California 
 legional 
 'acility
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY W 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 
 MRS ETHEL ROGERS
 
 HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT 
 
 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 PHYSIOLOGY, HISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE, HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, 
 
 AN'D OF MANY EXPERIMENTAL MEMOIRS ON CHEMICAL 
 
 AND OTHER SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1898
 
 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.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 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 Eeligion 
 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. But 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 
 no one can be justified in wantonly disturbing them. 
 But 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 Eoman 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 
 away; we live in the daybreak of better things. So-
 
 viil 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, Russian, 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- 
 flicting 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. i x 
 
 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. But 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- 
 nent 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 PREFACE. 
 
 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 
 a 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 Koman 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.
 
 XJV 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 Eeligion, 
 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 Eoman 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 Eeligion was not 
 accountable 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 Eoman pa- 
 ganism. The obvious remedy, therefore, was a return 
 to primitive purity. Thus arose the fourth conflict, 
 known to us as the Eeformation the second or North- 
 ern Eeformation. 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 
 Bible. 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 Eoman 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.
 
 xv i 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 Eoman 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. 
 
 JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER. 
 UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, December, 187S.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF SCIENCE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 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 systems. The military, engineer- 
 ing, 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 experiment, observation, and mathematical discussion. 
 . It is the origin of Science 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY. ITS TRANSFORMATION ON ATTAIN- 
 ING IMPERIAL POWER. ITS RELATIONS TO SCIENCE. 
 
 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 union with Paganism 
 a political necessity. Tertullian's description of its doc- 
 trines and practices. Debasing effect of the policy of 
 Constantine on it. Its alliance with the civil power. Its 
 incompatibility with science. Destruction of the Alexan- 
 drian Library and prohibition of philosophy. Exposition 
 of the Augustinian philosophy and Patristic science gen- 
 erally. The Scriptures made the standard of science . 34 
 xvii
 
 xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. PAOIt 
 
 CONFLICT RESPECTING THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 THE 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 prin- 
 ciples, rejecting the worship of the Virgin, the doctrine 
 of the Trinity, and everything in opposition to the unity 
 of God. He extinguishes idolatry in Arabia by force, 
 and prepares to make war on the Roman Empire. His suc- 
 cessors 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 established in the greater part of the Roman Empire. 
 The cultivation of science was restored, and Christen- 
 dom lost many of her most illustrious capitals, as Alexan- 
 dria, Carthage, and, above all, Jerusalem . . . .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 concep- 
 tions respecting the structure of the world. They as- 
 certain the size of the earth, and determine its shape. 
 Their khalifs collect great libraries, patronize every de- 
 partment of science and literature, establish astronomical 
 observatories. They develop the mathematical sciences, 
 invent algebra, and improve geometry 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
 
 CONTENTS. xix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 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 foun- 
 dation of modern astronomy, chemistry, and physics, and 
 introduce great improvements in agriculture and manu- 
 factures . 102 
 
 ' CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONFLICT RESPECTING THE NATURE OF THE SOUL. DOCTRINE 
 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 absorp- 
 tion. 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 found- 
 ing 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 
 resuks. Expulsion of the Jews and Moors. Overthrow 
 of Averroism in Europe. Decisive action of the late 
 Vatican Council 119 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONFLICT RESPECTING THE NATURE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Scriptural view of the world : the earth a flat surface ; loca- 
 tion of heaven and hell. 
 
 Scientific view : the earth a globe ; its size determined ; its 
 position in and relations to the solar system. The three
 
 xx CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 great voyages. Columbus, De Gama, Magellan. Circum- 
 navigation of the earth. Determination of its curvature 
 by the measurement of a degree and by the pendulum. 
 
 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 parallax by the transits of 
 Venus. Insignificance of the earth and man. 
 
 Ideas respecting the dimensions of the universe. Parallax of 
 the stars. The plurality of worlds asserted by Bruno. 
 He is seized and murdered by the Inquisition . . . 152 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 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. 
 
 Legend of the Deluge. The repeopling. The Tower of Babel ; 
 the confusion 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 respect- 
 ing aqueous rocks; corroboration by organic remains. 
 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 conducted 182 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CONFLICT RESPECTING THE CRITERION OF TRUTH. 
 
 Ancient philosophy declares that man has no means of ascer- 
 taining the truth. 
 Differences of belief arise among the early Christians. An
 
 CONTENTS. xxi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ineffectual attempt is made to remedy them by Councils. 
 Miracle and ordeal proof introduced. 
 
 The papacy resorts to auricular confession and the Inquisi- 
 tion. It perpetrates frightful atrocities for the suppres- 
 sion of differences of opinion. 
 
 Effect of the discovery of the Pandects of Justinian and de- 
 velopment 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. 
 
 Examination of the authenticity of the Pentateuch as the 
 Protestant criterion. Spurious character of those books. 
 
 For Science, the criterion of truth is to be found in the revela- 
 tions of Nature ; for the Protestant, it is in the Scriptures; 
 for the Catholic, in an infallible Pope .... 201 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNIVERSE. ' 
 
 There are two conceptions of the government of the world : 
 1. By Providence ; 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 foun- 
 dations of mechanical philosophy 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 conclu- 
 sion to the universe. The nebular hypothesis. Theologi- 
 cal 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 Evolution, 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 . 228
 
 xxii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. PAGE 
 
 LATIN CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 For more than a thousand years Latin Christianity controlled 
 the intelligence of Europe, and is responsible for the result. 
 
 That result is manifested by the condition of the city of Rome 
 at the Reformation, and by the condition of the Continent 
 of Europe in domestic and social life. European nations 
 suffered under the coexistence of a dual government, a 
 spiritual and a temporal. They were immersed in igno- 
 rance, superstition, discomfort. Explanation of the fail- 
 ure of Catholicism. Political history of the papacy: it 
 was transmuted from a spiritual confederacy into an abso- 
 lute monarchy. Action of the College of Cardinals and 
 the Curia. Demoralization 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 Catholi- 
 cism was prejudicial to modern civilization . . . 245 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SCIENCE IN RELATION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Illustration of the general influences of Science from the his- 
 tory 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 Reformation. Estab- 
 lishment of the Italian scientific societies. 
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE. It changed the 
 mode and the direction of thought in Europe. The trans- 
 actions of the Royal Society of London, and other scien- 
 tific societies, furnish an illustration of this. 
 
 THE ECONOMICAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE is illustrated by the 
 numerous mechanical 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 ? 286
 
 CONTENTS. xxiii 
 
 CHAPTER XII. PAGE 
 
 THE IMPENDING CRISIS. 
 
 Indications of the approach of a religious crisis. The pre- 
 dominating Christian Church, the Roman, perceives this, 
 and makes preparation for it. Pius IX. convokes an 
 (Ecumenical Council. Relations of the different Euro- 
 pean governments to the papacy. Relations of the Church 
 to Science, as indicated by the Encyclical Letter and the 
 Syllabus. 
 
 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 papa- 
 cy. It is a contest between the State and the Church for 
 supremacy. Effect of dual government in Europe. Dec- 
 laration by the Vatican Council of its position as to Sci- 
 ence. 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. Pres- 
 ent condition of the controversy, and its future prospects 827
 
 HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT 
 BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE OBIGItf OF SCIENCE. 
 
 Religious condition of the Greeks in the fourth century before 
 Christ. Their invasion of the Persian Umpire brings them 
 in contact with new aspects of Nature, and familiarizes them 
 with new religious systems. 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 experiment, ob- 
 servation, 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 
 uniformity in the acts of men, and that there was no 
 
 1
 
 2 GEEEK MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 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 sjich 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. ^.-Eschylus 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- 
 vancement. 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 ^Egean, the Black, the Caspian, 
 the Indian, the Persian, the Eed 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 PERSIAN 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 
 Cyprus on the battle-field of Cunaxa, it was demon- 
 strated, 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 
 3
 
 (} INVASION OF PERSIA BY GREECE. 
 
 Agesilaus, as he reembarked, 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 II- 
 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 MACEDONIAN 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 
 Eome, centuries later, no one could with safety have 
 denied that the city owed its founder, Eomulus, 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 
 " King 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 Mediterrnean coast; the en- 
 gineering difficulties overcome at the siege of Tyre; the
 
 10 EVENTS OF THE CAMPAIGNS. 
 
 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 Ked 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 move- 
 ment on the field; the piercing of the enemy's centre 
 a manoeuvre destined to be repeated many centuries sub- 
 sequently at Austerlitz; the energetic pursuit of the 
 Persian monarch; these are exploits not surpassed 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 
 conquerors, still more than eighty feet in height; there
 
 EFFECTS ON THE GREEK ARMY. H 
 
 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 
 confined 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 
 night 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 Eed 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 procession 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 OP 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 Nimroud 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 now 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 BELIGIOUS 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 tilings, 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 beauti- 
 ful 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. if 
 
 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. 
 
 He 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 t& 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- 
 nistical 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. But 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, adjoinng 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 Ehacotis, 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 
 ^Eschylus, 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 
 wer 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 Ehodius. 
 
 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 actual- 
 ly 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. 
 
 It remains now to describe briefly the philosophical 
 4
 
 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- 
 ness. They are failures arising from want of a suffi- 
 ciency of facts.
 
 ETHICAL SCHOOL OP THE MUSEUM. 23 
 
 Some of the general results at which Aristotle ar- 
 rived are very grand. Thus, he concluded that every 
 thing is ready to burst into life, and that the various 
 organic forms presented to us hy 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 Eome. 
 
 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-
 
 21 THE PRINCIPLES OF STOICISM. 
 
 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 
 society. " I possess," said the Stoic, " a treasure which 
 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?
 
 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, rose 
 from particulars to universals, advancing to them by 
 inductions. 
 
 Plato, therefore, trusted to the imagination, Aris- 
 totle 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 alluring 
 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. 2Y 
 
 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 Eoman 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-
 
 ERATOSTHENES 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 com- 
 plete system of the earth, in three books physical, 
 mathematical, 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 eviction 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 OP THE STEAM-ENGINE. 31 
 
 scientific fame. His determination of the planetary 
 orbits as 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 Caesar 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 
 devotees 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 recol- 
 lection, not as a reality. Again and again had Persia 
 changed her national faith. For the revelation of Zoro- 
 aster she had substituted Dualism; then under new po- 
 litical influences she had adopted Magianism. She had 
 worshiped fires, and kept her altars burning on moun- 
 tain-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 influ- 
 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. 
 
 The day will never come when any one of the propo- 
 sitions 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.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY. ITS TRANSFORMATION 
 ON ATTAINING IMPERIAL POWER. ITS RELATIONS 
 TO SCIENCE. 
 
 Religious condition of the Roman Republic. The adoption of 
 imperialism leads to monotheism. Christianity spreads over 
 the Roman Empire. The circumstances under which it at- 
 tained imperial power make 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. Its incompatibility 
 with science. Destruction of the Alexandrian Library and 
 prohibition of philosophy. Exposition of the Augustinian 
 philosophy and Patristic science generally. The Scriptures 
 made the standard of science. 
 
 IN a political sense, Christianity is the bequest of 
 the Eoman Empire to the world. 
 
 At the epoch of the transition of Borne 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 
 
 34
 
 MONOTHEISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 35 
 
 republic brought the gods of the vanquished peoples to 
 Eome. 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 philosophical 
 criticism, faith in the religion of the old days had been 
 profoundly shaken. It was, by this policy of Eome, 
 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 manufac- 
 ture 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 ex- 
 cesses 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 Koman desire. The conquerors of the world had dis- 
 covered 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 suc- 
 cessful warfare; and the emperor was the symbol of force. 
 Ther was a social splendor, but it was the phosphorescent 
 corruption of the ancient Mediterranean 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 in- 
 terests, denounced him to the Koman governor, who, to 
 satisfy their clamors, reluctantly delivered him over to 
 death.
 
 THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY. 37 
 
 His 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 
 a means. 
 
 Political conditions determined the boundaries of 
 the new religion. Its limits were eventually those of 
 the Roman Empire; Rome, doubtfully the place of the 
 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. 
 5
 
 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 
 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 sub- 
 sequently that of Licinius, removed all obstacles. He 
 ascended the throne of the Caesars the first Christian 
 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 
 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 Eoman 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 Home 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 glori- 
 ous majesty of the triumphant Eoman 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 Eome, the palace, the senate, the public places, 
 and especially the armies. We have left you nothing 
 but your temples. Eeflect 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 Christian- 
 ity 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 preeminent, 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
 
 CHRISTIANITY UNDER CONSTANTINB. 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 
 herself in the end, and the impurity be cast off. In ac- 
 complishing this amalgamation, Helena, the empress- 
 mother, aided by the court ladies, led the way. For her 
 gratification there were discovered, in a cavern at Jeru- 
 salem, wherein they had lain buried for more than three 
 centuries, 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 Chasroneia, 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 agapas 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. 
 
 Let 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 
 Roman 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 Eoraan 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 succeeded 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
 
 50 INTRODUCTION OP 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- 
 ternities 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 
 reason. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 6
 
 54 DISPERSION OP THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. 
 
 that, before he was begotten, he was not, and that he 
 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 Thcophilus. 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 Csesar, 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. His 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- 
 sition 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?" 
 
 Hypatia and Cyril! Philosophy and bigotry. They 
 cannot exist together. So Cyril felt, and on that feel- 
 ing he acted. As Hypatia retired 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 Koman 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 ac- 
 quitted of heresy, but, on referring the matter to the 
 Bishop 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
 
 CONDEMNATION 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 
 intention of Christianity as set forth by him, has noth- 
 ing in common with the plan of salvation upheld two 
 centuries 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 vieAv, 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, 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 any thing, 
 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 his 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, 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 
 conceive, 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, 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 hate ve- 
 hemently; 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, 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. 
 Much 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. AUGUSTINE. 
 
 writings, I have, in the two quotations here given, sub- 
 stituted for my own translation that of the Kev. Dr. 
 Pusey, as contained in Vol. I. of the " Library of Fa- 
 thers of the Holy Catholic Church," published at Ox- 
 ford, 1840. 
 
 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 perilous 
 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 fronj 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 PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 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 Cosmos 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 hy 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 sepa- 
 rates the superincumbent waters from the waters be-
 
 66 THE 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? It was none too 
 soon that the great critics who appeared at the Reforma- 
 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. 
 
 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 Yalen- 
 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. THE 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. He extin- 
 guishes 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 
 established 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. 
 
 THE 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 heen 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 
 68
 
 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. Distance gave security to the 
 episcopates of Alexandria and Rome. 
 
 Religious 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, 
 7
 
 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 
 landscape 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 Olmypus, 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 DOCTEINES. 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 car- 
 nal, these materialistic conceptions, and raised their pro- 
 testing 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 THE NESTOEIANS. 
 
 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 OP NESTOE. 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.
 
 Y4 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 revo- 
 lutions 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. 
 
 But the glories of this generous campaign could not 
 preserve Maurice himself. A mutiny broke out in the 
 Eoman 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
 
 THE EXPEDITION OF HERACL1US. 75 
 
 torn out, or the feet and hands cut off; some were 
 whipped 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 INVASION OP CHOSEOES. 
 
 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, Csssarea, 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 Rome," 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." 
 
 But Heraclius submitted only for a moment. He 
 found means not only to restore his affairs but to retali-
 
 INVASION OF CHOSROES. 7f 
 
 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 Roman Empire had irrevocably 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 monment, 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. But, 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 Abou Taleb, 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 hundred 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, Maronites, Nestorians. Sabellians, Valentinians. 
 Of these, the Maronites 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. 
 
 But, 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 Eoman 
 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. 
 
 By 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 cfoctrine, 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." 
 
 His marriage with Chadizah placed him in circum- 
 stances of ease, and gave him an opportunity of indulg-
 
 MOHAMMED. 81 
 
 ing 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, " Paradise 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 OP MOHAMMED. 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, 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 
 he 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, " 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 stand in 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: " 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 Eome. 
 
 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 KHALIF. 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 
 8
 
 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! Abubeker
 
 INVASION OP 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: " 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 Eoman 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 BOZRAH. 
 
 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 place at Antioch, barely one hundred 
 and fifty miles still farther north, the Emperor Heraclius
 
 FALL OP 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 Eoman 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. 
 
 From 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 Csesarea 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 
 Cassarea, 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. But, 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 Tor 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 Cassar, to the 
 provinces of Kome, 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: haw Tripoli and Tyre were be- 
 trayed; how Ca3sarea was captured; how with the trees 
 of Libanus and the sailors of Phoenicia a Saracen fleet 
 was equipped, which drove the Eoman 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 OVERTHROW OP 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 Eome 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 
 pratice 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 Eome. 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
 
 INVASION 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. 
 His 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 khalif s, not content 
 with their victories on the J^orth 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 then. 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 reenforce the garrison 
 continually. On his part, Omar, who was now khalif, 
 sent to the succor of the besieging army the veteran
 
 94r 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 thousand 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 es- 
 sential 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 reinforcements 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 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-
 
 INVASION 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 Ehone, and laid siege to 
 Aries. 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, 
 ed, and soon afterward were compelled to recross the 
 Pyrenees. 
 
 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."
 
 OS INSULT TO ROMK. 
 
 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 
 Saracens 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 ven- 
 erable churches of Asia Minor had passed out of exist- 
 ence; no Christian could set his foot in Jerusalem with- 
 out 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 come 
 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 
 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 POLYGAMY. 
 
 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-llaschid 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, thou son 
 of an unbelieving mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou 
 shalt behold my reply! " 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 tjibute 
 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 t/trir ri> //. 
 CM to the destiny of man, and obtain true conceptions respect- 
 ing 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 mathe- 
 matical sciences, invent algebra, and improve geometry and 
 trigonometry. They collect and translate the old Greek mathe- 
 matical 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 founda- 
 tion of modern astronomy, chemistry, and physics, and intro- 
 duce great improvements in agriculture and manufactures. 
 
 " 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- 
 
 102
 
 THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY BURNT. 1Q3 
 
 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. Amrout, 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. 
 
 But 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 Philadelphia began his collection. 
 Julius Cfesar 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 li- 
 brary twenty years after Theophilus, the uncle of St. 
 Cyril, had procured from the Emperor Theodosius a re- 
 script for its destruction. Even had this once noble col- 
 lection 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,
 
 104 THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY BURNT. 
 
 might rejoice in a superfluity of occupation, we may be 
 certain that the care of a library of half a million books 
 would transcend even his well-tried powers; and the cost 
 of preserving and supporting it, that had demanded the 
 ample resources of the Ptolemies and the Caesars, was be- 
 yond the means of a grammarian. Nor is the time re- 
 quired for its combustion or destruction any indication 
 of the extent of the collection. Of all articles of fuel, 
 parchment is, perhaps, the most wretched. Paper and 
 papyrus 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 NESTOEIANS AND JEWS/1Q5 
 
 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 
 exposed. 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, con- 
 cluded treaties both with the Prophet and with Omar, 
 and subsequently 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 OP THE ARABIANS. 
 
 full of Jews. In Alexandria alone, at the time of its 
 capture by Ararou, 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-
 
 FATALISM 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 Avith 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 FATALISM OP THE 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 
 the 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 Eed 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-
 
 HO T11KIK PASSION FOR SCIENCE. 
 
 cal form could not be positively asserted from one such 
 measurement, the khalif caused another to be made near 
 fu fa 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 seek M on \vyah, the sixth khalif, were presented to him
 
 THEIR LITERATURE. \\\ 
 
 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-Easchid (A. D. 786), followed his exam- 
 ple, 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 A*l-Mamun 
 (A. D. 813-832). He made Bagdad the centre of science, 
 collected great libraries, and surrounded himself with 
 learned men. 
 
 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
 
 112 THEY ORIGINATE CHEMISTRY. 
 
 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 " Alma- 
 gest." The collections thus acquired sometimes became 
 very large; thus the "Fatimite Library at Cairo con- 
 tained one hundred thousand volumes, elegantly tran-
 
 THEIR GREAT LIBRARIES. H3 
 
 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. 
 Books 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. Books of reference 
 abounded, geographical, statistical, medical, historical,
 
 THEIR GREAT LIBRARIES. 
 
 dictionaries, and even abridgments or condensations 
 of them, as the "Encyclopedic Dcitionary 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. 
 
 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. H5 
 
 were his religious opinions; his attainment in learning 
 was the only thing to be considered. The great Khalif 
 Al-Manmn 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. 
 
 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, 
 10
 
 1 l ^ THEIR THEORY OP 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."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONFLICT RESPECTING THE NATURE OF THE SOUL. 
 DOCTRINE 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 Alexan- 
 drian 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 Christen- 
 dom 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 Vatican 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 
 
 119
 
 120 TnE 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 winters-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. " Let 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 au- 
 thoritative 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
 
 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 reabsorbcd. 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 Borne, 
 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 .js 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 simulacral 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 
 
 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 Bald, 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 thnt 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
 
 128 ARE ANIMALS AUTOMATA f 
 
 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 can not 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 AUTOMATA? 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 ape! 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-Eeymond 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! " 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? 
 
 While solitary insects do not live to raise their young, 
 social insects have a longer term, they exhibit moral 
 allVrt ions 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 arc 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 NERVOUS 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 conies 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! 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 view, 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 extinc- 
 tion, 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 
 11
 
 134 EXPLANATION OF MKMORY. 
 
 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 
 antenna! 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 hed 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 THEORY 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 unchange- 
 ability 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-
 
 AVERKOCISM. 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. Kenan, 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
 
 140 AVERROISM. 
 
 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 Ninvana, 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 
 emerging 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 preexisting 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. 
 
 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 many 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 welecomed. 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
 
 AVERKOISM AMONG THE JEWS. 14.3 
 
 punished. Some were put to death, and the conse- 
 quence was, that Islam was full of hypocrites. 
 
 Into Italy, Germany, England, Averroism had si- 
 lently 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 OP AVERROISM. 
 
 ccssible 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 undermin- 
 ing European Christianity. 
 
 Until Innocent IV. (1243), there was no special tri- 
 bunal against heretics, distinct from those of the bish- 
 ops. 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 
 bishops, 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. 
 
 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 AVERROISM. 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
 
 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 du- 
 plicity it was affirmed that the torment had not been 
 completed 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 
 Torquemada and his collaborators, in the course of 
 eighteen years, burnt at the stake ten thousand two hun- 
 dred 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 destroyed Hebrew Bibles wherever he could find 
 them, and burnt six thousand volumes of Oriental litera- 
 ture at Salamanca, under an impiitation that they incul- 
 cated Judaism. With unutterable disgust and indigna- 
 tion, we learn that the papal government realized much 
 money by selling to the rich dispensations to secure 
 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 unbap- 
 tized Jew. On March 30, 1492, the edict of expulsion 
 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; en- 
 forced 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 OP 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 Rome, 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
 
 AVEEROISM IN EUROPE. 149 
 
 Tribus Impostoribus." The latter was variously im- 
 puted 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 Eobert Grostete, in Eoger 
 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. (1355) 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- 
 12
 
 150 ST. THOMAS COMBATS AVEHROISM. 
 
 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.
 
 AVERROISM 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 
 race.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONFLICT RESPECTING THE NATURE OP 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 posi- 
 tion in and relations to the solar system. The three great 
 voyages. Columbus, De Gama, Magellan. Circumnavigation 
 of the earth. Determination of its curvature by the measure- 
 ment of a degree and by the pendulum. 
 
 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. Deter- 
 mination of the sun's parallax by the transits of Venus. 
 Insignificance of the earth and man. 
 
 Ideas respecting the dimensions of the universe. Parallax of the 
 stars. The plurality of worlds asserted by Bruno. lie is 
 seized and murdered 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 
 
 152
 
 THEOLOGICAL 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,
 
 THEORY OP 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 lias 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 utterty 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 Erastosthenes 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 Ehodes; the bright star Canopus 
 just grazed the horizon at the latter place, at Alexandria 
 it rose 7. 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 Eed 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 sun. 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 rep- 
 resenting the actual facts. This was the result of a rec- 
 ognition of the sun's amazing distance, and therefore of 
 his enormous size. The heliocentric system, thus re- 
 garding 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 
 geocentric system. It left the earth in her position of 
 superiority, 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
 
 158 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 " Systeme du Monde," 
 adduces the observations of Al-Batagni as affording in- 
 contestable proof of the diminution of the eccentricity
 
 THE THREE GREAT VOYAGES. 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
 
 ICO Till-: VOYAGE OP 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 
 disturbances of the countries through which it passed. 
 The Eastern trade of Genoa was not merely in a precari- 
 ous 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 
 of 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 veiw were correct, her affairs might be re- 
 established. A ship sailing through the straits of Gi- 
 braltar 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. 
 
 He 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. 1G1 
 
 out by the Spanish ecclesiastics, and condemned by the 
 Council of Salamanca; its orthodoxy was confuted from 
 the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Prophecies, the Gos- 
 pels, the Epistles, and the writings of the Fathers St. 
 Chrysostom, 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 TUB VOYAGE OP DE OAMA. 
 
 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, lie was not the lirst 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 a 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 geographknl 
 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 readied 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 THE VOYAGE 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 dou- 
 bled the cape at last, and then for the fourth time 
 crossed the equator. On September 7, 1522, after a voy- 
 age of more than three years, he brought his ship, the 
 San Vittoria, to anchor in the port of St. Lucar, near 
 Seville. She had accomplished the greatest achieve- 
 ment in the history of the human race. She had cir- 
 cumnavigated 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 8 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 
 13
 
 1C6 THE SIZE OP Till: l.AKTII. 
 
 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.
 
 COPERNICUS. 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 Eevolutions of the Heavenly 
 Bodies." He had journeyed to Italy in his youth, had 
 devoted his attention to astronomy, and had taught 
 mathematics at Home. 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
 
 1C8 THE BOOK OF COPERNICUS. 
 
 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 Paid 
 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
 
 170 DISCOVERIES OP GALILEO. 
 
 presented a miniature representation of the Copernican 
 system. 
 
 The announcement of these wonders at once attract- 
 ed universal attention. The spiritual authorities were 
 not slow to detect their tendency, as endangering the 
 doctrine that the universe was made for man. In the 
 creation of myriads of stars, hitherto invisible, there 
 must surely have been some other motive than that of 
 illuminating 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
 
 PUNISHMENT OF GALILEO. 
 
 Church. By 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, atheism. 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 1 Inquisition at Eome, 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 OP GALILEO. 
 
 forced by the threat of death to deny facts which his 
 judges as well as himself knew to be true! He was 
 then committed to prison, treated with remorseless se- 
 verity 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 jcare 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. Roomer'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. 
 
 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 8^^ 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 STAES. 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- 
 nally 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-
 
 170 DISTANCES OP TUB 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 llth, 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 
 opinion, 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- 
 lowed 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 varnished 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 Eome, 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
 
 I si) TIIK MURDER OP 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. Knowing 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. 181 
 
 orable judges? N~o 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. 
 He 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. 
 
 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 VII. 
 
 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. 
 
 Legend of the Deluge. The repeopling. The Tower of Babel ; the 
 confusion of tongues. The primitive language. 
 
 Discovery by Cassini of the oblaleness of the planet Jupiter. 
 Discovery by Newton of the oblateness of the Earth. Deduc- 
 tion that she has been modeled by mechanical causes. Con- 
 firmation of this by geological discoveries respecting aqueous 
 rocks; corroboration by organic remains. The necessity of 
 admitting enormously long periods of time. Displacement of 
 the doctrine of Creation by that of Evolution. Discoveries re- 
 specting the Antiquity of Man. 
 
 The time-scale and space-scale of the world are infinite. Modera- 
 tion 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. But 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- 
 182
 
 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 " Timasus," 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 ot 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 
 Lord 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,
 
 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
 
 PATRISTIC 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 3d, 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 antedi- 
 luvian 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
 
 180 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. 
 
 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". 
 
 parcntly 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 coordinate 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 more 
 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 nutation 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 OP 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. Vast 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 dry land, 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,
 
 < KKAT1ON AND ELOLUTloN. 
 
 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 preexisting 
 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
 
 194 ASTRONOMICAL EVIDENCE. 
 
 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. Eecent 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 
 miocene contemporary with the mastodon. 
 
 At 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 gla- 
 ciers 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 for- 
 merly. 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 ris- 
 ing, England was sinking. In the Pleistocene age there 
 existed in Central Europe a rude race of hunters and 
 fishers 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 
 15
 
 198 ANTIQUITY OP 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 batons 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 OP MAN. 199 
 
 Some of these, it is said, cannot be less than one hun- 
 dred thousand years old. 
 
 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 in- 
 consistent 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 VIII. 
 
 CONFLICT RESPECTING THE CRITERION OF TRUTH. 
 
 Ancient philosophy declares that man has no means of ascertain- 
 ing the truth. 
 
 Differences of 'belief arise among the early Christians. An inef- 
 fectual attempt is made to remedy them by Councils. Miracle 
 and ordeal proof introduced. 
 
 The papacy resorts to auricular confession and the Inquisition. 
 It perpetrates frightful atrocities for the suppression of dif- 
 ferences of opinion. 
 
 Effect of the discovery of the Pandects of Justinian and develop- 
 ment 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 Ex- 
 purgatorius, and combats dissent by such means as the mas- 
 sacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve. 
 
 Examination of the authenticity of the Pentateuch as the Prot- 
 estant criterion. Spurious character of those books. 
 
 For Science the criterion of truth is to be found in the revelations 
 of Nature ; 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 
 201
 
 202 T1IE CRITERION OP 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 OP TRUTH. 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 and 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. (Ecumenical 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." Vast as its influence has been, " the 
 ancient 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 
 authentic acts of its famous sentence have been com- 
 mitted to writing, or, at least, none have been trans- 
 mitted to our times." The Church had now become 
 what, in the language of modern politicians, would be
 
 THE COUNCIL OF NICEA. 205 
 
 called " a confederated republic." The will of the coun- 
 cil was determined by a majority vote, and, to secure 
 that, all manner of intrigues and impositions were re- 
 sorted to; the influence of court females, bribery, and 
 violence, were not spared. The Council of Mcca had 
 scarcely adjourned, 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 minority had no rights which the majority need re- 
 spect. The protest of many good men, that a mere ma- 
 jority vote given by delegates, whose right to vote had 
 never been examined and authorized, could not be re- 
 ceived as ascertaining absolute truth, was passed over 
 with contempt, and the consequence was, that council 
 was assembled against council, and their jarring and 
 contradictory decrees spread perplexity and confusion 
 throughout the Christian world. In the fourth century 
 alone there were thirteen councils adverse to Arius, fif- 
 teen in his favor, and seventeen for the semi-Arians 
 in all, forty-five. Minorities were perpetually attempt- 
 ing 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- 
 nal 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 Home, that the 
 Bishop of Borne 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 discover 
 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- 
 nal, 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 pure 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 Eome.
 
 210 TOE PANDECTS OP 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 
 Lateran Council in the time of Leo X. 
 
 But, 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 
 Bodin, 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 Eeformation. 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 com- 
 merce was denied, raised funds by carrying about relics 
 in solemn procession, and charging a fee for touching 
 them. The popes, in their pecuniary straits, perceiving 
 how lucrative the practice might become, deprived the 
 bishops of the right of making such sales, and appro- 
 priated it to themselves, established agencies, chiefly 
 among the mendicant orders, for the traffic. Among 
 these orders there was a sharp competition, each boast- 
 ing of the superior value of its indulgences through its 
 greater influence 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 alienated 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 rais- 
 ing 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 Witten- 
 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 manceuvre 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. 
 
 Leo was not slow to discern that the Lutheran Ref- 
 ormation was something more serious than a squabble 
 16
 
 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*! 
 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 
 Keformers would tolerate no science that was not in 
 accordance with Genesis. Among them there were 
 many who maintained that religion and piety could 
 never nourish unless separated from learning and sci- 
 ence. 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 Eef- 
 ormation, Luther and Melanchthon, were determined 
 to banish philosophy from the Church. Luther declared 
 that the study of Aristotle is wholly useless; his vilifi- 
 cation 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 
 Eeformation. 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 CALVIN. 
 
 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 rec- 
 ognized that science alone can improve the social con- 
 dition of man. 
 
 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 Vanini, 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 Eoman 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
 
 218 THE SCRIPTURES THE STANDARD OP 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- 
 nists, 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. 
 
 But here, in the first place, it may be demanded, 
 Who or what is it that has put forth this great claim in 
 its behalf? 
 
 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 io 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 contradiction 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 TUB 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. 
 He 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. Irenams 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 
 an 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 ma- 
 chinery, if such expressions may with propriety be used, 
 are altogether Assyrian, not Egyptian. They were such
 
 ASSYRIAN TILE RECORDS. 223 
 
 records as one might expect to meet with in the cunei- 
 form impressions of the tile libraries of the Mesopo- 
 tamian 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 consecu- 
 tive or complete. Nothing is told us of all that lay be- 
 hind 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 distinct- 
 ly seen. Even the direction of those movements can
 
 _-i ii\ I:K>I: AtTiiousini' OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 only be guessed. But voices are heard which are as the 
 voices of many waters." I agree in the opinion of Hup- 
 feld, that " the discovery that the Pentateuch is put to- 
 gether 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 Judseus 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? Om- 
 niscience cannot be limited to a restricted group of 
 questions; 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 cecuraenical 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- 
 scribed 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 contending 
 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 VOLUME 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. 
 
 CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE GOVERNMENT OP THE 
 UNIVERSE. 
 
 There are two conceptions of the government of the world : 1. By 
 Providence; 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 philosophy are laid by Da Vinci. Galileo dis- 
 covers 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 Evolution, 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 
 
 228
 
 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 resumed 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 
 
 17
 
 230 KKI'LKU. 
 
 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 Wiirtemberg, who had adopted 
 the heliocentric theory, and who was deeply impressed 
 with the belief that relationshipsexist 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 1G09 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 line 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 Eoman 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 hindrance, 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 KEPLEK. 
 
 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 VINCI. 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. 
 Bacon 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 
 interval of about seventy years, Da Vinci was followed 
 by the Dutch engineer, Stevinus, whose work on the 
 principles 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 
 perpetual 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 movement 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 Huyghcns, it had be-
 
 NEWTON. 235 
 
 come 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, pa- 
 rabolas, 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 UNIVERSAL 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 
 1609 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 Nature, 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 Reformation. Though its effect had not been the 
 securing of complete liberty for thought, it had weak- 
 ened many of 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 Prot-
 
 238 '''in-: 
 
 was engrossed by the movements of his great 
 enemy the Catholic, and when that source of disquie- 
 tude ceased, and the inevitable partitions of the Kefor- 
 mation arose, that attention was fastened upon the rival 
 and antagonistic Churches. The Lutheran, the Calvin- 
 ist, the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, had something 
 more urgent on hand than Newton's mathematical 
 demonstrations. 
 
 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 
 tb.5 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, <r 
 Corona?, were determined by Hind, its period being
 
 NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 239 
 
 more than seven hundred and thirty-six years. The or- 
 bital movement of these double suns in ellipses compels 
 us to admit that the law of gravitation holds good far 
 beyond 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 Ency- 
 clopedia, 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 move- 
 ments of rotation of the sun, of the planets, and the 
 satellites, are in the same direction as their orbital mo- 
 tions, and in planes little different. 
 
 It is impossible that so many coincidences could be 
 the result of chance! 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? 
 
 First, we must be satisfied whether there is any 
 solid evidence for admitting the existence of such a 
 nebulous mass. 
 
 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
 
 NEBULAE HYPOTHESIS. 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 de- 
 pends on the exquisite correctness of their optical sur- 
 faces. Grand instruments may possess the former qual- 
 ity in perfection by reason of their size, but the latter 
 very imperfectly, either through want of original con- 
 figuration, 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 evi- 
 dence has at length been obtained, demonstrating the 
 existence of vast masses of matter in a gaseous condi- 
 tion, and at a temperature of incandescence. The 
 hypothesis of Laplace has thus a firm basis. In such a
 
 242 NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 nebular mass, cooling by radiation is a necessary inci- 
 dent, and condensation and rotation the inevitable re- 
 sults. 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 natu- 
 ral laws, an organized 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 
 universe. 
 
 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? " 
 
 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 preexisting 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 HYPOTHESIS. 243 
 
 chemistry. It never occurs to us to invoke the inter- 
 position of the Almighty in the production and fash- 
 ioning of this fugitive form. We explain all the facts 
 connected with it by physical laws, and perhaps should 
 reverentially hesitate to call into operation the ringer 
 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 an- 
 other 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 oth- 
 ers that will follow. There is an unceasing metamor- 
 phosis, 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? 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 
 presence, the supervision of God; here, at our distant 
 station, 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 DKCLIXK <F UKAT IN TIIH KAKTII. 
 
 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 charac- 
 ter in our globe. Her dimensions must have dimin- 
 ished 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 atmos- 
 phere must have varied, especially in the amount of 
 water-vapor and carbonic acid that it contained; the 
 barometric pressure must have declined. 
 
 These changes, and very many more that might be 
 mentioned, must have taken place not in a discontinu- 
 ous but in an orderly manner, since the master-fact, 
 the decline of heat, that was causing them, was itself 
 following a mathematical law. 
 
 But not alone did lifeless Nature submit to these 
 inevitable mutations; living Nature was also simultane- 
 ously affected. 
 18
 
 246 CONSEQUENT VARIATIONS OP 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 fol- 
 lows that organic Nature must have passed through de- 
 structions and transformations in correspondence thereto. 
 
 That such extinctions, such modifications, have taken 
 place, how copious, how convincing, is the evidence! 
 
 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, arbi- 
 trary interventions 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 OP 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 predomi- 
 nance 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 LAW. 
 
 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. But 
 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 solution 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 condi- 
 tion, most frequently under an organic form. The sun- 
 shine kept up its work day by day, but there were de- 
 manded myriads of days for the work to be completed. 
 It was a slow passage from a noxious to a purified at- 
 mosphere, 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 providential acts. They were the immediate, 
 the inevitable consequences of the physical changes, 
 and therefore, like them, the necessary issue of law. 
 
 For a more detailed consideration of this subject, I 
 may 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 se- 
 quence 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 individual 
 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 aerial; 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 develop- 
 ing, and with it his intellectual powers. At about fif- 
 teen years, in consequence of the evolution which spe- 
 cial parts of his system had attained, his moral charac- 
 ter changed. New ideas, new passions, influenced him.
 
 250 DEVELOPMENT IN MAN. 
 
 And that 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 develop- 
 ment, the metamorphosis, 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 en- 
 feeblement. Perhaps there is little exaggeration in say- 
 ing 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 consid- 
 ered, shows its time of infancy, its time of youth, its 
 time of maturity, its time of decline, if its phases of 
 life be completed. 
 
 In the phases of existence of all, so far as those 
 phases are completed, there arc 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. 
 
 But 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 
 emperors of Eome; a system which excluded chance 
 from every thing, and asserted the direction of all 
 events by irresistible necessity, to the promotion of per- 
 fect good; a system of earnestness, sternness, austerity, 
 virtue a protest in favor of the common-sense of man- 
 kind. And perhaps we shall not dissent from the re- 
 mark 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 some- 
 thing 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 condem- 
 nation 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 olfered 
 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 EELATION TO MODERN 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 For more than a thousand years Latin Christianity controlled the 
 intelligence of Europe, and is responsible for the result. 
 
 That result is manifested by the condition of the city of Rome at 
 the Reformation, and by the condition of the Continent of 
 Europe in domestic and social life. European nations suf- 
 fered under the coexistence of a dual government, a spiritual 
 and a temporal. They were immersed in ignorance, supersti- 
 tion, 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. Demoralization 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 prejudicial to modern civilization. 
 
 LATIN Christianity is responsible for the condition 
 and progress of Europe from the fourth to the six- 
 teenth century. We have now to examine how it dis- 
 charged 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 ac- 
 count for the condition of all mankind. Its inefficacy 
 against the great and venerable religions of Southern 
 
 235
 
 256 ROME AT THE REFORMATION. 
 
 and Eastern Asia would furnish an important and in- 
 structive 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, so- 
 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 Roman Fo- 
 rum, whence laws had been issued to the world, as 
 Cows' Field. The palace of the Casars was hidden by 
 mounds of earth, crested with flowering shrubs. The 
 baths of Caracalla, with their porticoes, gardens, reser- 
 voirs, had long ago become useless through the destruc- 
 tion of their supplying aqueducts. On the ruins of that 
 grand .edifice, " flowery glades and thickets of odorifer- 
 ous trees extended in ever-winding labyrinths upon im- 
 mense platforms, and dizzy arches suspended in the 
 air." Of the Coliseum, the most colossal of Roman 
 ruins, only about one-third remained. Once capable of 
 accommodating nearly ninety thousand spectators, it 
 had, in succession, been turned into a fortress in the mid- 
 dle 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
 
 ROME AT THE REFORMATION. 257 
 
 its magnificent 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 Flora of the Coliseum " contains four 
 hundred and twenty species. Among the ruins of 
 classical buildings might be seen broken columns, cy- 
 presses, and mouldy frescoes, dropping from the walls. 
 Even the vegetable world participated in the melancholy 
 change: the myrtle, which once flourished on the Aven- 
 tine, had nearly become 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, Eicimer, 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 Casars 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 Vandal, nor the 
 Norman, nor the Saracen, but the popes and their neph-
 
 253 NOME 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 Eeformation 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 in- 
 cumbents 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 Eo- 
 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 OP 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. For 
 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 flow- 
 ers 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. 201 
 
 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 in- 
 fluence 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. 
 
 By the resistances to life is meant whatever tends 
 to make individual existence more difficult of support. 
 Among such may be enumerated insufficient food, in- 
 adequate 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- 
 19
 
 262 VARIATIONS OP 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
 
 VARIATIONS 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
 
 204 CONDITION OP EURO I'K. 
 
 looks back with veneration on the past, settle in his own 
 niiiul 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. Xo 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 a 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. 
 
 ^Eneas 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,
 
 ii;tj DUAL GOVERNMENT IN EUROPE. 
 
 human flesh was cooked and sold; or that, in that of 
 1258, fifteen thousand persons died of hunger in Lon- 
 don? 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. Drinking, 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 
 chronicler records how men and women were caught 
 and dragged 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 ransom. 
 
 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. Eu- 
 rope was full of disgraceful miracles. On all the roads 
 pilgrims 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 145 G, 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 OP 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 Eoman 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 Eome, and made the pontiff the 
 supreme judge of the clergy of the whole Christian 
 world. It prepared the way for the great attempt, s\ib- 
 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
 
 272 CENTRALIZATION OP 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 Auselm 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 Prankish 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 OP 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 par- 
 tisans must be rewarded; nothing could be done to sat- 
 isfy their clamors, but to provide for them in foreign 
 countries. 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 dispos- 
 ing of all church-offices without distinction, and that 
 the oath of obedience of a bishop to him implied politi- 
 cal 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 Home. 
 
 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 Eome. 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 REVENU1 
 
 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. 
 Tip 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 lie would not remove 
 them, but would permit them to assemble twice a year 
 to discuss whether he had kept his oath. Kepeatedly 
 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 mtj,st 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, 
 20
 
 ;>7s 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, absohitions, 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 Rome, 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, un- 
 der the Christian dispensation, were God's chosen peo- 
 ple, 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. 379 
 
 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 OP 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-col- 
 ored velvet cloaks and white ermine capes of the cardi- 
 nals 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 advantage in her hands, never again to be en- 
 joyed by any successor, she did not accomplish much 
 more. Had not the sovereign pontiffs been so com- 
 pletely 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 embarrassment with each other, 
 from Ireland to Bohemia, from Italy to Scotland. The
 
 LATIN AS A SACRED LANGUAGE. 281 
 
 possession of a common tongue gave them the adminis- 
 tration of international affairs with intelligent allies 
 everywhere, speaking the same language. 
 
 Not without cause was the hatred manifested by 
 Home 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 
 reecho 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-
 
 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, the noble services of which 
 they were once the scene, the dim, religious light stream- 
 ing 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 Christian- 
 ity 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 CIVILIZATION. 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 th 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 ab- 
 sence of the popes at Avignon. The effects of printing, of 
 maritime adventure, and of the Reformation. 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 Society of London, and other scientific societies, 
 furnish an illustration of this. 
 
 THE ECONOMICAL INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE is illustrated by the 
 numerous mechanical and physical inventions, made since 
 the fourteenth century. Their influence on health and domes- 
 tic life, on the arts of peace and of war. 
 
 Answer to the question, What has Science done for humanity f 
 
 EUROPE, at the epoch of the Reformation, furnishes 
 us with the result of the inflnences 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 
 
 286
 
 SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION. 287 
 
 Huguenots were living in the Carolinas. Kumors 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 PROM 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.
 
 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 Eome, 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 re- 
 solved 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 ex- 
 communicated, and, in retaliation, he accused the pope, 
 Boniface VIII., of atheism; demanding that he should 
 be tried by a general council. He sent some trusty per- 
 sons 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
 
 MOORISH SCIENCE INTRODUCED. 291 
 
 therefore came to an understanding with the cardinals; 
 a French archbishop was elevated to the pontificate; 
 he took the name of Clement V. The papal court was 
 removed to Avignon, in France, and Eome 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 ful- 
 minated 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. Heading 
 became a common occupation. In ancient society that 
 art was possessed by comparatively few persons. Mod- 
 21
 
 294 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. V.\- 
 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, Peru, 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 stragglings 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 tinder theological forms. 
 There were some preliminary skirmishes about indul- 
 gences and other minor matters, bwt 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 Home; 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, 
 wore 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. 
 
 Rome 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
 
 DECOMPOSITION OF PROTESTANTISM. 297 
 
 men to 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 Eeformers 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-
 
 J!K TOLERATION. 
 
 sitionnl condition will load to a higher and nobler state 
 the hope of philosophy in all past ages of the world 
 a social state in which there shall he 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- 
 
 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 Roman 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 recive and able to appreciate it. 
 Among these were Leonardo da Vinci, who proclaimed
 
 DA VINCI. 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 Home; 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. 30 1 
 
 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 Koyal 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 ratio
 
 302 THEORIES OF G11AV1TATK .\ AND PHLOGISTON. 
 
 of the inverse square, it appeared that the attraction <>f 
 the moon's orbit would draw a body through more than 
 lift cm i'crt. 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 H> much 
 agitated that he was obliged to ask a friend to complete 
 it. The hypothesis was sustained. 
 
 A second instance will suiliciently illustrate the 
 method under consideration. It is presented by the 
 ( -licmical 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, wfe see that, while the for- 
 mer repudiated tradition, to the latter it was the main 
 support; while the former insisted on the agreement of 
 calculation and observation, or the correspondence of 
 reasoning and fact, the latter leaned upon mysteries; 
 while the former summarily rejected its own theories, 
 if it saw that they could not be coordinated 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 contin- 
 ually increased. On one side there was a sentiment of 
 disdain, 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 MATHEMATICS. 
 
 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 longer 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 " Arfce 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 so- 
 lutions of some of the higher problems, accompanied 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 discovered 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- 
 bcrt, 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 Eng- 
 land, in France, that this great movement in mathemat- 
 ics was witnessed ; Scotland had added a new gem to the 
 inU'llcctual diadem with which her brow is encircled, 
 by the grand invention of Logarithms, by Napier of 
 Merohiston. It is impossible to give any adequate con- 
 ception of the scientific importance of this incomparable 
 invention. The modern physicist and astronomer will 
 most cordially agree with Briggs,the Professorof Mathe- 
 matics in (ircsham College, in his exclamation: " I 
 never saw a book that pleased me better, and that made 
 me more wonder! " Not without reason did the im- 
 mortal Kepler regard Napier " to be the greatest man 
 of liis 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 for
 
 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 intension of " de- 
 stroying the established religion, of injuring the univer- 
 sities, and of upsetting ancient and solid learning."
 
 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OP 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 
 AValmesley, 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 Schiehallion, 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 Eoss; 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, 
 "Nulling in Verba." It proscribed superstition, and 
 permitted only calculation, observation, and experi- 
 ment. 
 
 22
 
 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. 31 1 
 
 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 vindicated 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 off spring 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
 
 314 DOMESTIC IMPROVEMENT. 
 
 secure to the originator a reasonable portion of the ben- 
 efits of his skill. It is suiliciciit to refer in the most 
 cursory manner to a few of these improvements; \\i- 
 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. Prohibi- 
 tions were published against throwing slops out of the 
 windows. 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 con- 
 template the heavens, in order to preserve personal 
 purity. Until the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury 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 DOMESTIC 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 ranunculus, 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
 
 318 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. De 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 Eome 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 Eome
 
 320 DISCOVERIES IN ASTRONOMY AND CHEMISTRY. 
 
 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, depfived 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 Ilalley^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 dar- 
 ing prophecy, he besought the astronomers of the suc- 
 ceeding 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 DISCOVERIES. 
 
 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 givefc 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. 323 
 
 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 riot 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 of 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 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 reestablished 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 Eevolution 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 Eeformation " 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 
 1G93 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- 
 23
 
 ;;_>', 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."
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE IMPENDING CRISIS. 
 
 Indications of the approach of a religious crisis. The predomi- 
 nating 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 Syllabus. 
 
 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 contest between the State and the Church for suprem- 
 acy. Effect of dual government in Europe. Declaration by 
 the Vatican Council of its position as to Science. The dog- 
 matic 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- 
 
 327
 
 328 PREDOMINANCE OP CATHOLICITY. 
 
 Inilizedor 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 tke 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 OP 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 
 Roman 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 coor- 
 dinate 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. 
 
 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 Rome. 
 
 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 (Ecumenical 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! "
 
 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. 
 
 Having 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. 
 
 Had 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, coordinately 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 Home 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 Apos- 
 tolic See, " conferred upon it by Christ our Lord, to the 
 judgment of the civil authority." His Holiness com- 
 mends, to the venerable brothers to whom the Encycli- 
 cal is addressed, 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 various adornments. There is nothing she 
 cannot obtain from him." 
 
 Plainly, the principle now avowed by the papacy
 
 334 CONVOCATION 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, Russia 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 (Ecumenical 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 VATICAN 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 Home 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
 
 33d THE VATICAN 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- 
 ment. 
 
 On April 23d, Von 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 Home. 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, sur- 
 rounded by the devotion of the Italian populations, 
 " might preserve on the banks of the Tiber a glorious 
 seat, independent 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 Home on September 20, 1870. A mani- 
 festo was issued, setting forth the details of a plebisci-
 
 333 THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 turn, 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 n&t 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 Roman 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
 
 ACTION OP THE PRUSSIAN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in the ministry of Public Worship. This was about 
 midsummer, 1871. In the following November the Im- 
 perial 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 Koyal 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. Look at its composition! 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. 
 24
 
 342 DUAL GOVERNMENT IN EUROPE. 
 
 Of fifty-five members of the present College of Cardi- 
 nals, 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 Eome how was 
 it possible that history should present us with any thing 
 more than a narrative 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 bal- 
 anced 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. 
 
 But 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 anything 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 
 Syllabub 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 fonnularize, 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 CATHOLIC 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 Scrip- 
 tures began to be counted as myths and fables. Chris- 
 tianity has been rejected, and the reign of mere Eeason, 
 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 (Ecumenical Council; and the 
 Holy 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 or ALL THINGS. The Holy 
 Catholic Apostolic Eoman 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 OP 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- 
 tec ts and governs all things, reaching from end to end 
 mightily, and ordering all things harmoniously. Every 
 tiling is open to his eyes, even things that come to pass 
 by the free action of his creatures." 
 
 " OF REVELATION. 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 fol- 
 lowing a false religion." 
 
 " OF FAITH AND KEASON. 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 FAITH. 
 
 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 understanding 
 mysteries as it does those truths which form its 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 faith be 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 there- 
 fore pronounce false every assertion which is contrary 
 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 de- 
 ceit/ Hence all the Christian faithful are not only for-
 
 CONSTITUTION OP CATHOLIC FAITH. 349 
 
 bidden 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 T "K VATICAN ANATHEMAS. 
 
 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 
 nothing. 
 
 " 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 VATICAN 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 
 pursued 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. Pere 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 ALL1ANCK. 
 
 tury, of which we are the temporal children, and toward 
 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- 
 niscience, 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 antago- 
 nists, and prays for " the intercession of the immaculate 
 Virgin Mary, mother of God, and that of the blessed 
 apostles 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 Eome. 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 Eeformation 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 Eeformation. They were begotten together and 
 were born together. It failed to perceive that, though 
 there is an impossiblity 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 VATICAN 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 coobserver 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 Roman 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. 
 
 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 VATICAN 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 
 Eeason to stultify itself in favor of Eoman Christianity. 
 
 With points of view so widely asunder, it is impos- 
 sible that Eeligion 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 VATICAN 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 judgment to an (Ecumeni- 
 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 civilisation has manifested itself, is it 
 not clear that the procedure is determined by law? 
 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 visible Xature 
 
 25
 
 358 THE VATICAN 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 VATICAN 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 incest 
 Rant interventions?
 
 360 THE ERRORS OP 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 fig- 
 ure of the earth, and the location of heaven and hell, 
 ended adversely to him. He affirmed that the earth is an 
 extended 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 demon- 
 strated beyond any possibility of contradiction by astro- 
 nomical facts, and by the voyage of Magellan's ship, he 
 then maintained that it is the central body of the uni- 
 verse, all others being in subordination to it, and it the 
 grajid object of God's regard. Forced from this posi- 
 tion, 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 motions of the solar system are regulated by provi- 
 dential intervention; the " Principia " of Newton dem- 
 onstrated 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 Xature was settled, and plants and 
 animals in their various tribes introduced. Constrained 
 by the accumulating mass of adverse evidence, he en- 
 larged 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 spe- 
 cies, slowly emerged in one age, reached a culmination 
 in a second, and gradually died out in a third: this over- 
 lapping 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 ERRORS OF ECCLESIASTICISM. 361 
 
 the tops of the highest mountains, and that the waters 
 of this flood were removed by a wind. Correct ideas re- 
 specting the dimensions of the atmosphere, and of the 
 sea, and of the operation of evaporation, proved how 
 untenable 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 consid- 
 ering how best to dispose of the evidence continually 
 accumulating 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/ Cn 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 Eeason. He 
 cannot claim infallibility in religious affairs, and de- 
 cline it in scientific. Infallibility embraces all things.
 
 362 SEPARATION OF UATI I n I . I r I SM AND CIV I L1ZATION. 
 
 It implies omniscience. If it holds good for theology, it 
 neees.-urily hokls good for science. How is it possible 
 to cotfrdinate the infallibility of the papacy with the 
 well-known errors into which it has fallen r 
 
 Does it not, then, become needful to reject the claim 
 of the papacy to the employment of coercion in the 
 maintenance of its opinions; to repudiate utterly the 
 declaration 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 fe- 
 rocity and terrorism of that institution? Has not con- 
 science inalienable 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 
 intellect 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 Eeformation 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
 
 3G4: 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 misunder- 
 standings 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 reenforces 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 Eome threw her departing shadow over the em- 
 pire and tinctured all its thoughts, so Christian Eome 
 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 civil institutions; that 
 professes its intention of repressing the one and destroy-
 
 366 INADMISSIBLE CLAIMS OP 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 OP 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 
 ecclesiastic must learn to keep himself within the do- 
 main 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 wil- 
 low-fringed rivers of Babylon, more than twenty-three 
 centuries ago, still holds good: "As for Truth, it en- 
 dureth and is always strong; it liveth and conquereth 
 for evermore."
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ABSORPTION, doctrine of, 122. 
 
 Abubeker invades Syria, 87. 
 
 Active intellect, 138. 
 
 .-Kiu'iis Sylvius's description of the 
 British Isles, 265. 
 
 Agesilaus, his expedition, 5. 
 
 Alexander invades Persia, 6 ; death 
 of, 16. 
 
 Alexandria, foundation of, 17 ; Mu- 
 seum, 18; library, 19; captured 
 by Amrpu, 94. 
 
 Al-Gazzali, quotation from, 101 ; on 
 the soul, 127. 
 
 Algebra invented by the Saracens, 
 112,115,804. 
 
 Alhazen, 117. 
 
 Alliance, Evangelical, 852. 
 
 Almagest, 112. 
 
 Al-Mamun measures the earth, 109, 
 155; his libraries, 112; quotation 
 from, 115 ; denounced, 142 ; trans- 
 lates 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- 
 186. 
 
 Antipodes, St. Augustine on the, 64. 
 
 Apolionius, his mathematical works, 
 29; water-clock of, 31. 
 
 Aquinas, St/Thomas, resisto Averro- 
 ism, 150. 
 
 Arabs, their fatalism, 10*5; litera- 
 ture, 111 ; manufacture and airri- 
 culture. 117 ; inventions and dis- 
 coveries, 158. 
 
 Arbela, battle of, 6. 
 
 Archimedes, 28. 
 
 Argyll, Duke of, quotation from, 
 223. 
 
 Ar'mtarchus, 156. 
 
 Aristotelian philosophy, 22. 
 
 Arithmetic, Indian, 115. 
 
 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. 
 
 Avcrroism, 124, 13!; in Andalusia, 
 142 ; opposed by the Dominicans, 
 143; in Europe, 149; in Italy, 
 150, 210. 
 
 B. 
 
 Babylon, 10. 
 
 Babylonian astronomy, 18. 
 
 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 tho 
 
 stars, 172. 
 Bruno, 177 ; is murdered, 180. 
 
 368
 
 INDEX. 
 
 369 
 
 Buddhism, doctrine as to the soul, 
 122; nature of, 138. 
 
 C. 
 
 Caaba, 86. 
 
 Cajetan to Luther, 211. 
 
 Callistheues, death of, 16. 
 
 Calvin, 213; burns Servetus, 216; 
 on predestination, 252. 
 
 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. 
 
 Catholicity, the failure of, 285, 321. 
 
 Censorship, 293. 
 
 Chain of Destiny, 108. 
 
 Chakia Mouni, 138. 
 
 Chaldean Church established, 73; 
 observations, 13. 
 
 Chemistry, origin of, 112-116. 
 
 Chosroes* invades the Koman 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, Isidorlan, 271. 
 
 De Dominis, punishment of, 319. 
 
 De Gaina, 16ii, 294. 
 
 Decree, measure of a, 165, 236. 
 
 D'Llcano, 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-Keymond 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; 
 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. f 
 
 Electric telegraph, 311. 
 
 Emanation, doctrine of, 122, 358. 
 
 Encyclical Letter, 352. 
 
 Encvclopaedias, Arabian, 114. 
 
 England, population of, 262. 
 
 Ephesus, Council of, 72.
 
 INDKX. 
 
 Kjiiphonhm on mineralogy, 214. 
 
 Eratosthenes, his works, 28; meas- 
 ures tin' earth, 155. 
 
 Kriirena, his philosophy, l'J">. 
 
 Kucli.l, -J7. 
 
 Europe, its social condition, 264, 
 _', s, 270; at the Reformation, 
 -'''."> ; dual government in, iS'i ; 
 ]>opulation, L'ti4, 827; socto of, 
 
 M& 
 
 Evangelical Alliance, 352. 
 Everlasting gospel, 148, 206. 
 Evolution, doctrine of, 247. 
 Kymcric, 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, 
 
 ta 
 
 Ferncl measures the earth, 165. 
 
 Force, its indestructibility, 126. 
 
 Fratricelli, their opinion, 284. - 
 
 Fraunhofer 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 ; punish- 
 ment, 171 ; mechanics, 233. 
 
 Genesis the basis of Christianity, 
 57 ; Augustine's interpretation of, 
 59; criticism on, 219. 
 
 Geometry improved by the Sara- 
 cens, 112. 
 
 Government of the world by law, 
 229. 
 
 Granada, surrender of, 148. 
 
 Gratian's " Decretum," 211, 273. 
 
 Gravitation, universal, 235. 
 
 Guizot, his affirmation, 365. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hakem, his library, 142. 
 Halley's comet, 269, 320. 
 Hallucinations, religious cause of, 
 
 82. 
 Haroun - al - Kaschid organizes 
 
 schools, 111. 
 
 , description of, 70; the Mo- 
 
 Helena paganizes Christianity, 
 
 lleraelius, his expedition t<> 
 staiitinople, 75; war with Chos- 
 rocs, 76; farewell to Syria, HI. 
 
 HI-P) invent* the steam - engine, 
 82. 
 
 Herschel on double stars, 238; on 
 the nebular hypothesis, _'!". 
 
 Hilary of Poictiers, quotation from, 
 203. 
 
 Hipparchus, 29. 
 
 Holy Ghost, finger of the, 270. 
 
 Hoiiiuti the bookseller, 118. 
 
 lluber on insects, 129. 
 
 Huggins on nebula, 241. 
 
 Humboldt on effect of Nature, 12. 
 
 Hupfcld on the Pentateuch, 224. 
 
 Hyucinthe, Pere, his views, 851. 
 
 I ly patio, murder of, 55. 
 
 Ibn-Junis, 116, 159. 
 I IK-OS, religious ideas of the, 357. 
 Index Expurgatprius, 217. 
 Indian arithmetic, 115. 
 Individualism, 295. 
 Indulgences, 212. 
 Infallibility, 225. 
 Inoculation, 218. 
 
 Inquisition, 144, 207, 279 ; an urgent 
 necessity, 362. 
 
 Insurance, 317. 
 Intervention and law, 252. 
 Inventions, scientific, 311. 
 Isis, worship of, restored, 48, 71. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jerusalem surrenders to Alexander, 
 7; to Chosrocs, 76; to the Sara- 
 cens, 90, 91. 
 
 Jesuiabbos treats with Mohammed, 
 105. 
 
 Jesuits in Prussia, 840. 
 
 Jews, their conversion ceases, 105; 
 influence on the Saracens, 105; 
 their psychology, 124; in Spain, 
 144; banished from Spain, 147. 
 
 John the Grammarian, 105. 
 
 Jugglery. 319. 
 
 Justinian closes paean schools, 5<?< 
 Pandects of, -j]o; effect of his 
 Italian war.-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 371 
 
 K. 
 
 Kepler, laws of, 230 ; condemnation 
 of, 231 ; anticipates Newton, 232. 
 K haled, 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. 
 
 Latin Christianity, its efi'ect, 255; 
 language, use of, 280. 
 
 Law, government of the world by, 
 229. 
 
 Legates, their duty, 2T3. 
 
 Leibnitz, accusation against New- 
 ton, 218. 
 
 Library, Alexandrian, 19; disper- 
 sion of the, 54; destruction of, 
 103; of Cairo, 113; Andalusian, 
 113. 
 
 Llamaism, 357. 
 
 Llorente, on the Inquisition, 146. 
 
 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. 
 
 Maimonicles, 143. 
 
 Man, antiquity of, 195; develop- 
 ment of. 249. 
 
 Martel, Charles, overthrows the 
 Saracens, 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, 
 2fi2; 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; 
 Mohammedanism their offshoot, 
 85; influence oil the Saracens, 
 105. 
 
 Newton, Bishop, quotation from, 50. 
 
 Newton, Sir I., discovers the earth's 
 oblateness, 189; his u 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- 
 % 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.
 
 372 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Perscpolift, 11. 
 
 Persia, 3 ; campaigns in, 74 ; intel- 
 Irrtuul condition of, 14 ; religion 
 of, 15. 
 
 Peru, civilization of, 289 ; religious 
 ideas of the I noon, 857. 
 
 Philip the Fair, 290. 
 
 Philip of Macedon, 6. 
 
 Philo the Jew. 1-j::. 
 
 Philoponus, John, asks for the Al- 
 exandrian Library, 103. 
 
 Philosophy a state crime, 6Q. 
 
 Phlogiston, 802. 
 
 Phocas, mutiny of, 74. 
 
 Physicians, Jewish, 107. 
 
 Picard measures the earth, 165, 236L 
 
 Pigafetti, 164. 
 
 Pius IX., his objects, 343, 
 
 Platonism, 26. 
 
 Plotinus, 123. 
 
 Polygamy, practical effect of, 100. 
 
 Pope, the infallible, 225, 387 ; 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, 840. 
 
 Ptolemies, their policy, 82. 
 
 Ptolemy, the astronomer, 80; his 
 system, 157. 
 
 Ptolemy Soter, birth of, 16; King 
 of Egypt, 17 ; an author, 27. 
 
 Purgatory, 278. 
 
 Pusey, Dr., translation quoted, 62. 
 
 Pythagorean system, 156. 
 
 R. 
 
 Railways, 288. 
 
 Reformation, 212, 296, 298, 859. 
 
 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. 
 
 Koinanus, treason of, 88. 
 
 Rome, at the Reformation, 256; 
 
 political condition of, 259 ; social 
 condition of, 260; occupied by 
 the Italian army, 387. 
 Royal Society, 308. 
 
 Salerno, college of, 11.". 
 
 Saracens, the, capture Jerusalem, 
 90; Alexandria, 94; Carthage, 
 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, 
 810. 
 
 Servetus, his opinions and murder, 
 216, 363. 
 
 Shell-mounds, 198. 
 
 Sixtus V., his Bible, 359. 
 
 Societies, Italian scientific, 300. 
 
 8ophron.iu8 surrenders Jerusalem, 
 90. 
 
 Sosigenes rectifies the calendar, 31. 
 
 Soql, 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. 
 
 Tank invades Spain, 96. 
 
 Tavlor's theorem, 806. 
 
 Telegraph, electric, 311. 
 
 Telescope invented, 169. 
 
 Tertullian, his apology, 89-46. 
 
 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, 58.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 373 
 
 Trinity, St. Augustine on the, 61 ; 
 
 Plotinus on, 123. 
 Truth, criterion of, 201. 
 
 U. 
 Universe, government of the, 228. 
 
 V. 
 
 Valentinian persecutes Platonistsi 
 
 66. 
 Valerius procures the punishment 
 
 of Pelagius, 56. 
 Vanini, murder of, 216. 
 Variation of the compass, 162. 
 Vasco 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 01 God. 72; 
 
 milk of, 270. 
 
 W. 
 
 Waldenses, their declaration, 209. 
 William of Malmesbury 011 the 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, 266. 
 Writing, effects of, 137. 
 
 X. 
 
 Xeres, battle of, 96. 
 Xitnenes burns Arabic manuscripts, 
 104; perfidy of, 148. 
 
 Yermuck, battle of, 89. 
 
 Z. 
 
 Zeno, 23. 
 
 Zoroaster, his religion, 15. 
 Zosimus reverses the opinion of 
 Innocent I., 56. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 26
 
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