or originated many commercial inven-
tions, which, with matters of pure science, they had
transmitted to the trading communities of Europe. The
art of book-keeping by double entry was thus brought
into Upper Italy. The different kinds of insurance
were adopted, though strenuously resisted by the clergy.
They opposed fire and marine insurance, on the ground
that it is a tempting of Providence. Life insurance
was regarded as an act of interference with the conse-
quences of God’s will. Houses for lending money on
interest and on pledges, that is, banking and pawnbrok-
ing establishments, were bitterly denounced, and espe-
cially was indignation excited against the taking of high
rates of interest, which was stigmatized as usury—a
feeling existing in some backward communities up to
the present day. Bills of exchange in the present form
and terms were adopted, the office of the public notary
3.18 MEDICAL IMPROVEMENTS.
established, and protests for dishonored obligations re-
Sorted to. Indeed, it may be said, with but little exag-
geration, that the commercial machinery now used was
thus introduced. I have already remarked that, in con-
sequence of the discovery of America, the front of Eu-
rope had been changed. Many rich Italian merchants,
and many enterprising Jews, had settled in Holland,
England, France, and brought into those countries vari-
ous mercantile devices. The Jews, who cared nothing
about papal maledictions, were enriched by the pontifi-
cal action in relation to the lending of money at high
interest; but Pius II., perceiving the mistake that had
been made, withdrew his opposition. Pawnbroking es-
tablishments were finally authorized by Leo X., who
threatened excommunication of those who wrote against
them. In their turn the Protestants now exhibited a
dislike against establishments thus authorized by Rome.
As the theological dogma, that the plague, like the
earthquake, is an unavoidable visitation from God for
the sins of men, began to be doubted, attempts were
made to resist its progress by the establishment of quar-
antines. When the Mohammedan discovery of inocu-
lation was brought from Constantinople in 1721, by
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, it was so strenuously re-
sisted by the clergy, that nothing short of its adoption
by the royal family of England brought it into use. A
similar resistance was exhibited when Jenner introduced
his great improvement, vaccination; yet a century ago
it was the exception to see a face unpitted by Small-
pox—now it is the exception to see One so disfigured.
In like manner, when the great American discovery of
anaesthetics was applied in obstetrical cases, it was dis-
couraged, not so much for physiological reasons, as un-
der the pretense that it was an impious attempt to escape
MAGIC AND MIRACLES. 319
from the curse denounced against all women in Genesis
iii. 16.
Inventive ingenuity did not restrict itself to the
production of useful contrivances, it added amusing
ones. Soon after the introduction of Science into Italy,
the houses of the virtuosi began to abound in all kinds of
curious mechanical surprises, and, as they were termed,
magical effects. In the latter the invention of the
magic-lantern greatly assisted. Not without reason did
the ecclesiastics detest experimental philosophy, for a
result of no little importance ensued—the juggler be-
came a successful rival to the miracle-worker. The
pious frauds enacted in the churches lost their wonder
when brought into competition with the tricks of the
conjurer in the market-place: he breathed flame, walked
on burning coals, held red-hot iron in his teeth, drew
basketfuls of eggs out of his mouth, worked miracles
by marionettes. Yet the old idea of the supernatural
was, with difficulty destroyed. A horse, whose master
had taught him many tricks, was tried at Lisbon in 1601,
found guilty of being possessed by the devil, and was
burnt. Still later than that many witches were brought
to the stake.
Once fairly introduced, discovery and invention have
unceasingly advanced at an accelerated pace. Each con-
tinually reacted on the other, continually they sapped
Supernaturalism. TXe Dominis commenced, and New-
ton completed, the explanation of the rainbow; they
showed that it was not the weapon of warfare of God,
but the accident of rays of light in drops of water. De
Dominis was decoyed to Rome through the promise of
an archbishopric, and the hope of a cardinal’s hat. He
was lodged in a fine residence, but carefully watched.
Accused of having suggested a concord between Rome
320 DISCOVERIES IN ASTRONOMY AND CHIEMISTRY.
and England, he was imprisoned in the castle of St.
Angelo, and there died. He was brought in his coffin
before an ecclesiastical tribunal, adjudged guilty of
heresy, and his body, with a heap of heretical books, was
cast into the flames. Franklin, by demonstrating the
identity of lightning and electricity, deprived Jupiter
of his thunder-bolt. The marvels of superstition were
displaced by the wonders of truth. The two telescopes,
the reflector and the achromatic, inventions of the last
century, permitted man to penetrate into the infinite
grandeurs of the universe, to recognize, as far as such a
thing is possible, its illimitable spaces, its measureless
times; and a little later the achromatic microscope placed
before his eyes the world of the infinitely small. The
air-balloon carried him above the clouds, the diving-
bell to the bottom of the sea. The thermometer gave
him true measures of the variations of heat; the barome-
ter, of the pressure of the air. The introduction of the
balance imparted exactness to chemistry, it proved the
indestructibility of matter. The discovery of oxygen,
hydrogen, and many other gases, the isolation of alumi-
num, calcium, and other metals, showed that earth and
air and water are not elements. With an enterprise
that can never be too much commended, advantage was
taken of the transits of Venus, and, by sending expedi-
tions to different regions, the distance of the earth from
the Sun was determined. The step that European intel-
lect had made between 1456 and 1759 was illustrated
by Halley’s comet. When it appeared in the former
year, it was considered as the harbinger of the vengeance
of God, the dispenser of the most dreadful of his retri-
butions, war, pestilence, famine. By order of the pope,
all the church-bells in Europe were rung to scare it
away, the faithful were commanded to add each day
MISCELLANEOUS IMPROVEMENTS. 321
another prayer; and, as their prayers had often in so
marked a manner been answered in eclipses and
droughts and rains, so on this occasion it was declared
that a victory over the comet had been vouchsafed to
the pope. But, in the mean time, Halley, guided by the
revelations of Kepler and Newton, had discovered that
its motions, so far from being controlled by the supplica-
tions of Christendom, were guided in an elliptic orbit
by destiny. Knowing that Nature had denied to him
an opportunity of witnessing the fulfillment of his daring
prophecy, he besought the astronomers of the succeed-
ing generation to watch for its return in 1759, and in
that year it came.
Whoever will in a spirit of impartiality examine
what had been done by Catholicism for the intellectual
and material advancement of Europe, during her long
reign, and what has been done by Science in its brief
period of action, can, I am persuaded, come to no other
conclusion than this, that, in instituting a comparison,
he has established a contrast. And yet, how imperfect,
how inadequate is the catalogue of facts I have fur-
nished in the foregoing pages! I have said nothing of
the spread of instruction by the diffusion of the arts of
reading and writing, through public Schools, and the
consequent creation of a reading community; the modes
of manufacturing public opinion by newspapers and re-
views, the power of journalism, the diffusion of informa-
tion public and private by the post-office and cheap
mails, the individual and Social advantages of newspaper
advertisements. I have said nothing of the establish-
ment of hospitals, the first exemplar of which was the
Invalides of Paris; nothing of the improved prisons,
reformatories, penitentiaries, asylums, the treatment of
lunatics, paupers, criminals; nothing of the construction
322 INVENTIONS AND DISCOWERIES.
of canals, of Sanitary engineering, or of census reports;
nothing of the invention of stereotyping, bleaching by
chlorine, the cotton-gin, or of the marvelous contriv,
ances with which cotton-mills are filled—contrivances
which have given us cheap clothing, and therefore
added to cleanliness, comfort, health; nothing of the
grand advancement of medicine and surgery, or of the
discoveries in physiology, the cultivation of the fine arts,
the improvement of agriculture and rural economy, the
introduction of chemical manures and farm-machinery.
I have not referred to the manufacture of iron and its
vast affiliated industries; to those of textile fabrics; to
the collection of museums of natural history, antiquities,
curiosities. I have passed unnoticed the great subject of
the manufacture of machinery by itself—the invention
of the slide-rest, the planing-machine, and many other
contrivances by which engines can be constructed with
almost mathematical correctness. I have said nothing
adequate about the railway system, or the electric tele-
graph, nor about the calculus, or lithography, the air-
pump, or the voltaic battery; the discovery of Uranus.
or Neptune, and more than a hundred asteroids; the
relation of meteoric streams to comets; nothing of the
expeditions by land and sea that have been sent forth
by various governments for the determination of im-
portant astronomical or geographical questions; nothing
of the costly and accurate experiments they have caused
to be made for the ascertainment of fundamental phys-
ical data. I have been so unjust to our own century
that I have made no allusion to some of its greatest
scientific triumphs: its grand conceptions in natural
history; its discoveries in magnetism and electricity;
its invention of the beautiful art of photography; its
applications of spectrum analysis; its attempts to bring
ADVANTAGES ARISING FROM THEM. 32:
3
chemistry under the three laws of Avogadro, of Boyle
and Mariotte, and of Charles; its artificial production
of organic substances from inorganic material, of which
the philosophical consequences are of the utmost im-
portance; its reconstruction of physiology by laying the
foundation of that Science on chemistry; its improve-
ments and advances in topographical surveying, and in
the correct representation of the surface of the globe.
I have said nothing about rifled-guns and armored ships,
nor of the revolution that has been made in the art of
war; nothing of that gift to women, the Sewing-machine;
nothing of the noble contentions and triumphs of the arts
of peace—the industrial exhibitions and world's fairs.
What a catalogue have we here, and yet how imper-
fect! It gives merely a random glimpse at an ever-in-
creasing intellectual commotion—a mention of things as
they casually present themselves to view. How striking
the contrast between this literary, this scientific activity,
and the stagnation of the middle ages!
The intellectual enlightenment that surrounds this
activity has imparted unnumbered blessings to the hu-
man race. In Russia it has emancipated a vast serf-
population; in America it has given freedom to four
million negro slaves. In place of the sparse dole of
the monastery-gate, it has organized charity and direct-
ed legislation to the poor. It has shown medicine its
true function, to prevent rather than to cure disease.
In statesmanship it has introduced scientific methods,
displacing random and empirical legislation by a labori-
ous ascertainment of Social facts previous to the appli-
cation of legal remedies. So conspicuous, so impressive
is the manner in which it is elevating men, that the
hoary nations of Asia seek to participate in the boon.
Let us not forget that our action on them must be at:
324 AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS.
tended by their reaction on us. If the destruction of
paganism was completed when all the gods were brought
to Rome and confronted there, now, when by our won-
derful facilities of locomotion strange nations and con-
flicting religions are brought into common presence—
the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the Brahman—modifi-
cations of them all must ensue. In that conflict science
alone will stand Secure; for it has given us grander
views of the universe, more awful views of God.
The spirit that has imparted life to this movement,
that has animated these discoveries and inventions, is
Individualism; in Some minds the hope of gain, in other
and nobler ones the expectation Öf honor. It is, then,
not to be wondered at that this principle found a politi-
cal embodiment, and that, during the last century, on
two occasions, it gave rise to social convulsions—the
American and the French Revolutions. The former has
ended in the dedication of a continent to Individualism
—there, under republican forms, before the close of the
present century, one hundred million people, with no
more restraint than their common Security requires, will
be pursuing an unfettered career. The latter, though
it has modified the political aspect of all Europe, and
though illustrated by Surprising military successes, has,
thus far, not consummated its intentions; again and
again it has brought upon France fearful disasters. Her
dual form of government—her allegiance to her two
sovereigns, the political and the Spiritual—has made her
at once the leader and the antagonist of modern prog-
ress. With one hand she has enthroned Reason, with
the other she has reëstablished and sustained the pope.
Nor will this anomaly in her conduct cease until she be-
stows a true education on all her children, even on those
of the humblest rustic.
SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION. 325
The intellectual attack made on existing opinions by
the French Revolution was not of a scientific, but of a
literary character; it was critical and aggressive. But
Science has never been an aggressor. She has always
acted on the defensive, and left to her antagonist the
making of wanton attacks. Nevertheless, literary dis-
sent is not of such ominous import as Scientific; for lit-
erature is, in its nature, local–science is cosmopolitan.
If, now, we demand, What has science done for the
promotion of modern civilization; what has it done for
the happiness, the well-being of society? we shall find
our answer in the same manner that we reached a just
estimate of what Latin Christianity had done. The read-
er of the foregoing paragraphs would undoubtedly infer
that there must have been an amelioration in the lot of
our race; but, when we apply the touchstone of statis-
tics, that inference gathers precision. Systems of phi-
losophy and forms of religion find a measure of their
influence on humanity in census-returns. Latin Chris-
tianity, in a thousand years, could not double the popu.
lation of Europe; it did not add perceptibly to the term
of individual life. But, as Dr. Jarvis, in his report to
the Massachusetts Board of Health, has stated, at the
epoch of the Reformation “the average longevity in
Geneva was 21.21 years; between 1814 and 1833 it was
40.68; as large a number of persons now live to seventy
years as lived to forty, three hundred years ago. In
1693 the British Government borrowed money by sell-
ing annuities on lives from infancy upward, on the ba-
sis of the average longevity. The contract was profit-
able. Ninety-seven years later another tontine, or scale
of annuities, on the basis of the same expectation of life
as in the previous century, was issued. These latter an-
nuitants, however, lived so much longer than their pre:
326 SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION.
decessors, that it proved to be a very costly loan for the
government. It was found that, while ten thousand of
each sex in the first tontine died under the age of
twenty-eight, only five thousand seven hundred and
Seventy-two males and six thousand four hundred and
sixteen females in the second tontine died at the same
age, one hundred years later.”
We have been comparing the spiritual with the prac-
tical, the imaginary with the real. The maxims that
have been followed in the earlier and the later period
produced their inevitable result. In the former that
maxim was, “Ignorance is the mother of Devotion;”
in the latter, “Knowledge is Power.”
CHAPTER XII.
T IIIE IMP EN ID IN G C R IS IS .
Indications of the approach of a religious crisis.-The predominating
Christian Church, the Roman, perceives this, and makes preparation
for it—Pius IX, convokes an (Ecumenical Council—Relations of the
different European governments to the papacy, — Relations of the
Church to Science, as indicated by the Encyclical Letter and the Syl-
labus.
Acts of the Vatican Council in relation to the infallibility of the pope, and
to Science.—Abstract of decisions arrived at.
Controversy between the Prussian Government and the papacy.—It is a con-
test between the State and the Church for supremacy.—Effect of dual
government in Europe.— Declaration by the Vatican Council of its
position as to Science—The dogmatic constitution of the Catholic faith.
—Its definitions respecting God, Revelation, Faith, Reason. — The
anathemas it pronounces.—Its denunciation of modern civilization.
The Protestant Evangelical Alliance and its acts.
General review of the foregoing definitions and acts.-Present condition of
the controversy, and its future prospects.
No one who is acquainted with the present tone of
thought in Christendom can hide from himself the fact
that an intellectual, a religious crisis is impending.
In all directions we see the lowering skies, we hear
the mutterings of the coming storm. In Germany, the
national party is arraying itself against the ultramon-
tane; in France, the men of progress are struggling
against the unprogressive, and in their contest the po-
litical Supremacy of that great country is wellnigh neu-
328 PREDOMINANCE OF CATHOLICITY.
tralized or lost. In Italy, Rome has passed into the hands
of an excommunicated king. The sovereign pontiff,
feigning that he is a prisoner, is fulminating from the
Vatican his anathemas, and, in the midst of the most
convincing proofs of his manifold errors, asserting his
own infallibility. A Catholic archbishop with truth de-
clares that the whole civil society of Europe seems to be
withdrawing itself in its public life from Christianity.
In England and America, religious persons perceive
With dismay that the intellectual basis of faith has been
undermined by the spirit of the age. They prepare for
the approaching disaster in the best manner they can.
The most serious trial through which society can
pass is encountered in the exuviation of its religious
restraints. The history of Greece and the history of
Rome exhibit to us in an impressive manner how great
are the perils. But it is not given to religions to en-
dure forever. They necessarily undergo transformation
with the intellectual development of man. How many
countries are there professing the same religion now
that they did at the birth of Christ?
It is estimated that the entire population of Europe
is about three hundred and one million. Of these, one
hundred and eighty-five million are Roman Catholics,
thirty-three million are Greek Catholics. Of Protes-
tants there are seventy-one million, separated into many
sects. Of Jews, five million; of Mohammedans, seven
million.
Of the religious subdivisions of America an accurate
numerical statement cannot be given. The whole of
Christian South America is Roman Catholic, the same
may be said of Central America and of Mexico, as also
of the Spanish and French West India possessions. In
the United States and Canada the Protestant population
PREDOMINANCE OF CATHOLICITY. 329
predominates. To Australia the same remark applies.
In India the sparse Christian population sinks into in-
significance in presence of two hundred million Mo-
hammedans and other Oriental denominations. The
Toman Catholic Church is the most widely diffused and
the most powerfully organized of all modern Societies.
It is far more a political than a religious combination.
Its principle is that all power is in the clergy, and that
for laymen there is only the privilege of obedience.
The republican forms under which the Churches existed
in primitive Christianity have gradually merged into an
absolute centralization, with a man as vice-God at its
head. This Church asserts that the divine commission
under which it acts comprises civil government; that it
has a right to use the state for its own purposes, but
that the state has no right to intermeddle with it; that
even in Protestant countries it is not merely a coördi-
nate government, but the sovereign power. It insists
that the state has no rights over any thing which it de-
clares to be in its domain, and that Protestantism, being
a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Prot-
estant communities the Catholic bishop is the only law-
ful spiritual pastor. g
It is plain, therefore, that of professing Christians
the vast majority are Catholic; and such is the authori-
tative demand of the papacy for Supremacy, that, in any
Survey of the present religious condition of Christendom,
regard must be mainly had to its acts. Its movements are
guided by the highest intelligence and skill. Catholicism
obeys the orders of one man, and has therefore a unity,
a compactness, a power, which Protestant denominations
do not possess. Moreover, it derives inestimable strength
from the Souvenirs of the great name of Tome.
Unembarrassed by any hesitating sentiment, the
330 THE (ECUMENICAL COUNCIL,
papacy has contemplated the coming intellectual crisis.
It has pronounced its decision, and occupied what seems
to it to be the most advantageous ground.
This definition of position we find in the acts of the
late Vatican Council.
Pius IX., by a bull dated June 29, 1868, convoked
an OEcumenical Council, to meet in Rome, on December
8, 1869. Its sessions ended in July, 1870. Among other
matters submitted to its consideration, two stand forth
in conspicuous prominence—they are the assertion of
the infallibility of the Roman pontiff, and the defini-
tion of the relations of religion to science.
But the convocation of the Council was far from
meeting with general approval.
The views of the Oriental Churches were, for the
most part, unfavorable. They affirmed that they saw
a desire in the Roman pontiff to set himself up as the
head of Christianity, whereas they recognized the Lord
Jesus Christ alone as the head of the Church. They
believed that the Council would only lead to new quar-
rels and scandals. The sentiment of these venerable
Churches is well shown by the incident that, when, in
1867, the Nestorian Patriarch Simeon had been invited
by the Chaldean Patriarch to return to Roman Catholic
unity, he, in his reply, showed that there was no pros-
pect for harmonious action between the East and the
West: “You invite me to kiss humbly the slipper of
the Bishop of Rome; but is he not, in every respect, a
man like yourself—is his dignity superior to yours?
We will never permit to be introduced into our holy
temples of worship images and statues, which are noth-
ing but abominable and impure idols. What! shall we
attribute to Almighty God a mother, as you dare to do!
Away from us, such blasphemy l’”
EXPECTATIONS OF THE PAPACY. 331
Eventually, the patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops,
from all regions of the world, who took part in this
Council, were seven hundred and four.
Rome had seen very plainly that Science was not
only rapidly undermining the dogmas of the papacy, but
was gathering great political power. She recognized
that all over Europe there was a fast-spreading seces-
sion among persons of education, and that its true focus
was North Germany.
She looked, therefore, with deep interest on the
Prusso-Austrian War, giving to Austria whatever en-
couragement she could. The battle of Sadowa was a
bitter disappointment to her.
With satisfaction again she looked upon the break-
ing out of the Franco-Prussian War, not doubting that
its issue would be favorable to France, and therefore
favorable to her. Here, again, she was doomed to dis-
appointment at Sedan.
Pſaving now no further hope, for many years to
come, from external war, she resolved to see what could
be done by internal insurrection, and the present move-
ment in the German Empire is the result of her machi-
nations.
IHad Austria or had France succeeded, Protestant-
ism would have been overthrown along with Prussia.
But, while these military movements were being
carried on, a movement of a different, an intellectual
kind, was engaged in. Its principle was, to restore the
worn-out mediaeval doctrines and practices, carrying
them to an extreme, no matter what the consequences
might be.
Not only was it asserted that the papacy has a di-
vine right to participate in the government of all coun-
tries, coördinately with their temporal authorities, but
332 ENCYCLICAL LETTER AND SYLLABUS.
that the Supremacy of Rome in this matter must be
recognized; and that in any question between them the
temporal authority must conform itself to her order.
And, since the endangering of her position had been
mainly brought about by the progress of science, she
presumed to define its boundaries, and prescribe limits
to its authority. Still more, she undertook to denounce
modern civilization.
These measures were contemplated soon after the
return of his Holiness from Gaeta in 1848, and were
undertaken by the advice of the Jesuits, who, lingering
in the hope that God would work the impossible, sup-
posed that the papacy, in its old age, might be rein-
vigorated. The organ of the Curia proclaimed the ab-
solute independence of the Church as regards the state;
the dependence of the bishops on the pope; of the dio-
cesan clergy on the bishops; the obligation of the Prot-
estants to abandon their atheism, and return to the fold;
the absolute condemnation of all kinds of toleration. In
December, 1854, in an assembly of bishops, the pope
had proclaimed the dogma of the immaculate concep-
tion. Ten years subsequently he put forth the cele-
brated Encyclical Letter and the Syllabus.
The Encyclical Letter is dated December 8, 1864.
It was drawn up by learned ecclesiastics, and subse-
quently debated at the Congregation of the Holy Office,
then forwarded to prelates, and finally gone over by the
pope and cardinals.
Many of the clergy objected to its condemnation of
modern civilization. Some of the cardinals were re-
luctant to concur in it. The Catholic press accepted
it, not, however, without misgivings and regrets. The
Protestant governments put no obstacle in its way; the
Catholic were embarrassed by it. France allowed the
ENCYCLICAL LETTER AND SYLLABUS. 333
publication only of that portion proclaiming the jubilee;
Austria and Italy permitted its introduction, but with-
held their approval. The political press and legislatures
of Catholic countries gave it an unfavorable reception.
Many deplored it as likely to widen the breach be-
tween the Church and modern society. . The Italian
press regarded it as determining a war, without truce or
armistice, between the papacy and modern civilization.
Even in Spain there were journals that regretted “the
obstinacy and blindness of the court of Rome, in brand-
ing and condemning modern civilization.”
It denounces that “most pernicious and insane opin-
ion, that liberty of conscience and of worship is the
right of every man, and that this right ought, in every
well-governed state, to be proclaimed and asserted by
law; and that the will of the people, manifested by
public opinion (as it is called), or by other means, con-
stitutes a Supreme law, independent of all divine and
human rights.” It denies the right of parents to edu-
cate their children outside the Catholic Church. It de-
nounces “the impudence” of those who presume to sub-
ordinate the authority of the Church and of the Apostolic
See, “conferred upon it by Christ our Lord, to the judg-
ment of the civil authority.” His Holiness commends,
to the venerable brothers to whom the Encyclical is ad-
dressed, incessant prayer, and, “in order that God may
accede the more easily to our and your prayers, let us
employ in all confidence, as our mediatrix with him, the
Virgin Mary, mother of God, who sits as a queen upon
the right hand of her Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ, in a golden vestment, clothed around with vari-
ous adornments. There is nothing she cannot obtain
from him.” &
T’lainly, the principle now avowed by the papacy
334 CONWOCATION OF THE COUNCIL.
must bring it into collision even with governments
which had heretofore maintained amicable relations
with it. Great dissatisfaction was manifested by Rus-
sia, and the incidents that ensued drew forth from his
Holiness an allocution (November, 1866) condemnatory
of the course of that government. To this, Tºussia re-
plied, by declaring the Concordat of 1867 abrogated.
Undeterred by the result of the battle of Sadowa
(July, 1866), though it was plain that the political con-
dition of Europe was now profoundly affected, and es-
pecially the relations of the papacy, the pope delivered
an allocution (June 27, 1867), confirming the Encyclical
and Syllabus. He announced his intention of convok-
ing an OEcumenical Council.
Accordingly, as we have already mentioned, in the
following year (June 29, 1868), a bull was issued con-
voking that Council. Misunderstandings, however, had
now sprung up with Austria. The Austrian Reichsrath
had adopted laws introducing equality of civil rights
for all the inhabitants of the empire, and restricting the
influence of the Church. This produced on the part of
the papal government an expostulation. Acting as Rus-
sia had done, the Austrian Government found it neces-
sary to abrogate the Concordat of 1855.
In France, as above stated, the publication of the
entire Syllabus was not permitted; but Prussia, de-
sirous of keeping on good terms with the papacy, did
not disallow it. The exacting disposition of the papacy
increased. It was openly declared that the faithful
must now sacrifice to the Church, property, life, and
even their intellectual convictions. The Protestants
and the Greeks were invited to tender their submission.
On the appointed day, the Council opened. Its ob-
jects were, to translate the Syllabus into practice, to
THE WATICAN COUNCIL. 335
establish the dogma of papal infallibility, and define
the relations of religion to science. Every preparation
had been made that the points determined on should
be carried. The bishops were informed that they were
coming to Rome not to deliberate, but to Sanction de-
crees previously made by an infallible pope. No idea
was entertained of any such thing as free discussion.
The minutes of the meetings were not permitted to be
inspected; the prelates of the opposition were hardly
allowed to speak. On January 22, 1870, a petition, re-
questing that the infallibility of the pope should be
defined, was presented; an opposition petition of the
minority was offered. Hereupon, the deliberations of
the minority were forbidden, and their publications pro-
hibited. And, though the Curia had provided a com-
pact majority, it was found expedient to issue an order
that to carry any proposition it was not necessary that
the vote should be near unanimity, a simple majority
sufficed. The remonstrances of the minority were al-
together unheeded.
As the Council pressed forward to its object, foreign
authorities became alarmed at its reckless determination.
A petition drawn up by the Archbishop of Vienna, and
signed by several cardinals and archbishops, entreated
his Holiness not to submit the dogma of infallibility for
consideration, “because the Church has to sustain at
present a struggle unknown in former times, against
men who oppose religion itself as an institution baneful
to human nature, and that it is inopportune to impose
upon Catholic nations, led into temptation by so many
machinations, more dogmas than the Council of Trent
proclaimed.” It added that “the definition demanded
would furnish fresh arms to the enemies of religion, to
excite against the Catholic Church the resentment of
336 THE WATECAN COUNCIL.
men avowedly the best.” The Austrian prime-minister
addressed a protest to the papal government, warning
it against any steps that might lead to encroachments
on the rights of Austria. The French Government
also addressed a note, suggesting that a French bishop
should explain to the Council the condition and the
rights of France. To this the papal government replied
that a bishop could not reconcile the double duties of
an ambassador and a Father of the Council. Hereupon,
the French Government, in a very respectful note, re-
marked that, to prevent ultra opinions from becoming
dogmas, it reckoned on the moderation of the bishops,
and the prudence of the Holy Father; and, to defend
its civil and political laws against the encroachments of
the theocracy, it had counted on public reason and the
patriotism of French Catholics. In these remonstrances
the North-German Confederation joined, seriously press-
ing them on the consideration of the papal govern-
lment.
On April 23d, Won Arnim, the Prussian embassa-
dor, united with Daru, the French minister, in sug-
gesting to the Curia the inexpediency of reviving me-
diaeval ideas. The minority bishops, thus encouraged,
demanded now that the relations of the spiritual to the
secular power should be determined before the pope's
infallibility was discussed, and that it should be settled
whether Christ had conferred on St. Peter and his suc-
cessors a power over kings and emperors.
No regard was paid to this, not even delay was con-
sented to. The Jesuits, who were at the bottom of the
movement, carried their measures through the packed
assembly with a high hand. The Council omitted no
device to screen itself from popular criticism. Its pro-
ceedings were conducted with the utmost secrecy; all
INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 337
who took part in them were bound by a solemn oath
to observe silence.
On July 13th, the votes were taken. Of 601 votes,
451 were affirmative. Under the majority rule, the
measure was pronounced carried, and, five days subse-
quently, the pope proclaimed the dogma of his infalli-
bility. It has often been remarked that this was the
day on which the French declared war against Prussia.
Eight days afterward the French troops were withdrawn
from Rome. Perhaps both the statesman and the phi-
losopher will admit that an infallible pope would be a
great harmonizing element, if only common-sense could
acknowledge him.
Hereupon, the King of Italy addressed an autograph
letter to the pope, setting forth in very respectful terms
the necessity that his troops should advance and occupy
positions “indispensable to the security of his Holiness,
and the maintenance of order;” that, while satisfying the
national aspirations, the chief of Catholicity, surrounded
by the devotion of the Italian populations, “might pre-
serve on the banks of the Tiber a glorious seat, inde-
pendent of all human sovereignty.”
To this his Holiness replied in a brief and caustic
letter: “I give thanks to God, who has permitted your
majesty to fill the last days of my life with bitterness.
For the rest, I cannot grant certain requests, nor conform
with certain principles contained in your letter. Again,
I call upon God, and into his hands commit my cause,
which is his cause. I pray God to grant your majesty
many graces, to free you from dangers, and to dispense
to you his mercy which you so much need.”
The Italian troops met with but little resistance.
They occupied Rome on September 20, 1870. A mani-
festo was issued, setting forth the details of a plebisci-
15 *
338 THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT,
tum, the vote to be by ballot, the question, “the unifi-
cation of Italy.” Its result showed how completely the
popular mind in Italy is emancipated from theology.
In the Roman provinces the number of votes on the
lists was 167,548; the number who voted, 135,291; the
number who voted for annexation, 133,681; the num-
ber who voted against it, 1,507; votes annulled, 103.
The Parliament of Italy ratified the vote of the Roman
people for annexation by a vote of 239 to 20. A royal
decree now announced the annexation of the Papal
States to the kingdom of Italy, and a manifesto was is-
sued indicating the details of the arrangement. It de-
clared that “by these concessions the Italian Govern-
ment seeks to prove to Europe that Italy respects the
sovereignty of the pope in conformity with the prin-
ciple of a free Church in a free state.”
In the Prusso-Austrian War it had been the hope of
the papacy to restore the German Empire under Austria,
and make Germany a Catholic nation. In the Franco-
German War the French expected ultramontane sym-
pathies in Germany. No means were spared to excite
Catholic sentiment against the Protestants. No vilifi-
cation was spared. They were spoken of as atheists;
they were declared incapable of being honest men; their
sects were pointed out as indicating that their secession
was in a state of dissolution. “The followers of Luther
are the most abandoned men in all Europe.” Even the
pope himself, presuming that the whole world had for-
gotten all history, did not hesitate to say, “Let the Ger-
man people understand that no other Church but that
of Rome is the Church of freedom and progress.”
Meantime, among the clergy of Germany a party
was organized to remonstrate against, and even resist,
the papal usurpation. It protested against “a man be:
AFFAIRS IN PRUSSIA. 339
ing placed on the throne of God,” against a vice-God of
any kind, nor would it yield its scientific convictions
to ecclesiastical authority. Some did not hesitate to
accuse the pope himself of being a heretic. Against
these insubordinates excommunications began to be ful-
minated, and at length it was demanded that certain
professors and teachers should be removed from their
offices, and infallibilists substituted. With this demand
the Prussian Government declined to comply.
The Prussian Government had earnestly desired to
remain on amicable terms with the papacy; it had no
wish to enter on a theological quarrel; but gradually
the conviction was forced upon it that the question was
not a religious but a political one—whether the power
of the state should be used against the state. A teacher
in a gymnasium had been excommunicated; the gov-
ernment, on being required to dismiss him, refused.
The Church authorities denounced this as an attack
upon faith. The emperor sustained his minister. The
organ of the infallible party threatened the emperor
with the opposition of all good Catholics, and told him
that, in a contention with the pope, systems of govern-
ment can and must change. It was now plain to every
one that the question had become, “Who is to be mas-
ter in the state, the government or the Toman Church?
It is plainly impossible for men to live under two gov-
ernments, one of which declares to be wrong what the
other commands. If the government will not submit to
the Roman Church, the two are enemies.” A conflict
was thus forced upon Prussia by Rome—a conflict in
which the latter, impelled by her antagonism to modern
civilization, is clearly the aggressor.
The government, now recognizing its antagonist,
defended itself by abolishing the Catholic department
340 ACTION OF THE PRUSSIAN GOVERNMENT.
in the ministry of Public Worship. This was about
midsummer, 1871. In the following November the
Imperial Parliament passed a law that ecclesiastics abus-
ing their office, to the disturbance of the public peace,
should be criminally punished. And, guided by the
principle that the future belongs to him to whom the
School belongs, a movement arose for the purpose of
Separating the schools from the Church.
The Jesuit party was extending and strengthening
an organization all over Germany, based on the princi-
ple that state legislation in ecclesiastical matters is not
binding. Here was an act of open insurrection. Could
the government allow itself to be intimidated ? The
Bishop of Ermeland declared that he would not obey
the laws of the state if they touched the Church. The
government stopped the payment of his salary; and,
perceiving that there could be no peace so long as the
Jesuits were permitted to remain in the country, their
expulsion was resolved on, and carried into effect. At
the close of 1872 his Holiness delivered an allocution,
in which he touched on the “persecution of the Church
in the German Empire,” and asserted that the Church
alone has a right to fix the limits between its domain
and that of the state—a dangerous and inadmissible
principle, since under the term morals the Church com-
prises all the relations of men to each other, and asserts
that whatever does not assist her oppresses her. Here-
upon, a few days subsequently (January 9, 1873), four
laws were brought forward by the government: 1.
Regulating the means by which a person might sever his
connection with the Church; 2. Restricting the Church
in the exercise of ecclesiastical punishments; 3. Regu-
lating the ecclesiastical power of discipline, forbidding
bodily chastisement, regulating fines and banishments
THE CHURCH A POLITICAL POWER. 341
granting the privilege of an appeal to the Royal Court
of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs, the decision of which
is final; 4. Ordaining the preliminary education and
appointment of priests. They must have had a satis-
factory education, passed a public examination con-
ducted by the state, and have a knowledge of philoso-
phy, history, and German literature. Institutions refus-
ing to be superintended by the state are to be closed.
These laws demonstrate that Germany is resolved
that she will no longer be dictated to nor embarrassed
by a few Italian noble families; that she will be master
of her own house. She sees in the conflict, not an affair
of religion or of conscience, but a struggle between the
Sovereignty of state legislation and the Sovereignty of
the Church. She treats the papacy not in the aspect of
a religious, but of a political power, and is resolved
that the declaration of the Prussian Constitution shall be
maintained, that “the exercise of religious freedom must
not interfere with the duties of a citizen toward the
community and the state.”
With truth it is affirmed that the papacy is admin-
istered not Cecumenically, not as a universal Church, for
all the nations, but for the benefit of some Italian fam-
ilies. Took at its composition I It consists of pope,
cardinal bishops, cardinal deacons, who at the present
moment are all Italians; cardinal priests, nearly all
Italians; ministers and secretaries of the Sacred Con-
gregation in Rome, all Italians. France has not given a
pope since the middle ages. It is the same with Aus-
tria, Portugal, Spain. In spite of all attempts to change
this system of exclusion, to open the dignities of the
Church to all Catholicism, no foreigner can reach the
holy chair. It is recognized that the Church is a do-
main given by God to the princely Italian families.
342 DUAL GOVERNMENT IN EUROPE.
Of fifty-five members of the present College of Cardi.
mals, forty are Italians—that is, thirty-two beyond their
proper share.
The stumbling-block to the progress of Europe has
been its dual system of government. So long as every
nation had two Sovereigns, a temporal one at home and
a spiritual one in a foreign land—there being differ.
ent temporal masters in different nations, but only one
foreign master for all, the pontiff at Rome—how was
it possible that history should present us with any thing
more than anarrative of the strifes of these rival powers?
Whoever will reflect on this state of things will see how
it is that those nations which have shaken off the dual
form of government are those which have made the
greatest advance. He will discern what is the cause
of the paralysis which has befallen France. On one
hand she wishes to be the leader of Europe, on the other
she clings to a dead past. For the sake of propitiating
her ignorant classes, she enters upon lines of policy which
her intelligence must condemn. So evenly balanced
are the two sovereignties under which she lives, that
Sometimes One, Sometimes the other, prevails; and not
unfrequently the one uses the other as an engine for the
accomplishment of its ends.
Dut this dual system approaches its close. To the
northern nations, less imaginative and less Superstitious,
it had long ago become intolerable; they rejected it
summarily at the epoch of the Reformation, notwith-
standing the protestations and pretensions of Rome.
Russia, happier than the rest, has never acknowledged
the influence of any foreign spiritual power. She gloried
in her attachment to the ancient Greek rite, and saw in
the papacy nothing more than a troublesome dissenter
from the primitive faith. In America the temporal and
INTENTIONS OF THE POPE. 343
the spiritual have been absolutely divorced—the latter
is not permitted to have any thing to do with affairs of
state, though in all other respects liberty is conceded to
it. The condition of the New World also satisfies us
that both forms of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant,
have lost their expansive power; neither can pass be-
yond its long-established boundary-line—the Catholic
republics remain Catholic, the Protestant Protestant.
And among the latter the disposition to sectarian isola-
tion is disappearing; persons of different denominations
consort without hesitation together. They gather their
current opinions from newspapers, not from the Church.
Pius IX., in the movements we have been consider-
ing, has had two objects in view: 1. The more thorough
centralization of the papacy, with a spiritual autocrat as-
suming the prerogatives of God at its head; 2. Control
over the intellectual development of the nations profess-
ing Christianity.
The logical consequence of the former of these is
political intervention. He insists that in all cases the
temporal must subordinate itself to the spiritual power;
all laws inconsistent with the interests of the Church
must be repealed. They are not binding on the faith-
ful. In the preceding pages I have briefly related some
of the complications that have already occurred in the
attempt to maintain this policy.
I now come to the consideration of the manner in
which the papacy proposes to establish its intellectual
control; how it defines its relation to its antagonist,
Science, and, seeking a restoration of the mediaeval con-
dition, opposes modern civilization, and denounces mod.
ern Society.
The Encyclical and Syllabus present the principles
which it was the object of the Vatican Council to carry
344 THE SYLLABUS,
into practical effect. The Syllabus stigmatizes panthe.
ism, naturalism, and absolute rationalism, denouncing
such opinions as that God is the world; that there is no
God other than Nature; that theological matters must
be treated in the same manner as philosophical ones;
that the methods and principles by which the old scho-
lastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable
to the demands of the age and the progress of science;
that every man is free to embrace and profess the reli-
gion he may believe to be true, guided by the light of
his reason; that it appertains to the civil power to de-
fine what are the rights and limits in which the Church
may exercise authority; that the Church has not the
right of availing herself of force or any direct or indi-
rect temporal power; that the Church ought to be sepa-
rated from the state and the state from the Church;
that it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion
shall be held as the only religion of the state, to the
exclusion of all other modes of worship; that persons
coming to reside in Catholic countries have a right to
the public exercise of their own worship; that the Ro-
man pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to, and
agree with, the progress of modern civilization. The
Syllabus claims the right of the Church to control public
schools, and denies the right of the state in that respect;
it claims the control over marriage and divorce.
Such of these principles as the Council found expe-
dient at present to formularize, were set forth by it in
“The Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic Faith.”
The essential points of this constitution, more especially
as regards the relations of religion to science, we have
now to examine. It will be understood that the follow-
ing does not present the entire document, but only an
abstract of what appear to be its more important parts.
CONSTITUTION OF CATHOLIG FAITH. 345
This definition opens with a severe review of the
principles and consequences of the Protestant Reforma-
tion:
“The rejection of the divine authority of the Church
to teach, and the subjection of all things belonging to
religion to the judgment of each individual, have led to
the production of many sects, and, as these differed and
disputed with each other, all belief in Christ was over-
thrown in the minds of not a few, and the Holy Script-
ures began to be counted as myths and fables. Chris-
tianity has been rejected, and the reign of mere Reason
as they call it, or Nature, substituted; many falling into
the abyss of pantheism, materialism, and atheism, and,
repudiating the reasoning nature of man, and every rule
of right and wrong, they are laboring to overthrow the
very foundations of human Society. As this impious
heresy is spreading everywhere, not a few Catholics
have been inveigled by it. They have confounded hu-
man science and divine faith.
“But the Church, the Mother and Mistress of na-
tions, is ever ready to strengthen the weak, to take to
her bosom those that return, and carry them on to better
things. And, now the bishops of the whole world being
gathered together in this CEcumenical Council, and the
IIoly Ghost sitting therein, and judging with us, we
have determined to declare from this chair of St. Peter
the saving doctrine of Christ, and proscribe and con-
demn the opposing errors. -
“OF GOD, THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGs.-The Holy
Catholic Apostolic Roman Church believes that there
is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of Heaven
and Earth, Almighty, Eternal, Immense, Incomprehen-
sible, Infinite in understanding and will, and in all per-
fection. He is distinct from the world. Of his own
346 CONSTITUTION OF CATHOLIC FAITH,
most free counsel he made alike out of nothing two
created creatures, a spiritual and a temporal, angelic and
earthly. Afterward he made the human nature, com-
posed of both. Moreover, God by his providence pro-
tects and governs all things, reaching from end to end
mightily, and ordering all things harmoniously. Every
thing is open to his eyes, even things that come to pass
by the free action of his creatures.”
“OF TEVELATION.—The Holy Mother Church holds
that God can be known with certainty by the natural
light of human reason, but that it has also pleased him
to reveal himself and the eternal decrees of his will in
a Supernatural way. This supernatural revelation, as
declared by the Holy Council of Trent, is contained in
the books of the Old and New Testament, as enumer-
ated in the decrees of that Council, and as are to be had
in the old Vulgate Latin edition. These are sacred be-
cause they were written under the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost. They have God for their author, and as
such have been delivered to the Church.
“And, in order to restrain restless spirits, who may
give erroneous explanations, it is decreed—renewing
the decision of the Council of Trent—that no one may
interpret the sacred Scriptures contrary to the Sense in
which they are interpreted by Holy Mother Church, to
whom such interpretation belongs.”
“OF FAITH.—Inasmuch as man depends on God as
his Lord, and created reason is wholly subject to un-
created truth, he is bound when God makes a revelation
to obey it by faith. This faith is a supernatural vir-
tue, and the beginning of man's salvation who believes
revealed things to be true, not for their intrinsic truth
as seen by the natural light of reason, but for the au.
thority of God in revealing them. But, nevertheless,
CONSTITUTION OF CATHOLIC FAITH. 347
that faith might be agreeable to reason, God willed to
join miracles and prophecies, which, showing forth his
omnipotence and knowledge, are proofs Suited to the
understanding of all. Such we have in Moses and the
prophets, and above all in Christ. Now, all those things
are to be believed which are written in the word of God,
or handed down by tradition, which the Church by her
teaching has proposed for belief.
“No one can be justified without this faith, nor shall
any one, unless he persevere therein to the end, at-
tain everlasting life. Hence God, through his only-be-
gotten Son, has established the Church as the guardian
and teacher of his revealed word. For only to the
Catholic Church do all those signs belong which make
evident the credibility of the Christian faith. Nay,
more, the very Church herself, in view of her wonder-
ful propagation, her eminent holiness, her exhaustless
fruitfulness in all that is good, her Catholic unity, her
unshaken stability, offers a great and evident claim to
belief, and an undeniable proof of her divine mission.
Thus the Church shows to her children that the faith
they hold rests on a most solid foundation. Wherefore,
totally unlike is the condition of those who, by the
heavenly gift of faith, have embraced the Catholic truth,
and of those who, led by human opinions, are following
a false religion.”
“OF FAITH AND REASON.—Moreover, the Catholic
Church has ever held and now holds that there exists a
twofold order of knowledge, each of which is distinct
from the other, both as to its principle and its object.
As to its principle, because in the one we know by natu-
ral reason, in the other by divine faith; as to the ob.
ject, because, besides those things which our natural rea.
Son can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries
348 CONSTITUTION OF CATHOLIC, FAITII.
hidden in God, which, unless by him revealed, cannot
come to our knowledge.
“Reason, indeed, enlightened by faith, and seeking,
with diligence and godly sobriety, may, by God's gift,
come to some understanding, limited in degree, but
most wholesome in its effects, of mysteries, both from
the analogy of things which are naturally known and
from the connection of the mysteries themselves with
One another and with man’s last end. But never can
reason be rendered capable of thoroughly understand-
ing mysteries as it does those truths which formits prop-
er object. For God's mysteries, in their very nature,
So far surpass the reach of created intellect, that, even
when taught by revelation and received by faith, they
remain covered by faith itself, as by a veil, and shroud-
ed, as it were, in darkness as long as in this mortal life.
“But, although faithbe above reason, there never can
be a real disagreement between them, since the same
God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has given
man's Soul the light of reason, and God cannot deny
himself, nor can one truth ever contradict another.
Wherefore the empty shadow of such contradiction
arises chiefly from this, that either the doctrines of faith
are not understood and set forth as the Church really
holds them, or that the vain devices and opinions of
men are mistaken for the dictates of reason. We
therefore pronounce false every assertion which is con-
trary to the enlightened truth of faith. Moreover, the
Church, which, together with her apostolic office of
teaching, is charged also with the guardianship of the
deposits of faith, holds likewise from God the right
and the duty to condemn ‘knowledge, falsely so called,’
“lest any man be cheated by philosophy and vain deceit.'
Hence all the Christian faithful are not only forbidden
CONSTITUTION OF CATIIOLIC FAITII. 349
to defend, as legitimate conclusions of Science, those
opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine
of faith, especially when condemned by the Church, but
are rather absolutely bound to hold them for errors
wearing the deceitful appearance of truth.
“Not only is it impossible for faith and reason ever
to contradict each other, but they rather afford each
other mutual assistance. For right reason establishes
the foundation of faith, and, by the aid of its light,
cultivates the science of divine things; and faith, on
the other hand, frees and preserves reason from errors,
and enriches it with knowledge of many kinds. So far,
then, is the Church from opposing the culture of hu-
man arts and sciences, that she rather aids and pro-
motes it in many ways. For she is not ignorant of nor
does she despise the advantages which flow from them
to the life of man; on the contrary, she acknowledges
that, as they sprang from God, the Lord of knowledge,
so, if they be rightly pursued, they will, through the
aid of his grace, lead to God. Nor does she forbid
any of those Sciences the use of its own principles and
its own method within its own proper sphere; but, rec-
ognizing this reasonable freedom, she takes care that
they may not, by contradicting God’s teaching, fall into
errors, or, overstepping the due limits, invade or throw
into confusion the domain of faith.
“For the doctrine of faith revealed by God has not
been proposed, like some philosophical discovery, to be
made perfect by human ingenuity, but it has been de-
livered to the spouse of Christ as a divine deposit, to
be faithfully guarded and unerringly set forth. Hence,
all tenets of holy faith are to be explained always ac.
cording to the sense and meaning of the Church; nor
is it ever lawful to depart therefrom under pretense
350 THE WATICAN ANATEIEMAS.
or color of a more enlightened explanation. Therefore,
as generations and centuries roll on, let the understand.
ing, knowledge, and wisdom of each and every one, of
individuals and of the whole Church, grow apace and
increase exceedingly, yet only in its kind; that is to say,
retaining pure and inviolate the sense and meaning and
belief of the same doctrine.”
Among other canons the following were promulgated:
“Let him be anathema— -
“Who denies the one true God, Creator and Lord
of all things, visible and invisible. -
“Who unblushingly affirms that, besides matter,
nothing else exists.
“Who says that the substance or essence of God,
and of all things, is one and the same.
“Who says that finite things, both corporeal and
Spiritual, or at least Spiritual things, are emanations of
the divine substance; or that the divine essence, by
manifestation or development of itself, becomes all
things.
“Who does not acknowledge that the world and all
things which it contains were produced by God out of
Inothing.
“Who shall say that man can and ought to, of his
own efforts, by means of constant progress, arrive, at
last, at the possession of all truth and goodness.
“Who shall refuse to receive, for sacred and canoni-
cal, the books of Holy Scripture in their integrity, with
all their parts, according as they were enumerated by
the holy Council of Trent, or shall deny that they are.
inspired by God.
“Who shall say that human reason is in such wise
independent, that faith cannot be demanded of it by
God.
THE WATICAN ANATHEMAS. 351
“Who shall say that divine revelation cannot be ren-
dered credible by external evidences.
“Who shall say that no miracles can be wrought, or
that they can never be known with certainty, and that
the divine origin of Christianity cannot be proved by
them.
“Who shall say that divine revelation includes no
mysteries, but that all the dogmas of faith may be un-
derstood and demonstrated by reason duly cultivated.
“Who shall say that human Sciences ought to be pur-
sued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be al-
lowed to hold as true their assertions, even when op-
posed to revealed doctrine.
“Who shall say that it may at any time come to pass,
in the progress of Science, that the doctrines set forth
by the Church must be taken in another sense than that
in which the Church has ever received and yet receives
them.”
The extraordinary and, indeed, it may be said, arro-
gant assumptions contained in these decisions were far
from being received with satisfaction by educated Cath-
olics. On the part of the German universities there
was resistance; and, when, at the close of the year,
the decrees of the Vatican Council were generally ac-
quiesced in, it was not through conviction of their
truth, but through a disciplinary sense of obedience.
By many of the most pious Catholics the entire
movement and the results to which it had led were
looked upon with the sincerest sorrow. Père Hyacinthe,
in a letter to the superior of his order, says: “I pro-
test against the divorce, as impious as it is insensate,
sought to be effected between the Church, which is our
eternal mother, and the Society of the nineteenth cen
352 THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE.
tury, of which we are the temporal children, and tow-
ard which we have also duties and regards. It is my
most profound conviction that, if France in particular,
and the Latin race in general, are given up to social,
moral, and religious anarchy, the principal cause un-
doubtedly is not Catholicism itself, but the manner in
which Catholicism has for a long time been understood
and practised.”
Notwithstanding his infallibility, which implies om-
miscience, his Holiness did not foresee the issue of the
Franco-Prussian War. Had the prophetical talent been
vouchsafed to him, he would have detected the inoppor-
tuneness of the acts of his Council. His request to the
King of Prussia for military aid to support his tempo-
ral power was denied. The excommunicated King of
Italy, as we have seen, took possession of Rome. A
bitter papal encyclical, strangely contrasting with the
courteous politeness of modern state-papers, was issued,
November 1, 1870, denouncing the acts of the Pied-
montese court, “which had followed the counsel of the
sects of perdition.” In this his Holiness declares that
he is in captivity, and that he will have no agreement
with Belial. He pronounces the greater excommunica-
tion, with censures and penalties, against his antagonists,
and prays for “the intercession of the immaculate Vir-
gin Mary, mother of God, and that of the blessed apos-
tles Peter and Paul.” -
Of the various Protestant denominations, several
had associated themselves, for the purposes of consulta-
tion, under the designation of the Evangelical Alliance,
Their last meeting was held in New York, in the au.
tumn of 1873. Though, in this meeting, were gathered
together many pious representatives of the Reformed
THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 353
Churches, European and American, it had not the pres-
tige nor the authority of the Great Council that had just
previously closed its sessions in St. Peter's, at Rome. It
could not appeal to an unbroken ancestry of far more
than a thousand years; it could not speak with the au-
thority of an equal and, indeed, of a Superior to emper-
ors and kings. While profound intelligence and a
statesmanlike, worldly wisdom gleamed in every thing
that the Vatican Council had done, the Evangelical Alli-
ance met without a clear and precise view of its objects,
without any definitely-marked intentions. Its wish was
to draw into closer union the various Protestant Church-
es, but it had no well-grounded hope of accomplishing
that desirable result. It illustrated the necessary work-
ing of the principle on which those Churches originated.
They were founded on dissent and exist by separation.
Yet in the action of the Evangelical Alliance may
be discerned certain very impressive facts. It averted
its eyes from its ancient antagonist—that antagonist
which had so recently loaded the Reformation with
contumely and denunciation—it fastened them, as the
Vatican Council had done, on Science. Under that
dreaded name there stood before it what seemed to be
a spectre of uncertain form, of hourly-dilating propor-
tions, of threatening aspect. Sometimes the Alliance
addressed this stupendous apparition in words of cour-
tesy, sometimes in tones of denunciation.
The Alliance failed to perceive that modern Science
is the legitimate sister—indeed, it is the twin-sister—
of the Reformation. They were begotten together and
were born together. It failed to perceive that, though
there is an impossibility of bringing into coalition the
many conflicting sects, they may all find in science a
point of connection; and that, not a distrustful attitude
354 THE WATICAN CONSTITUTION CRITICISED.
toward it, but a cordial union with it, is their true
policy. -
It remains now to offer some reflections on this
“Constitution of the Catholic Faith,” as defined by the
Vatican Council. *~.
For objects to present themselves under identical re.
lations to different persons, they must be seen from the
Same point of view. In the instance we are now con-
sidering, the religious man has his own especial station;
the Scientific man another, a very different one. It is
not for either to demand that his coöbserver shall admit
that the panorama of facts spread before them is actu-
ally such as it appears to him to be.
The Dogmatic Constitution insists on the admission
of this postulate, that the Toman Church acts under a
divine commission, specially and exclusively delivered
to it. In virtue of that great authority, it requires of
all men the surrender of their intellectual convictions,
and of all nations the subordination of their civil power.
But a claim so imposing must be substantiated by
the most decisive and unimpeachable credentials; proofs,
not only of an implied and indirect kind, but clear, em-
phatic, and to the point; proofs that it would be impos-
sible to call in question.
The Church, however, declares, that she will not
submit her claim to the arbitrament of human reason;
she demands that it shall be at once conceded as an
article of faith. •r -*.
If this be admitted, all her requirements must neces.
sarily be assented to, no matter how exorbitant they
may be. - -
With strange inconsistency the Dogmatic Constitu.
tion deprecates reason, affirming that it cannot deter
THE WATICAN CONSTITUTION CRITICISED. 355
mine the points under consideration, and yet submits to
it arguments for adjudication. In truth, it might be
said that the whole composition is a passionate plea to
Reason to stultify itself in favor of Roman Christianity.
With points of view so widely asunder, it is impos-
sible that Religion and Science should accord in their
representation of things. Nor can any conclusion in
common be reached, except by an appeal to Reason as a
Supreme and final judge. -
There are many religions in the world, some of them
of more venerable antiquity, some having far more nu-
merous adherents, than the Roman. How can a selec-
tion be made among them, except by such an appeal to
Reason? Religion and Science must both submit their
claims and their dissensions to its arbitrament.
Against this the Vatican Council protests. It exalts
faith to a Superiority over reason; it says that they con-
stitute two separate orders of knowledge, having respec-
tively for their objects mysteries and facts. Faith deals
with mysteries, reason with facts. Asserting the domi-
nating Superiority of faith, it tries to satisfy the reluc-
tant mind with miracles and prophecies.
On the other hand, Science turns away from the
incomprehensible, and rests herself on the maxim of
Wiclif: “God forceth not a man to believe that which
he cannot understand.” In the absence of an exhibi-
tion of Satisfactory credentials on the part of her oppo-
nent, she considers whether there be in the history of
the papacy, and in the biography of the popes, any
thing that can adequately sustain a divine commission,
any thing that can justify pontifical infallibility, or ex-
tort that unhesitating obedience which is due to the
Vice-God. -
One of the most striking and yet contradictory feat-
356 THE WATICAN CONSTITUTION CRITICISED.
ures of the Dogmatic Constitution is, the reluctant hom-
age it pays to the intelligence of man. It presents a
definition of the philosophical basis of Catholicism, but
it veils from view the repulsive features of the vulgar
faith. It sets forth the attributes of God, the Creator
of all things, in words fitly designating its sublime con-
ception, but it abstains from affirming that this most
awful and eternal Being was born of an earthly mother,
the wife of a Jewish carpenter, who has since become
the queen of heaven. The God it depicts is not the
God of the middle ages, seated on his golden throne,
surrounded by choirs of angels, but the God of Philoso-
phy. The Constitution has nothing to say about the
Trinity, nothing of the worship due to the Virgin—on
the contrary, that is by implication sternly condemned;
nothing about transubstantiation, or the making of the
flesh and blood of God by the priest; nothing of the
invocation of the Saints. It bears on its face subordi-
nation to the thought of the age, the impress of the in-
tellectual progress of man. -
Such being the exposition rendered to us respecting
the attributes of God, it next instructs us as to his mode
of government of the world. The Church asserts that
she possesses a Supernatural control over all material
and moral events. The priesthood, in its various grades,
can determine issues of the future, either by the exercise
of its inherent attributes, or by its influential invoca-
tion of the celestial powers. To the Sovereign pontiff
it has been given to bind or loose at his pleasure. It is
unlawful to appeal from his judgments to an OEcumeni-
cal Council, as if to an earthly arbiter superior to him.
Powers such as these are consistent with arbitrary rule,
but they are inconsistent with the government of the
world by immutable law. Hence the Dogmatic Consti.
THE PASSAGE OF EUROPE TO LLAMAISM. 357
tution plants itself firmly in behalf of incessant provi-
dential interventions; it will not for a moment admit
that in natural things there is an irresistible sequence
of events, or in the affairs of men an unavoidable course
of acts.
But has not the order of civilization in all parts of
the world been the same? Does not the growth of so-
ciety resemble individual growth ? Do not both exhibit
to us phases of youth, of maturity, of decrepitude? To
a person who has carefully considered the progressive
civilization of groups of men in regions of the earth far
apart, who has observed the identical forms under which
that advancing civilization has manifested itself, is it
not clear that the procedure is determined by law Ż
The religious ideas of the Incas of Peru and the em-
perors of Mexico, and the ceremonials of their court-life,
were the same as those in Europe—the same as those in
Asia. The current of thought had been the same. A
Swarm of bees carried to some distant land will build
its combs and regulate its social institutions as other
unknown swarms would do, and so with separated and
disconnected swarms of men. So invariable is this se-
quence of thought and act, that there are philosophers
who, transferring the past example offered by Asiatic
history to the case of Europe, would not hesitate to
Sustain the proposition—given a bishop of Rome and
some centuries, and you will have an infallible pope:
given an infallible pope and a little more time, and you
will have Llamaism–Llamaism to which Asia has long
ago attained.
As to the origin of corporeal and spiritual things,
the Dogmatic Constitution adds a solemn emphasis to its
declarations, by anathematizing all those who hold the
doctrine of emanation, or who believe that visibleNature
358 THE WATICAN CONSTITUTION CRITICISED.
is Only a manifestation of the Divine Essence. In this
its authors had a task of no ordinary difficulty before
them. They must encounter, those formidable ideas,
whether old or new, which in our times are so strongly
forcing themselves on thoughtful men. The doctrine
of the conservation and correlation of Force yields as its
logical issue the time-worn Oriental emanation theory;
the doctrines of Evolution and Development strike at
that of successive creative acts. The former rests on
the fundamental principle that the quantity of force in
the universe is invariable. Though that quantity can
neither be increased nor diminished, the forms under
which Force expresses itself may be transmuted into
each other. As yet this doctrine has not received com-
plete scientific demonstration, but so numerous and so
cogent are the arguments adduced in its behalf, that it
stands in an imposing, almost in an authoritative atti-
tude. Now, the Asiatic theory of emanation and ab-
sorption is seen to be in harmony with this grand idea.
It does not hold that, at the conception of a human be-
ing, a soul is created by God out of nothing and given
to it, but that a portion of the already existing, the
divine, the universal intelligence, is imparted, and, when
life is over, this returns to and is absorbed in the gen-
eral source from which it originally came. The authors
of the Constitution forbid these ideas to be held, under
pain of eternal punishment. §
In like manner they dispose of the doctrines of
Evolution and Development, bluntly insisting that the
Church believes in distinct creative acts. The doctrine
that every living form is derived from some preced-
ing form is scientifically in a much more advanced po-
sition than that concerning Force, and probably may
be considered as established, whatever may become of
THE WATICAN CONSTITUTION CRITICISED. 359
the additions with which it has recently been over-
laid. - - -
In her condemnation of the Reformation, the Church
carries into effect her ideas of the subordination of
reason to faith. In her eyes the Reformation is an im-
pious heresy, leading to the abyss of pantheism, materi-
alism, and atheism, and tending to overthrow the very
foundations of human society. She therefore would
restrain those “restless spirits” who, following Luther,
have upheld the “right of every man to interpret the
Scriptures for himself.” She asserts that it is a wicked
error to admit Protestants to equal political privileges
with Catholics, and that to coerce them and suppress
them is a sacred duty; that it is abominable to permit
them to establish educational institutions. Gregory
XVI. denounced freedom of conscience as an insane
folly, and the freedom of the press a pestilent error,
which cannot be sufficiently detested.
But how is it possible to recognize an inspired and
infallible oracle on the Tiber, when it is remembered
that again and again successive popes have contradicted
each other; that popes have denounced councils, and
councils have denounced popes; that the Bible of Sixtus
V. had so many admitted errors—nearly two thousand
—that its own authors had to recall it? How is it pos-
sible for the children of the Church to regard as “de-
lusive errors” the globular form of the earth, her posi-
tion as a planet in the Solar system, her rotation on her
axis, her movement round the sun ? How can they deny
that there are antipodes, and other worlds than ours?
How can they believe that the world was made out of
nothing, completed in a week, finished just as we see it
now ; that it has undergone no change, but that its
parts have worked so indifferently as to require incessant
interventions?
360 TIIE ERRORS OF ECCLESIASTICISM.
When Science is thus commanded to surrender her
intellectual convictions, may she not ask the ecclesiastic
to remember the past? The contest respecting the figure
of the earth, and the location of heaven and hell, ended
adversely to him. He affirmed that the earth is an ex-
tended plane, and that the sky is a firmament, the floor
of heaven, through which again and again persons have
been seen to ascend. The globular form demonstrated
beyond any possibility of contradiction by astronomical
facts, and by the voyage of Magellan's ship, he then
maintained that it is the central body of the universe,
all others being in subordination to it, and it the grand
object of God’s regard. Forced from this position, he
next affirmed that it is motionless, the sun and the stars
actually revolving, as they apparently do, around it.
The invention of the telescope proved that here again
he was in error. Then he maintained that all the mo-
tions of the solar system are regulated by providential
intervention; the “Principia” of Newton demonstrated
that they are due to irresistible law. He then affirmed
that the earth and all the celestial bodies were created
about six thousand years ago, and that in six days the
order of Nature was settled, and plants and animals in
their various tribes introduced. Constrained by the ac-
cumulating mass of adverse evidence, he enlarged his
days into periods of indefinite length—only, however,
to find that even this device was inadequate. The six
ages, with their six special creations, could no longer be
maintained, when it was discovered that species, slowly
emerged in one age, reached a culmination in a second,
and gradually died out in a third: this overlapping from
age to age would not only have demanded creations, but
re-creations also. He affirmed that there had been a
deluge, which covered the whole earth above the tops
THE ERRORS OF ECGLESIASTICISM. 361
of the highest mountains, and that the waters of this
flood were removed by a wind. Correct ideas respect-
ing the dimensions of the atmosphere, and of the sea,
and of the operation of evaporation, proved how unten-
able these statements are. Of the progenitors of the
human race, he declared that they had come from their
Maker's hand perfect, both in body and mind, and had
subsequently experienced a fall. He is now consider-
ing how best to dispose of the evidence continually ac-
cumulating respecting the Savage condition of prehis-
toric man.
Is it at all surprising that the number of those who
hold the opinions of the Church in light esteem should
so rapidly increase ? How can that be received as a
trustworthy guide in the invisible, which falls into so
many errors in the visible % How can that give confi-
dence in the moral, the spiritual, which has so signally
failed in the physical ? It is not possible to dispose of
these conflicting facts as “empty shadows,” “vain de-
vices,” “fictions coming from knowledge falsely so
called,” “ errors wearing the deceitful appearance of
truth,” as the Church stigmatizes them. On the con-
trary, they are stern witnesses, bearing emphatic and
unimpeachable testimony against the ecclesiastical claim
to infallibility, and fastening a conviction of ignorance
and blindness upon her.
Convicted of so many errors, the papacy makes no
attempt at explanation. It ignores the whole matter.
Nay, more, relying on the efficacy of audacity, though
confronted by these facts, it lays claim to infallibility.
But, to the pontiff, no other rights can be conceded
than those he can establish at the bar of Reason. He
cannot claim infallibility in religious affairs, and decline
it in scientific. Infallibility embraces all things. It
16
362 SEPARATION OF CATHOLICISM AND CIVILIZATION
implies omniscience. If it holds good for theology, it
necessarily holds good for Science. How is it possible
to coördinate the infallibility of the papacy with the
well-known errors into which it has fallen'.
Does it not, then, become needful to reject the claim
of the papacy to the employment of coercion in the main-
tenance of its opinions; to repudiate utterly the declara-
tion that “the Inquisition is an urgent necessity in view
of the unbelief of the present age,” and in the name of
human nature to protest loudly against the ferocity and
terrorism of that institution ? Has not conscience in-
alienable rights?
An impassable and hourly-widening gulf intervenes
between Catholicism and the spirit of the age. Catholi-
cism insists that blind faith is superior to reason; that
mysteries are of more importance than facts. She claims
to be the sole interpreter of Nature and revelation, the
supreme arbiter of knowledge; she summarily rejects
all modern criticism of the Scriptures, and Orders the
Bible to be accepted in accordance with the views of the
theologians of Trent; she openly avows her hatred of
free institutions and constitutional systems, and declares
that those are in damnable error who regard the recon-
ciliation of the pope with modern civilization as either
possible or desirable.
But the spirit of the age demands—is the human in-
tellect is to be subordinated to the Tridentine Fathers,
or to the fancy of illiterate and uncritical persons who
wrote in the earlier ages of the Church’ It sees no
merit in blind faith, but rather distrusts it. It looks
forward to an improvement in the popular canon of
credibility for a decision between fact and fiction. It
does not consider itself bound to believe fables and
falsehoods that have been invented for ecclesiastical
SCIENCE AND PROTESTANTISM. 363
ends. It finds no argument in behalf of their truth,
that traditions and legends have been long-lived; in
this respect, those of the Church are greatly inferior
to the fables of paganism. The longevity of the Church
itself is not due to divine protection or intervention, but
to the skill with which it has adapted its policy to exist-
ing circumstances. If antiquity be the criterion of au-
thenticity, the claims of Buddhism must be respected;
it has the superior warrant of many centuries. There
can be no defense of those deliberate falsifications of
history, that concealment of historical facts, of which
the Church has so often taken advantage. In these
things the end does not justify the means.
Then has it in truth come to this, that Roman Chris-
tianity and Science are recognized by their respective
adherents as being absolutely incompatible; they can-
not exist together; one must yield to the other; man-
kind must make its choice—it cannot have both.
While such is, perhaps, the issue as regards Catholi-
cism, a reconciliation of the Reformation with Science
is not only possible, but would easily take place, if the
Protestant Churches would only live up to the maxim
taught by Luther, and established by so many years of
war. That maxim is, the right of private interpreta-
tion of the Scriptures. It was the foundation of intel-
lectual liberty. But, if a personal interpretation of the
book of Revelation is permissible, how can it be denied
in the case of the book of Nature? In the misunder-
standings that have taken place, we must ever bear in
mind the infirmities of men. The generations that im-
mediately followed the Reformation may perhaps be
excused for not comprehending the full significance of
their cardinal principle, and for not on all occasions car-
rying it into effect. When Calvin caused Servetus to
364 SCIENCE AND FAITH.
be burnt, he was animated, not by the principles of the
Reformation, but by those of Catholicism, from which
he had not been able to emancipate himself completely.
And when the clergy of influential Protestant confes-
sions have stigmatized the investigators of Nature as
infidels and atheists, the same may be said. For Catholi-
cism to reconcile itself to Science, there are formidable,
perhaps insuperable obstacles in the way. For Protes-
tantism to achieve that great result there are not. In
the one case there is a bitter, a mortal animosity to be
overcome; in the other, a friendship, that misunderstand-
ings have alienated, to be restored.
But, whatever may be the preparatory incidents of
that great impending intellectual crisis which Christen-
dom must soon inevitably witness, of this we may rest
assured, that the silent secession from the public faith,
which in so ominous a manner characterizes the pres-
ent generation, will find at length political expression.
It is not without significance that France reënforces the
ultramontane tendencies of her lower population, by the
promotion of pilgrimages, the perpetration of miracles,
the exhibition of celestial apparitions. Constrained to
do this by her destiny, she does it with a blush. It is
not without significance that Germany resolves to rid
herself of the incubus of a dual government, by the
exclusion of the Italian element, and to carry to its
completion that Reformation which three centuries ago
she left unfinished. The time approaches when men
must take their choice between quiescent, immobile faith
and ever-advancing Science—faith, with its mediaeval
consolations, Science, which is incessantly scattering its
material blessings in the pathway of life, elevating the
lot of man in this world, and unifying the human race.
CIVILIZATION AND RELIGION, 365
Its triumphs are solid and enduring. But the glory
which Catholicism might gain from a conflict with ma-
terial ideas is at the best only like that of other celestial
meteors when they touch the atmosphere of the earth
—transitory and useless.
Though Guizot's affirmation that the Church has
always sided with despotism is only too true, it must
be remembered that in the policy she follows there
is much of political necessity. She is urged on by the
pressure of nineteen centuries. But, if the irresistible
indicates itself in her action, the inevitable manifests
itself in her life. For it is with the papacy as with a
man. It has passed through the struggles of infancy,
it has displayed the energies of maturity, and, its work
completed, it must sink into the feebleness and queru-
lousness of old age. Its youth can never be renewed.
The influence of its souvenirs alone will remain. As
pagan Rome threw her departing shadow over the em-
pire and tinctured all its thoughts, so Christian Rome
casts her parting shadow over Europe.
Will modern civilization consent to abandon the
career of advancement which has given it so much power
and happiness? Will it consent to retrace its steps to the
semi-barbarian ignorance and Superstition of the middle
ages? Will it submit to the dictation of a power, which,
claiming divine authority, can present no adequate cre-
dentials of its office; a power which kept Europe in a
stagnant condition for many centuries, ferociously sup:
pressing by the stake and the sword every attempt at
progress; a power that is founded in a cloud of myste-
ries; that Sets itself above reason and common-sense;
that loudly proclaims the hatred it entertains against
liberty of thought and freedom in civilinstitutions; that
professes its intention of repressing the one and destroy-
366 INADMISSIBLE CLAIMS OF CATHOLICISM.
ing the other whenever it can find the opportunity; that
denounces as most pernicious and insane the opinion
that liberty of conscience and of worship is the right of
every man; that protests against that right being pro-
claimed and asserted by law in every well-governed
state; that contemptuously repudiates the principle that
the will of the people, manifested by public opinion (as
it is called) or by other means, shall constitute law; that
refuses to every man any title to opinion in matters of
religion, but holds that it is simply his duty to believe
what he is told by the Church, and to obey her com-
mands; that will not permit any temporal government
to define the rights and prescribe limits to the authority
of the Church; that declares it not only may but will
resort to force to discipline disobedient individuals; that
invades the Sanctity of private life, by making, at the
confessional, the wife and daughters and servants of one
suspected, spies and informers against him ; that tries
him without an accuser, and by torture makes him bear
witness against himself; that denies the right of parents
to educate their children outside of its own Church, and
insists that to it alone belongs the Supervision of domes-
tic life and the control of marriages and divorces; that
denounces “the impudence” of those who presume to
subordinate the authority of the Church to the civil au-
thority, or who advocate the separation of the Church
from the state; that absolutely repudiates all toleration,
and affirms that the Catholic religion is entitled to be
held as the only religion in every country, to the exclu-
sion of all other modes of worship; that requires all laws
standing in the way of its interests to be repealed,
and, if that be refused, orders all its followers to disobey
them :
This power, conscious that it can work no miracle to
ISSUE OF THE CONFLICT. * 367
serve itself, does not hesitate to disturb Society by its
intrigues against governments, and seeks to accomplish
its ends by alliances with despotism.
Claims such as these mean a revolt against modern
civilization, an intention of destroying it, no matter at
what social cost. To submit to them without resistance,
men must be slaves indeed!
As to the issue of the coming conflict, can any one
doubt? Whatever is resting on fiction and fraud will
be overthrown. Institutions that organize impostures
and spread delusions must show what right they have
to exist. Faith must render an account of herself to
Reason. Mysteries must give place to facts. Religion
must relinquish that imperious, that domineering posi-
tion which she has so long maintained against Science.
There must be absolute freedom for thought. The eccle-
siastic must learn to keep himself within the domain he
has chosen, and cease to tyrannize over the philosopher,
who, conscious of his own strength and the purity of
his motives, will bear such interference no longer.
What was written by Esdras near the willow-fringed
rivers of Babylon, more than twenty-three centuries
ago, still holds good: “As for Truth it endureth and is
always strong; it liveth and conquereth for evermore.”
I N D E X .
A.
ABSORPTION, doctrine of 122.
Abubeker invades Syria, 87.
Active intellect, 138.
AEneas Sylvius's description of the
British Isles, 265.
Agesilaus, his expedition, 5.
Alexander invades Persia, 6; death
of 16.
Alexandria, foundation of 17; Mu-
Scum, 18; library, 19; captured
by Amrou, 94.
Al-Gazzali, quotation from, 101; on
the soul, 127.
Algebra invented by the Saracens,
112, 115, 304.
Alhazen, 117.
Alliance, Evangelical, 352.
Almagest, 112.
Al-Mamun measures the earth, 109,
155; his libraries, 112; quotation
from, 115; denounced, 142;
translates the “Syntaxis,” 158,
Almansor at Bagdad, 111.
America, discovery of, 159 ; its
progress, 286.
American Revolution, 324.
Amrou invades Egypt, 93; consults
the khalif about the Alexandrian
Library, 102.
Anaesthetics, 318.
Anathema, Nicene, 53; of the Vati-
can Council, 350.
Andalusia, conquest of, 96; civili-
zation of, 141.
Animals, are they automata ? 128–
136.
Antipodes, St. Augustine on the, 64.
Apollonius, his mathematical works,
29; water-clock of, 31.
Aquinas, St. Thomas, resists Averro-
ism, 150.
Arabs, their fatalism, 106; litera-
ture, 111; manufacture and agri-
culture, 117; inventions and dis-
coveries, 158.
Arbela, battle of, 6.
Archimedes, 28.
Argyll, Duke of, quotation from,
223.
Aristarchus, 156.
Arithmetic, Indian, 115.
Aristotelian philosophy, 22.
Arius, 51; councils respecting, 205.
Assyrian printing, 14.
Astronomy, Arabian, 116 ; periods
of progress, 232.
Atmospheric refraction, 117, 158.
Augustine denounces Pelagius, 56;
review of his writings; 58–62;
on antipodes, 64.
Auricular confession, 207.
Averroism, 124, 139; in Andalusia,
142; opposed by the Dominicans,
143; in Europe, 149; in Italy,
150, 210.
B.
Babylon, 10.
Babylonian astronomy, 13.
Bacon, Lord, 233.
Bagdad a centre of science, 111.
Bahira converts Mohammed, 78.
Bartholomew’s eve, 214.
Bede, Venerable, quotation from
the, 65.
Bozrah, fall of 88.
Bradley discovers aberration of the
stars, 172.
Bruno, 177; is murdered, 180.
INDEX. 369
Buddhism, doctrine as to the Soul,
122; nature of, 138.
C.
Caaba, 86.
Cajetan to Luther, 211.
Callisthenes, death of 16.
Calvin, 213; burns Servetus, 216;
on predestination, 252.
Catholicity, the failure of 285, 321.
Cape, the, doubling of 163, 294.
Cardinals, college of 276.
Carthage burned by the Saracens,
95; had introduced Latin Chris-
tianity, 95.
Cassini discovers the oblateness of
Jupiter, 188.
Censorship, 293.
Chain of Destiny, 108.
Chakia Mouni, 138.
Chaldean Church established, 78;
observations, 13.
Chemistry, origin of 112–116.
Chosroes invades the Roman Em-
pire, 76; captures Jerusalem, 76;
carries off the cross, 77.
Christianity, origin of 34; pagan-
ization, 46; transformed into a
political system, 52.
Chronology, vulgar, 184; patristic,
184.
Chronometer, 312.
Church, Catholic, its numbers, 328;
its pretensions; 329; appanage
of Italy, 341 ; its claims, 365.
Circumnavigation of the earth, 163.
Civilization and Catholicity, 282.
Clay libraries, 13.
Clementine Constitutions, 211.
Colenso on the Pentateuch, 219.
Coliseum, 256.
Colleges, Arabian, 214.
Columbus, voyage of, 159; discov-
ers the line of no variation, 162.
Confusion of tongues, 186.
Conservation of force, 358.
Constantine becomes emperor, 39;
his gift to the pope, 272.
Constitution, dogmatic, of Catholic
faith, 344, 354.
Cooling of the earth, 245.
Copernicus, 167; his system estab-
lished, 172.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, 64, 154.
Cosmogony, scientific, 188.
Councils determine truth, 204; in-
fallible, 226.
Creation and evolution, 192.
Crisis, impending, 327.
Criterion of truth, 201.
Crown of thorns, 270.
Ctesibius invents the fire-engine, 31.
Curia, its business, 274.
Cyril murders Hypatia, 55; bribes
the eunuch, 72.
D.
Damascus, fall of 76, 89.
Death, introduction of, into the
world, 56.
Decretals, Isidorian, 271.
De Dominis, punishment of, 319.
De Gama, 163, 294.
Degree, measure of a, 165, 236.
D'Elcano, Sebastian, completes cir-
cumnavigation, 164.
Deluge, its date, 185.
Descartes on automata, 128–130;
his geometry, 305.
“De Tribus Impostoribus,” 148.
Development theory, 118, 248.
Diocletian opposes Christianity, 38;
abdication of 39.
Dionysius Exiguus constructs chro-
nology, 184.
Dogmatic constitution of Catholic
faith, 344, 354.
Domestic improvements, 314–316.
Dual government, 266, 342.
Dualism, 15.
Du Bois-Reymond on the ant, 129.
E.
Earth, its form, 108; measured by
Al-Mamun, 109; theological view
of, 153; measures of 155, 165;
circumnavigation of 164; meas-
ured by the French, 166; dimen-
sions of 167, 174; distance from
the sun, 173; age of 182; oblate-
ness of, 189; formation of 189;
370
antiquity of 194; decline of her
heat, 244.
East, the, peculiarities of its reli-
gious opinions, 69.
Ecclesiastic, the, recommended to
remember the past, 360.
Edessa, college of 73.
Electric telegraph, 311.
Emanation, doctrine of 122, 358.
Encyclical Letter, 352.
Encyclopædias, Arabian, 114.
England, population of 262.
Ephesus, Council of 72.
Epiphanius on mineralogy, 214.
Eratosthenes, his works, 28; meas-
ures the earth, 155.
Erigena, his philosophy, 125.
Euclid, 27.
Europe, its social condition, 264,
268, 270; at the Reformation,
265; dual government in, 266;
population, 264, 327; sects of,
328.
Evangelical Alliance, 352.
Everlasting gospel, 148, 206.
Evolution, doctrine of 247.
Eymeric, the inquisitor, 208.
Ezra, author of the Pentateuch,
222; quotation from, 367.
F.
Fathers of the Church, their char-
acter, 188.
Fatalism of Arabs, 106.
Faustus, his appeal to Augustine,
48.
|Fernel measures the earth, 165.
Force, its indestructibility, 126.
Fratricelli, their opinion, 284.
Frauenhofer on spectra, 241.
Frederick II., his “Sicilian Ques-
tions,” 151.
“Free Spirit,” Brethren and Sisters
of the, 209.
French Revolution, 324.
G.
Galileo, discoveries of 170; pun-
ishment, 171 ; mechanics, 233.
Genesis the basis of Christianity,
INDEX.
57; Augustine's interpretation of,
59; criticism on, 219.
Geometry improved by the Sara-
Cens, 112.
dºment of the world by law,
9.
Granada, surrender of 148.
Gratian’s “Decretum,” 211, 273.
Gravitation, universal, 235.
Guizot, his affirmation, 365.
II.
Hakem, his library, 142.
Halley's comet, 269, 320.
Hallucinations, religious cause of,
82.
Haroun - al - Raschid organizes
Schools, 111.
Heaven, description of 70;
Mohammedan’s, 109.
Helena paganizes Christianity, 47.
Heraclius, his expedition to Con-
stantinople, 75; war with Chos-
roes, 76; farewell to Syria, 91.
Hero invents the steam-engine, 32.
Herschel on double stars, 238; on
the nebular hypothesis, 240.
Hilary of Poictiers, quotation from,
203.
Hipparchus, 29.
Holy Ghost, finger of the, 270.
Honian the bookseller, 113,
Huber on insects, 129.
Huggins on nebula, 241.
JHumboldt on effect of Nature, 12.
Hupfeld on the Pentateuch, 224.
Hyacinthe, Père, his views, 351.
Hypatia, murder of, 55.
the
I.
Ibn-Junis, 116, 159.
Incas, religious ideas of the, 357.
Index Expurgatorius, 217.
Indian arithmetic, 115.
Individualism, 295.
Indulgences, 212.
Infallibility, 225.
Inoculation, 218.
Inquisition, 144, 207, 279; an ur-
gent necessity, 362.
INDEX.
Insects, 129.
Insurance, 317.
Intervention and law, 252.
Inventions, scientific, 311.
Isis, worship of, restored 48, 71.
J.
Jerusalem surrenders to Alexander,
7; to Chosroes, 76; to the Sara-
cens, 90, 91. - -
Jews, their conversion ceases, 105;
influence on the Saracens, 105;
their psychology, 124; in Spain,
144; banished from Spain, 147.
Jesuiabbas treats with Mohammed,
105.
Jesuits in Prussia, 340.
John the Grammarian, 105.
Jugglery, 319.
Justinian closes pagan schools, 56;
Pandects of 210; effect of his
Italian Wars, 262.
R.
Kepler, laws of 230; condemnation
of 231; anticipates Newton, 232.
Khaled, the Saracen general, 87.
Khalifates, the three, 99.
Koran, the God of the, 84.
L.
Lactantius, quotation from, 64.
Lambeth Articles, 253.
Language, the primitive, 186.
Languages, modern, 281.
Laplace on nebular hypothesis,
239. t
Latin Christianity, its effect, 255;
language, use of, 280.
Law, government of the world by,
229.
Legates, their duty, 273.
Leibnitz, accusation against New-
ton, 218.
Library, Alexandrian, 19; disper-
Sion of the, 54; destruction of,
; of Cairo, 113; Andalusian,
113. -
Llamaism, 357.
Llorente, on the Inquisition, 146.
371
Locomotion, 312.
Logarithms, invention of 306.
Luther, 212, 295; against Aristotle,
215.
M.
Macedonian campaign, 7.
Magellan, his voyage, 164, 294.
Magianism, 15; overthrown by Mo-
hammed, 92.
Maimonides, 143.
Man, antiquity of 195 ; develop-
ment of 249.
Martel, Charles, overthrows the Sar-
acens, 97.
Mathematics, 303.
Maurice, the Emperor, 74.
Medical colleges, Saracen, 115; im-
provements, 318.
Memory, explanation of 134.
Menu, Institutes of 122.
Mercantile inventions, 317.
Mexico, diminution of population,
262; civilization of 289.
Miracle-evidence, 66, 206.
Mississippi, advance of the, 190.
Moawyah, the Khalif, 110.
Mohammed, at Bozrah, 78; his
marriage,80; battles, 82; death,
83; religious opinions of 84.
Mohammedanism an offshoot of
Nestorianism, 85; popular doc-
trines of 86, 101. -
Monotheism, tendency to, 35; ori-
gin of, 70.
Moors expelled from Spain, 148.
Mosaic record, objections to the,
195, -
Municipal improvements, 315.
Museum, Alexandrian, 18, 20, 33.
N.
Nebular hypothesis, 239–243.
Negro slavery, 288.
Neptune, discovery of 237.
Nervous system, functions of 131.
Nestor, 51; follows the opinions
of Theodore of Mopsuestia, 71;
quarrels with Cyril, 72; trial of
72; death of 73.
Nestorians are Aristotelians, 73
372
Mohammedanism their offshoot,
85; influence on the Saracens,
105.
Newton, Bishop, quotation from, 50.
Newton, Sir I., discovers the earth's
oblateness, 189; his “Principia,”
235, 237; example from his phi-
losophy, 301. -
Nicea, Council of 51, 53, 204.
Nirwana, 122, 140.
Noah divides the earth, 185.
O.
Observatory at Seville, 115.
Omar, Jerusalem Surrendered to,
90; at Medina, 110.
Organisms, their variation, 246.
P.
Pandects of Justinian, 210.
Papacy the, its transformation,
271; centralization of the, 273;
Italian, 341.
Papal revenues, 267, 275.
Paper, invention of 294.
Parallax of the Sun, 174; of the
stars, 175.
Patriarchs, their length of life, 187.
Patristic philosophy, 63; chronolo-
gy, 185.
Pelagius, his doctrine and condem-
nation, 56.
Pelayo, Bishop, his statement, 276.
Pendulum invented, 116.
Pentateuch, Tertullian on the, 40;
criticism of 219.
Pergamus, library of 21, 103.
Persepolis, 11. ~
Persia, 3; campaigns in, 74; intel-
lectual condition of, 14; religion
of 15.
Peru, civilization of 289; religious
ideas of the Incas, 357.
Philip the Fair, 290.
Philip of Macedon, 6.
Philo the Jew, 123.
Philoponus, John, asks for the Al-
exandrian Library, 103.
Philosophy a state crime, 66.
Phocas, mutiny of 74.
Phlogiston, 302.
Physicians, Jewish, 107.
INDEX.
Picard measures the earth, 165,236.
Pigafetti, 164.
Pius IX., his objects, 343.
Platonism, 26.
Plotinus, 123.
Polygamy, practical effect of 100.
Pope, the infallible, 225, 337; elec-
tion of the, 276.
Population, theory of 261.
Posidonius measures the earth, 155.
Prayers, Christian and Mohamme-
dan, 108.
Precession of the equinoxes, 30, 189,
Predestination, 252.
Prehistoric man, 195.
Printing, effects of 137, 293.
Protestantism, decomposition of,
297 ; reconciliation with Science,
364.
Prussia, conflict of, with the pope,
339; Church laws of 340.
Ptolemies, their policy, 32.
Ptolemy Soter, birth of 16; King
of Egypt, 17; an author, 27.
Ptolemy, the astronomer, 30; his
system, 157.
Purgatory, 278.
Pusey, Dr., translation quoted, 62.
Pythagorcan system, 156.
R.
Railways, 288.
Reformation, 212, 296, 298, 359.
Registry of nervous impressions,
135.
Renan on Averroism, 139.
Revenues, papal, 276–278.
Roman rites adopted into Chris-
tianity, 48; aristocratic families,
pagan, 51.
Romances, Arabian, 113–117.
Romanus, treason of 88.
Rome, at the Reformation, 256;
political condition of, 259; So-
cial condition of 260; occupied
by the Italian army, 337.
Royal Society, 308.
S.
Salerno, college of 115.
Saracens, the, capture Jerusalem,
90; Alexandria, 94 ; Carthage,
INDEX.
95; invade Spain, 96; France,
97; insult Rome, 98; dissensions
of 99; disregard of European
opinion, 99; dynasties of 111.
Schism, the Great, 279, 292,
Science, sacred, 62; introduction
into Europe, 290; influence of,
310.
Servetus, his opinions and murder,
216, 363.
Shell-mounds, 198.
Sixtus W., his Bible, 359.
Societies, Italian Scientific, 300.
Sophronius Surrenders Jerusalem,
90.
Sosigenes rectifies the calendar, 31.
Soul, the, 120; Vatican Council on
the, 121 ; nature of the, 127.
Spain, invasion of 96.
Spinoza, 149.
Stars, distance of, 175; new, 177.
Steam-engine, 312.
Stoicism, 23, 251.
Sun, distance of the, 173.
Syllabus, 332; analysis of 344.
“Syntaxis” of Ptolemy, 30.
Syphilis, 269.
Syria invaded by Chosroes, 76; by
the Saracens, 87.
T.
Tarik invades Spain, 96.
Taylor's theorem, 306.
Telegraph, electric, 311.
Telescope invented, 169.
Tertullian, his apology, 39–45.
Theodosius closes, the temples, 54.
Theophilus disperses the Alexan-
drian Library, 54.
Toleration, 298.
Torquemada, the inquisitor, 146;
burns Oriental manuscripts, 146.
Tower of Babel, 186.
Trent, Council of 214.
Trigonometry invented by the Sara-
cens, 112, 116. *
Trinitarian dispute, 53.
T H E
373
Trinity, St. Augustine on the, 61
Plotinus on, 123.
Truth, criterion of 201.
~
U.
Universe, government of the, 228.
V.
Valentinian persecutes Platonists,
66.
Valerius procures the punishment
of Pelagius, 56.
Vanini, murder of 216.
Variation of the compass, 162.
Wasco de Gama, 162.
Vatican Council, 330.
Vedaism, 121.
Venus, transit of 173, 320.
Vicar of Christ, 273.
Vinci, L. da, 233,299.
Virgin Mary, mother of God, 72;
milk of 270.
W.
Waldenses, their declaration, 209.
William of Malmesbury on the
Anglo-Saxons, 266.
Writing, effects of 137.
Y.
Xcres, battle of 96.
Ximenes burns Arabic manuscripts,
104; perfidy of 148.
Y.
Yermuck, battle of 89.
2'--
Zeno, 23.
Zoroaster, his religion, 15.
Zosimus reverses the opinion of
Innocent I., 56.
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