the past, and whatever its prospective vogue in the near future, it
is to be set down without qualification or hesitation as a delusion
and a snare. To suppose that the heavenly bodies have an influence
on human conduct is in its origin a pagan error, closely allied with
the pagan myth that the sun, moon and stars are presided over by as
many separate deities. Only thus could have originated the delusion
that Jupiter and Venus would procure a blessed destiny, and Mars and
Saturn a troubled one, for the children born at the time of their
rising.
Nor can the cult be justified by an array of the names of those who
have been its votaries. It is true that many astronomers in the
{489} past, including the great Kepler himself, have practised the
astrological art, casting horoscopes for their clients. But in most
cases it would be found, at least in the modern period, that these
scientists merely yielded through tolerance to the weakness of their
age. In true astronomy there is no place whatever for astrology.
Besides being groundless the practice is to be condemned for its
perilous moral tendencies. Distracting the soul from the worship of
the spiritual God, who alone governs the universe, it substitutes
for His action that of mere material objects, stars and planets,
which it thus elevates to the rank of lesser gods or demons.
Pretending to forecast from birth what each man's course in life
shall be, it robs the will of its proper share in moulding human
conduct.
_The Christian Fathers_.--An interesting testimony to the former
prevalence of this erroneous belief is found in one of Sir Walter
Scott's novels, "Guy Mannering," whose whole plot turns upon the
fulfilment of an astrological prediction. Reading the history at
hand the novelist had learned what complete sway the cult had
formerly exercised, almost down to the time of his writing. It would
have interested the celebrated author to know that there was,
however, one long period in which astrology was absolutely and
effectually excluded from Christian Europe. For over a thousand
years Christendom remained free from this blight, thanks to the
teachings of the Fathers of the Church.
In discussing the relations of the Fathers towards the astral
science, we have already shown how they purged it of some of its
grossest errors. But their principal service to the science remains
now to be told. For amongst all the vagaries of the science of the
heavens, astrology is both in theory and in practice the most
deplorable. That the Fathers placed the weight of their great
authority in the scale against this superstition, is one of the most
praiseworthy of their achievements.
_First Efforts at Reform_.--At the time that the Fathers began to
write, in the century just following the labors of the Apostles,
astrology formed everywhere an integral part of the science of
astronomy. It was taught in all the schools, Chaldean, Jewish,
Grecian and Roman. Almost from the beginning the defenders of the
Christian faith proceeded to attack this pernicious error, realizing
how inimical it was to the spread of truth which Christ had come to
impart. Already in his address to the Greeks, Tatian was heard
denouncing the absurdities of Grecian astronomy and astrology. This
was in the middle of the second century, just at the close of what
is called the Apostolic Period.
A little later, Tertullian, the famed apologist of the then
flourishing African Church, placed himself on record as the
uncompromising enemy of astrology. With his usual vehemence of
language he declared that "of astrologers there should be no
speaking even" among Christians; and went to the length of saying
that "he cannot hope for heaven whose finger or wand abuses the
heavens." These and many similar utterances may be found in his
Treatise on Idolatry.
_Respect for True Astrology_.--With this denunciation of magic and
idolatry there went hand in hand, however, a genuine respect {490}
for the proper science of the heavens. Contemporary with Tertullian,
and like him one of the great Christian masters of the period, was
Clement Alexandria. To the Catholic astronomer of to-day it is
gratifying to find this Father of the Egyptian Church giving
generous testimony to the worth of astronomical science. With just
discrimination he praises astronomy as "leading the soul nearer to
the creative power, as helpful to navigation and husbandry, and as
making the soul in the highest degree observant, capable of
perceiving the true and detecting the false."
Another contemporary, Hippolytus, was indeed unsparing in his
denunciation of astrology. In a treatise of eleven quarto pages,
contained in his "Refutation of All Heresies," he riddled with
merciless logic the vain pretensions of the Greek astrologers. But
he showed that he had no quarrel with a well ordered study of the
heavens, by giving liberal praise to Ptolemy, the ablest of the
astronomers.
_A Universal Teaching_.--In far distant Syria, then a choice realm
in the Church's patrimony, there was at the beginning of the third
century another school of Christian philosophers who joined with
their brethren in West and East in waging war on the same dread
enemy. A Syrian work, called the Book of the Astrologers, has two
quarto pages of excellent quality recounting and scoring the
absurdities of current astrological practices. It is so like
Hippolytus' work that one seems an echo of the other.
Perhaps the most interesting of all these concordant denunciations
is that found in the "Recognitions of Clement," a patristic writing
probably of the third century. Here the treatises on astrology run
to full ten chapters, a sign that the author had abundant knowledge
of the subject. In this work astrology is refuted particularly from
the moral point of view. It is convicted of the double charge of
being fatalistic in its tendency and subversive of all morality.
"Men's conduct," says the author's thesis, "is due to their own free
will and not to the configuration of the planets."
_Golden Age of Patristic Literature_.--So ran on in perfect unity
and harmony the steady flow of patristic teaching. It reached its
climax, as we should expect to find, in the heroic writers of the
fourth century, the golden era of patrology. Lactantius, the
Christian Cicero, re-echoed the voices of the past in pronouncing
astrology the work of demons. An Augustine, the greatest of the
Fathers, confirmed the decision of his predecessors by protesting
against the amalgamation of astrology with the true science of
nature.
So effectual indeed was the opposition to astrology of the earlier
Christian writers, confirmed by the masters of the post-Nicene
period, that the practice came to be regarded by all the faithful as
a superstition and a danger, and continued to be so esteemed down to
the time of the Crusades. For a full millennium, Christian Europe
midst all its vicissitudes was spared the absurdities of
astrological belief and practice, thanks to the patristic school of
writers.
_A Surprising Omission_.--We have thought it well to bring to light
these none too well-known facts regarding one important part of the
astronomical teachings of the Fathers. How they could have {491}
escaped the attention of Andrew D. White, or how he could have
failed to find place for them in his voluminous work, it is
difficult to understand.
His book bristles with accounts of superstitions, always telling
against the theologians, and in favor of the scientists. But
astrology is absent even from the index of his work. Had he allotted
it a chapter, his numerous readers would have learned that one great
school of theological writers, enduring for a thousand years, did
wage war on a certain sort of science, to wit, the pseudo-science of
astrology.
{492}
APPENDIX VIII.
SCIENCE IN AMERICA.
For Americans it is very probable that the chapter in the history of
science which will demonstrate most clearly that there was not only no
opposition on the part of the Popes or the Church authorities to the
teachings of science or its development, but on the contrary
encouragement and patronage, in spite of our English traditions to the
contrary, is that which gives even very briefly the story of the
evolution of science and its teaching on the American continent.
Notwithstanding the very prevalent impression, indeed we might say the
practically universal persuasion, that there was nothing worth while
talking about in any department of education in America before the
nineteenth century, except what little there was in the English
colonies, and while it is confidently assumed that above all science
received no attention from our Southern neighbors, Spanish America not
only surpassed English America in education, but far outdistanced
English America in what was accomplished for scientific research and
the evolution of the knowledge of a large number of scientific
subjects in a great many ways.
Even those among us who thought themselves well read in American
history have, as a rule, known almost nothing of this until
comparatively recent years. Professor Bourne of Yale, whose untimely
death deprived the United States of a distinguished historical
scholar, was the first to point out emphatically how far ahead of the
English were the Spanish colonies in every mode of education, but
particularly in the cultivation of science. In many places Prescott
had more than hinted at this, but the materials for the whole story
were not available until our time.
Some of Bourne's paragraphs represent a severe arraignment of the
ignorance that has characterized so much of our supposed knowledge of
the Spanish Americans and their culture in the past. After reading
them it is easy to realize the truth of the expression that another
distinguished university man from the United States made use of not
long ago, after having visited the South American countries. He
declared that it was time for North Americans to wake up and
_discover_ South America. Literally we have known almost nothing about
it, indeed in a certain sense we have known much less than nothing,
since we were quite sure that we knew {493} practically all there was
to know while failing to know much that as Americans we ought to have
known.
Two Spanish-American universities were founded under Papal charters
almost a full century before Harvard as our first small college in
English America began its career. Harvard was not to be a university
in any proper sense of the term for a full century and a half after
its foundation, while the universities of Mexico and Peru, largely
under the influence of the ecclesiastical authorities and owing nearly
everything to Church patronage under the Spanish Crown, had all the
essential university faculties before the close of the sixteenth
century. In spite of the predominant Church influence, which, if we
were to credit former English traditions, must have been fatal to the
evolution of science, Professor Bourne's researches show that in _the
sixteenth century_ the Spanish-American universities were already
doing such scientific work as the students in English America became
interested in only during the _nineteenth century_. Obviously I prefer
to quote Professor Bourne's own words for such startling assertions.
He said in his chapter on "The Transmission of Culture" in his volume
in The American Nation Series, "Spain in America":
"Not all the institutions of learning founded in Mexico in the
_sixteenth century_ can be enumerated here, but it is not too much
to say that in number, range of studies and standard of attainments
by the officers _they surpassed anything existing in English America
until the nineteenth century_. Mexican scholars made distinguished
achievements in some branches of science, particularly medicine and
surgery, but pre-eminently linguistics, history and anthropology.
Dictionaries and grammars of the native languages and histories of
the Mexican institutions are an imposing proof of their scholarly
devotion and intellectual activity. Conspicuous are Toribio de
Motolinia's '_Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,_' Duran's
'_Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana_' but most important of all
Sahagun's great work on Mexican life and religion."
Indeed, it is with regard to science in various forms that one finds
the most surprising contributions from these old-time scholars. While
the English in America were paying practically no attention to
science, the Spaniards were deeply interested in it. Dr. Chanca, a
physician who had been for several years physician-in-ordinary to the
King and Queen (Ferdinand and Isabella) and was looked upon as one of
the leaders of his profession in Spain, was appointed by the Crown to
accompany Columbus on his second expedition, partly for the sake of
the health of those who went, but also in order to make scientific
notes on American subjects. The report {494} of this scientific
excursion is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the state of
science of the time and furnishes precious information with regard to
Indian medicine, Indian customs, Spanish knowledge of and interest in
botany and metallurgy, as well as certain phases of zoology and other
scientific departments, which serves to show how wide was the training
in science of this Spanish physician of over four hundred years ago.
Dr. Chanca's epistle was republished as one of the Miscellaneous
Publications of the Smithsonian Institution and a series of articles
with regard to him from the pen of Dr. Fernandez de Ybarra has
appeared in medical and other journals of the United States. Chanca is
the author of a medical work on the Treatment of Pleurisy, published
after his return in 1506, and a commentary on Arnold of Villanova's
_De conservanda juventute et retardanda senectute_, "The Conservation
of Youth and the Retardation of Old Age." Such a work is all the more
interesting at this time because we know of De Soto's search for a
"Fountain of Youth" in Florida and the popular belief in the
existence of some such fabled miracle-worker for the old. Indeed most
people seem inclined to think that such an idea represented very
characteristically the naive medical science of the time. The Fountain
of Youth was only like the many wonderful remedies--nearly always they
are announced to have come from long distances--that are supposed to
renew youthful vigor and which are sold so plentifully in our time. To
take such popular notions as an index of the medical science of either
that time or our own is quite absurd. The genuine medical science of
this period is, as I have shown in my volume "The Century of
Columbus," a never-ending source of surprise by its anticipation of
many ideas that are usually supposed to be much later in origin and
not a few of which are fondly supposed to be original discoveries of
our time.
Evidently Spanish interest in science was broad and deep and this is
confirmed by the story of the medical schools in connection with these
Spanish-American universities which is of special significance. My own
medical _alma mater_, the University of Pennsylvania, whose medical
school was the first in the United States, erected a tablet some years
ago in which it was at least hinted that this was the oldest medical
school in America. A few years later, on the erection of a second
tablet to the earliest medical faculty, additional knowledge having
come in the meantime, the inscription on this was worded so as to
refer to the first school of medicine in North America.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL, MEXICO (ANOTHER VIEW) This hospital, as was
noted in the caption to the other view of it (opp. page 272), is the
oldest foundation of this kind in America (1524) and is still in
existence supported by the original endowment. The second oldest
hospital in America was that of Santa Fe (in Mexico) founded in 1531
by a remarkable man who became Bishop of Michoacan, and who supported
it at his own expense, besides forming at Santa Fe a community of
thirty thousand Indians who lived like monks, practising hospitality
and all the works of charity (_A History of Nursing, Nutting and
Dock, New York_).]
{495}
The medical school of the University of Lima, founded before the end
of the sixteenth century, had meanwhile been discovered. Subsequently
the medical school of the University of Mexico came to be known and
the next tablet will have to be worded with due reference to that. The
first chair in medicine was founded at the University of Mexico about
1580, almost two centuries before our first formal academic medical
teaching in the United States was organized about 1770. During the
course of a generation altogether seven chairs in medicine were
founded in Mexico, including a chair of anatomy and surgery, a special
chair of dissection, a chair of therapeutics and one of prognostics.
The medical school of the University of Lima was organized about the
same time.
With our rather complacent modern method of belittling the past and
our disinclination to admit that the Spaniards were doing anything in
science that the English Americans were not to think of for nearly two
centuries, it would be easy to conclude that the teaching at these
medical schools must have been altogether trivial and of no
significance. When it is learned that most of the teaching was founded
on Hippocrates and Galen some of our generation might think it
hopelessly backward, but it would be well for those who think so, to
be reminded that during the century following the sixteenth, Sydenham
in England, and Boerhaave in Holland, the most distinguished medical
men of their time who are deservedly looked up to with great reverence
by most of the distinguished teachers of ours, were both of them
pleading for a return to the broad, sane views and insistence on
clinical observation of Hippocrates and Galen. As a matter of fact the
medical schools of both the University of Mexico and of Lima were
furnishing quite as good a medical training as the average medical
school of Europe at that time. They were modelled closely after the
Spanish universities and were in intimate relations with them, even
exchanging professors and students, and at the middle of the
seventeenth century at least maintaining excellent standards.
From the very beginning, then, the Spanish Americans made a definite
attempt to develop scientific knowledge in America. In medicine, in
botany, in pharmacology, as well as in geography, philology,
ethnology, and anthropology, there are magnificent contributions made
by Spanish scholars. Many a Spanish university student and teacher
spent time in this country investigating the properties of plants,
especially their relations to medicine, and laying precious
foundations in botany. Besides there were university scholars at home
in Spain taking advantage of these field investigations to {496}
compile works of serious character which are well known by those who
are familiar with the history of botany and pharmacology. What the
Spaniards were doing in America the Portuguese were doing in India and
South Africa, and a very serious attempt was made during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries to bring to Europe every possible material,
plant or mineral, that might be of value for human health and at the
same time to increase the bounds of human knowledge by careful
investigation.
Nor was this thoroughly scientific and practical education confined
only to the upper classes nor exclusively to those of Spanish birth
and blood. Even "the wild Indians," as Bourne tells us, "were
successfully gathered together in a village called a Mission where,
under the increasing supervision of the friars, they were taught the
elements of letters and trained to peaceful, industrious and religious
lives. In fact every mission was an industrial school, where the
simple arts were taught by the friars, themselves in origin plain
Spanish peasants." He continues, "Spanish America, from California and
Texas, to Paraguay and Chili, was fringed with such establishments,
the outposts of civilization, where many thousands of Indians went
through a schooling which ended only with their lives." Bourne goes so
far as to say "every town, Indian as well, as Spanish, was by law
required to have its church, hospital, and school for teaching Indian
children Spanish and the elements of religion." The Spaniards were
actually anticipating for the young Indians some of the modes of
vocational education, interest in which is only just being aroused
among us at the present time.
No wonder that the work of conversion in Mexico followed hard upon the
heels of conquest, and to quote Bourne's words farther, "The Aztec
priesthood relaxed its bonds and the masses were relieved from the
earlier burdens of the faith. In the old world the progress from
actual to vicarious sacrifice for sin had been slow and painful
through the ages; in the new it was accomplished in but a single
generation. The old religion had inculcated a relatively high
morality, but its dreadful rites overhung the present life like a
black cloud and for the future it offered little consolation." ..."The
work of the Church was rapidly adapted to the new field of labor." The
triumph of the Church's influence was the preservation of the natives
and their gradual uplift. This was a slow process and required almost
divine patience, but it was infinitely better than the method by which
the English-speaking colonies, in a chapter of history that is almost
untellable in its {497} completeness, brought the natives of the
country that they had invaded to ruin and practically obliteration.
This experiment in applied sociology so successfully accomplished must
be placed to the credit of the Spaniards also, and it stands out with
all the more interest by contrast with English neglect of duty.
While seeing so clearly all that was accomplished in Mexico under the
influence of the Church for education and social progress and
scientific teaching and training in the arts and crafts and trades,
Professor Bourne cannot quite bring himself to condemn entirely the
almost complete failure that characterized all the relations of the
English-speaking peoples to the natives here in America and he even
seems to find some justification for their harsh treatment of the
Indians. I think that our point of view generally has changed a great
deal in this matter even in the last ten or fifteen years since we
have come to recognize our social obligations more clearly and, above
all, have come to appreciate better what is meant by "the white man's
burden" in his relations to the dark-skinned peoples who are lower in
the scale of civilization than we are. The Civil War did much to
correct American notions on this point, but our attention to problems
in the Philippines has done even more. I shall leave Professor
Bourne's paragraph to speak for itself and each reader to say for
himself whether the English method of dealing with the Indian is
justified by comparison with the ruthless processes of nature as
Professor Bourne would hint.
"Far different was the advancing frontier in English America with
its clean sweep, its clash of elemental human forces. Our own method
prepared a home for a more advanced civilization and a less variously
mixed population and its present fruits seem to justify it as the
ruthless processes of nature are justified; but a comparison of the
two systems does not warrant self-righteousness on the part of the
English in America."
Indeed we might well say far from it, for the almost literal
obliteration of the Indian in North America as of the natives in
Australia and New Zealand, only so much more complete there,
represents ever to be regretted blots on the history of civilization
for which there can be no possible justification.