the best known members of the Royal College of Physicians and the
founder of Caius College, Cambridge, sketches {107} Linacre's
character (he had as a young man known him personally) in very
sympathetic vein. As Dr. Caius was one of the greatest Englishmen of
his time in the middle of the sixteenth century, his opinion must
carry great weight. It is to him that we owe the famous epitaph that
for long in old St. Paul's, London, was to be read on Linacre's
tombstone:--
"_Fraudes dolosque mire perosus, fidus amicis, omnibus ordinibus
juxta carus_. A stern hater of deceit and underhand ways, faithful
to his friends, equally dear to all classes,"
Surely this is a worthy tribute to the great physician, clergyman,
scholar, and philanthropist of the eve of the Reformation in England.
{108}
V.
FATHER KIRCHER, S.J.:
SCIENTIST, ORIENTALIST, AND COLLECTOR.
{109}
Oportet autem neque recentiores viros in his fraudare quae vel
repererunt vel recte secuti sunt; et tamen ea quae apud antiquiores
aliquos posita sunt auctoribus suis reddere.--CELSUS _de Medicina_.
{110}
[Illustration: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER]
{111}
V.
FATHER KIRCHER, S.J.: SCIENTIST, ORIENTALIST, AND COLLECTOR.
Except in the minds of the unconquerably intolerant, the Galileo
controversy has in recent years settled down to occupy something of
its proper place in the history of the supposed conflict between
religion and science. In touching the subject in the life of
Copernicus we suggested that it has come to be generally recognized,
as M. Bertrand, the perpetual Secretary of the Paris Academy of
Sciences, himself a distinguished mathematician and historian,
declares, that "the great lesson for those who would wish to oppose
reason with violence was clearly to be read in Galileo's story, and
the scandal of his condemnation was learned without any profound
sorrow to Galileo himself; and his long life, considered as a whole,
was the most serene and enviable in the history of science." Somehow,
notwithstanding the directness of this declaration, there is still
left in the minds of many an impression rather difficult to eradicate
that there was definite, persistent opposition to everything
associated with scientific progress among the churchmen of the time of
Galileo.
Perhaps no better answer to this unfortunate, because absolutely
untrue, impression could be in {112} formulated than is to be found in
a sketch of the career of Father Athanasius Kircher, the distinguished
Jesuit who for so many years occupied himself with nearly every branch
of science in Rome, under the fostering care of the Church. He had
been Professor of Physics, Mathematics, and Oriental Languages at
Wuerzburg, but was driven from there by the disturbances incident to
the Thirty Years' War, in 1631. He continued his scientific
investigation at Avignon. From here, within two years after Galileo's
trial in 1635, he was, through the influence of Cardinal Barberini,
summoned to Rome, where he devoted himself to mathematics at first,
and then to every branch of science, as well as the Oriental
languages, not only with the approval, but also with the most liberal
pecuniary aid from the ecclesiastical authorities of the papal court
and city.
Some idea of the breadth of Father Kircher's scientific sympathy and
his genius for scientific observation and discovery, which amounted
almost to intuition, may be gathered from the fact that to him we owe
the first definite statement of the germ theory of disease; and he
seems to have been the first to recognize the presence of what are now
called microbes. At the same time his works on magnetism contained not
only all the knowledge of his own time, but also some wonderful
suggestions as to the possibilities of the development of this
science. His studies with regard to light are almost as epochal as
those with regard to magnetism. Besides these, he {113} was the first
to find any clue to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and yet found time to
write a geographical work on Latium, the country surrounding Rome, and
to make collections for his museum which rendered it in its time the
best scientific collection in the world. It may very well indeed be
said that visitors to Rome with scientific tendencies found as much
that was suggestive in Father Kircher's museum--the "Kircherianum," as
it came to be called--as artists and sculptors and architects found in
the Vatican collections of the papal city.
All of this work was accomplished within the half century after
Galileo's trial, for Father Kircher died in 1680, at the age of
seventy-eight, having lived, as so many of the great scientists have
done, a long life in the midst of the most persistent activity.
Kircher, more than perhaps any other, can be said to be the founder of
modern natural science. Before any one else, in a practical way, he
realized the necessity for the collection of an immense amount of
data, if science was to be founded on the broad, firm foundation of
observed truth. The principle which had been announced by Bacon in the
"Novum Organon"--"to take all that comes rather than to choose, and to
heap up rather than to register"--was never carried out as fully as by
Father Kircher. As Edmund Gosse said in the June number of _Harper's_,
1904, "Bacon had started a great idea, but he had not carried it out.
He is not the founder, he is the prophet {114} of modern physical
science. To be in direct touch with nature, to adventure in the
unexplored fields of knowledge, and to do this by carrying out an
endless course of slow and sure experiments, this was the counsel of
the 'Novum Organon.'" Bacon died in 1626, and scarcely more than a
decade had passed before Kircher was carrying out the work thus
outlined by the English philosopher in a way that was surprisingly
successful, even looked at from the standpoint of our modern science.
Needless to say, however, it was not because of Bacon's suggestion
that he did so, for it is more than doubtful whether he knew of
Bacon's writings until long after the lines of his life-work had been
traced by his own inquiring spirit. The fulness of time had come. The
inductive philosophy was in the air. Bacon's formulae, which the
English philosopher never practically applied, and Father Kircher's
assiduous collection of data, were but expressions of the spirit of
the times. How faithfully the work of the first modern inductive
scientist was accomplished we shall see.
It may be easily imagined that a certain interest in Father Kircher,
apart from his scientific attainments and the desire to show how much
and how successful was the attention given to natural science by
churchmen about the time of the Galileo controversy, might influence
this judgment of the distinguished Jesuit's scientific accomplishments.
With regard to his discoveries in medicine especially, and above all
his {115} announcement of the microbic origin of contagious disease,
it may be thought that this was a mere chance expression and not at
all the result of serious scientific conclusions. Tyndall, however,
the distinguished English physicist, would not be the one to give
credit for scientific discoveries, and to a clergyman in a distant
century, unless there was definite evidence of the discovery. It is
not generally known that to the great English physicist we owe the
almost absolute demonstration of the impossibility of spontaneous
generation, together with a series of studies showing the existence
everywhere in the atmosphere of minute forms of life to which
fermentative changes and also the infectious diseases--though at that
time this was only a probability--are to be attributed. When Tyndall
was reviewing, in the midst of the controversy over spontaneous
generation, the question of the microbic origin of disease, he said:
"Side by side with many other theories has run the germ theory of
epidemic disease. The notion was expressed by Kircher and favored by
Linnaeus, that epidemic diseases may be due to germs which enter the
body and produce disturbance by the development within the body of
parasitic forms of life."
How much attention Father Kircher's book on the pest or plague, in
which his theory of the micro-organismal origin of disease is put
forward, attracted from the medical profession can be understood from
the fact that it was submitted to three of the most distinguished
physicians in {116} Rome before being printed, and that their
testimony to its value as a contribution to medicine prefaced the
first edition. They are not sparing in their praise of it. Dr. Joseph
Benedict Sinibaldus, who was the Professor of the Practice of Medicine
in the Roman University at the time, says that "Father Kircher's book
not only contains an excellent resume of all that is known about the
pest or plague, but also as many valuable hints and suggestions on the
origin and spread of the disease, which had never before been made."
He considers it a very wonderful thing that a non-medical man should
have been able to place himself so thoroughly in touch with the
present state of medicine in respect to this disease and then point
out the conditions of future progress.
Dr. Paul Zachias, who was a distinguished Roman physician of the time,
said that he had long known Father Kircher as an eminent writer on
other subjects, but that after reading his book on the pest he must
consider him also distinguished in medical writing. He says: "While he
has set his hand at other's harvests, he has done it with so much
wisdom and prudence as to win the admiration of the harvesters already
in the field." He adds that there can be no doubt that it would be a
source of profit for medical men to read this little book and that it
will undoubtedly prove beneficial to future generations. Testimony of
another kind to the value of Father Kircher's book is to be found in
the fact {117} that within a half-year after its publication in Latin
it appeared in several other languages. It is too much the custom of
these modern times to consider that scientific progress in the
centuries before our own and its immediate predecessor was likely to
attract little attention for many years, and was especially slow to
make its way into foreign countries. Anything, however, of real
importance in science took but a very short time to travel from one
country to another in Europe in the seventeenth century, and the fact
that scientific men generally used Latin as a common language made the
spread of discoveries and speculations much easier even than at the
present time. Our increased means of communication have really only
served to allow sensational announcements of a progress in
science--which is usually no progress at all--to be spread quite as
effectually in modern times as were real advances in the older days.
There is no good account of Father Kircher's life available in
English, and it has seemed only proper that the more important at
least of the details of the life of the man who thus anticipated the
beginnings of modern bacteriology and of the relations of
micro-organisms to disease, should not be left in obscurity. His life
history is all the more interesting and important because it
illustrates the interest of the churchmen of the time, and especially
of the Roman ecclesiastical authorities, in all forms of science; for
Father Kircher is undoubtedly one of the greatest scholars of {118}
history and one of the scientific geniuses in whose works can be
found, as the result of some wonderful principles of intuition
incomprehensible to the slower intellectual operations of ordinary
men, anticipations of many of the discoveries of the after-time. There
is scarcely a modern science he did not touch upon, and nothing that
he touched did he fail to illuminate. His magnificent collections in
the museum of the Roman College demonstrate very well his extremely
wide interests in all scientific matters.
The history of Father Kircher's career furnishes perhaps the best
possible refutation of the oft-repeated slander that Jesuit education
was narrow and was so founded upon and rooted in authority that
original research and investigation, in scientific matters
particularly, were impossible, and that it utterly failed to encourage
new discoveries of any kind. As a matter of fact, Kircher was not only
not hampered in his work by his superiors or by the ecclesiastical
authorities, but the respect in which he was held at Rome enabled him
to use the influence of the Church and of great churchmen all over the
world, with the best possible effect, for the assembling at the Roman
College of objects of the most various kinds, illustrating especially
the modern sciences of archeology, ethnology, and paleontology,
besides Egyptian and Assyrian history.
Athanasius Kircher was born 2 May, 1602, at Geisa, near Fulda, in
South Germany. He was educated at the Jesuit College of Fulda, and at
{119} the early age of sixteen, having completed his college course,
entered the Jesuit novitiate at Mainz. After his novitiate he
continued his philosophical and classical studies at Paderborn and
completed his years of scholastic teaching in various cities of South
Germany--Munster, Cologne, and Coblenz--finally finishing his
education by theological studies at Cologne and Mainz.
Toward the end of the third decade of the seventeenth century he
became Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at Wuerzburg. Here his
interest in Oriental languages began, and he established a special
course in this subject at the University of Wuerzburg. During the
Thirty Years' War, however, the invasion of Germany very seriously
disturbed university work, and finally in 1631 Father Kircher was sent
by his superiors to Avignon in South France, where he continued his
teaching some four years, attracting no little attention by his wide
interest in many sciences and by various scientific works that showed
him to be a man of very broad genius.
In 1635, through the influence of Cardinal Barberini, he was summoned
to Rome, where he became Professor of Mathematics and Oriental
Languages in the famous Roman College of the Jesuits, which was
considered at that time one of the greatest educational institutions
in the world. His interest in science, however, was not lessened by
teaching duties that would apparently have demanded all his time; and,
as we shall see, he continued to issue books on the most diverse {120}
scientific subjects, most of them illustrated by absolutely new
experimental observations and all of them attracting widespread
attention.
Father Kircher began his career as a writer on science at the early
age of twenty-seven, when he issued his first work on magnetism. The
title of this volume, "Ars Magnesia tum Theorematice tum Problematice
Proposita," shows that the subject was not treated entirely from a
speculative standpoint. Indeed, in the preface he states that he hopes
that the principal value of the book will be found in the fact that
the knowledge of magnetism is presented by a new method, with special
demonstrations, and that the conclusions are confirmed by various
practical uses and long-continued experience with magnets of various
kinds.
Although it may be a source of great surprise, Father Kircher's genius
was essentially experimental. He has been spoken of not infrequently
as a man who collected the scientific information of his time in such
a way as to display, as says the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, "a wide
and varied learning, but that he was a man singularly devoid of
judgment and critical discernment." He was in some respects the direct
opposite of the opinion thus expressed, since his learning was always
of a practical character, and there are very few subjects in this
writing which he has not himself illustrated by means of new and
ingenious experiments.
Perhaps the best possible proof of this is to be {121} found in the
fact that his second scientific work was on the construction of
sun-dials, and that one of the discoveries he himself considered most
valuable was the invention of a calculating machine, as well as of a
complicated arrangement for illustrating the positions of the stars in
the heavens. He constructed, moreover, a large burning-glass in order
to demonstrate the possibility of the story told of Archimedes, that
he had succeeded in burning the enemy's ships in the harbor at
Syracuse by means of a large lens.
But Father Kircher's surest claim to being a practical genius is to be
found in his invention of the magic lantern. It was another Jesuit,
Aquilonius, in his work on optics, issued in 1613, who had first
sought to explain how the two pictures presented to the two eyes are
fused into one, and it was in a practical demonstration of this by
means of lenses that Kircher hit upon the invention of the projecting
stereoscope.
After his call to Rome our subject continued his work on magnetism,
and in 1641 issued a further treatise on the subject called "Magnes"
or "De Arte Magnetica." While he continued to teach Oriental languages
and issued in 1644 a book with the title "Lingua AEgyptiaca
Restituta," he also continued to apply himself especially to the
development of physical science. Accordingly in 1645 there appeared
his volume "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae." This was a treatise on light,
illustrated, as was his treatise on magnetism, by many original
experiments and demonstrations.
{122}
During the five years until 1650 the department of acoustics came
under his consideration, so that in that year we have from his pen a
treatise called "Musurgia Universalis," with the subtitle, "The Art of
Harmony and Discord; a treatise on the whole doctrine of sound with
the philosophy of music treated from the standpoint of practical as
well as theoretic science." During the next five years astronomy was
his special hobby, and the result was in 1656 a treatise on astronomy
called "Iter Celeste." This contained a description of the earth and
the heavens and discussed the nature of the fixed and moving stars,
with various considerations as to the composition and structure of
these bodies. A second volume on this subject appeared in 1660.
The variety of Father Kircher's interests in science was not yet
exhausted, however. Five years after the completion of his two volumes
on astronomy there came one on "Mundus Subterraneus." This treated of
the modern subjects of geology, metallurgy, and mineralogy, as well as
the chemistry of minerals. It also contained a treatise on animals
that live under the ground, and on insects. This was considered one of
the author's greatest books, and the whole of it was translated into
French, whilst abstracts from it, especially the chapters on poisons,
appeared in most of the other languages of Europe. Part of it was
translated even into English, though seventeenth-century Englishmen
were loath to draw their inspiration from Jesuit writers.
{123}
Jesuits were, however, at this time generally acknowledged on the
Continent to be leaders in every department of thought, sympathetic
coadjutors in every step in scientific progress. Strange as it may
appear to those who will not understand the Jesuit spirit of love for
learning, two of the most distinguished scientists whose names are
immortal in the history of physical sciences in different departments
during this century, Kepler and Harvey, were on intimate terms of
friendship with the Jesuits of Germany. Harvey, on the occasion of a
visit to the Continent, stopped for a prolonged visit with the Jesuits
at Cologne, so that some of his English friends joked him about the
possibility of his making converts of the Jesuits. These witticisms,
however, did not seem to distract Harvey very much, for he returned on
a subsequent occasion to spend some further days with his Jesuit
scientific friends along the Rhine.
In the meantime Father Kircher was issuing notable books on his always
favorite subject of the Oriental languages. In 1650 there appeared
"Obeliscus Pamphilius," containing an explanation of the hieroglyphics
to be found on the obelisk which by the order of Innocent X, a member
of the Pamfili family, was placed in the Piazza Navona by Bernini.
This is no mere pamphlet, as might be thought, but a book of 560
pages. In 1652 there appeared "OEdipus AEgyptiacus," that is, the
revealer of the sphinx-like riddle of the Egyptian ancient languages.
In 1653 a second volume of this appeared, and in 1655 a third {124}
volume. It was considered so important that it was translated into
Russian and other Slav languages, besides several other European
languages. His book, "Lingua AEgyptiaca Restituta," which appeared in
1644, when Kircher was forty-two years of age, is considered to be of
value yet in the study of Oriental languages, and was dedicated to the
patron, Emperor Ferdinand III, whose liberality made its publication
possible.
It is often a subject for conjecture just how science was studied and
taught in centuries before the nineteenth, and just what text-books
were employed. A little familiarity with Father Kircher's
publications, however, will show that there was plenty of very
suitable material for text-books to be found in his works. Under his
own direction, what at the present time would be called a text-book of
physics, but which at that time was called "Physiologia
Experimentalis," was issued, containing all the experimental and
demonstrative parts of his various books on chemistry, physics, music,
magnetism, and mechanics, as well as acoustics and optics. This formed
the groundwork of most text-books of science for a full century
afterwards. Indeed, until the beginning of the distinctly modern
science of chemistry with the discoveries of Priestley and Lavoisier,
there was to be little added of serious import in science.
Perhaps the most commendable feature of Father Kircher's books is the
fact that he himself seems never to have considered that he had {125}
exhausted a subject. The first work he published was on magnetism.
Some twelve years later he returned to the subject, and wrote a more
extensive work, containing many improvements over the first volume.
The same thing is true of his studies in sound. In 1650, when not
quite fifty years of age, he issued his "Musurgia Universalis," a
sub-title of which stated that it contains the whole doctrine of sound
and the practical and theoretical philosophy of music. A little over
twenty years later, however, he published the "Phonurgia Nova," the
sub-title of which showed that it was mainly concerned with the
experimental demonstration of various truths in acoustics and with the
development of the doctrine he had originally stated in the
"Musurgia."
It is no wonder that his contemporaries spoke of him as the _Doctor
centum artium_--the teacher of a hundred arts--for there was
practically no branch of scientific knowledge in his time in which he
was not expert. Scientific visitors to Rome always considered it one
of the privileges of their stay in the papal city to have the
opportunity to meet Father Kircher, and it was thought a very great
honor to be shown through his museum by himself.
Of course, it is difficult for present-day scientists to imagine a man
exhausting the whole round of science in this way. Many who have read
but little more than the titles of Father Kircher's many books are
accordingly prone to speak of him as a mine of information, but
without any {126} proper critical judgment. He has succeeded,
according to them, in heaping together an immense amount of
information, but it is of the most disparate value. There is no doubt
that he took account of many things in science that are manifestly
absurd. Astrology, for instance, had not, in his time, gone out of
fashion entirely, and he refers many events in men's lives to the
influence of the stars. He even made rules for astrological
predictions, and his astronomical machine for exhibiting the motions
of the stars was also meant to be helpful in the construction of
astrological tables. It must not be forgotten, however, that in his
time the best astronomers, like Tycho Brahe and even Kepler, had not
entirely given up the idea of the influence of the stars over man's
destiny.