Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM
By Andrew Dickson White
Two Volumes Combined
To the Memory of
EZRA CORNELL
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK.
Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we
Breathe cheaply in the common air.--LOWELL
Dicipulus est prioris posterior dies.--PUBLIUS SYRUS
Truth is the daughter of Time.--BACON
The Truth shall make you free.--ST. JOHN, viii, 32.
INTRODUCTION
My book is ready for the printer, and as I begin this preface my eye
lights upon the crowd of Russian peasants at work on the Neva under my
windows. With pick and shovel they are letting the rays of the April sun
into the great ice barrier which binds together the modern quays and the
old granite fortress where lie the bones of the Romanoff Czars.
This barrier is already weakened; it is widely decayed, in many places
thin, and everywhere treacherous; but it is, as a whole, so broad, so
crystallized about old boulders, so imbedded in shallows, so wedged into
crannies on either shore, that it is a great danger. The waters from
thousands of swollen streamlets above are pressing behind it; wreckage
and refuse are piling up against it; every one knows that it must yield.
But there is danger that it may resist the pressure too long and break
suddenly, wrenching even the granite quays from their foundations,
bringing desolation to a vast population, and leaving, after the
subsidence of the flood, a widespread residue of slime, a fertile
breeding-bed for the germs of disease.
But the patient mujiks are doing the right thing. The barrier, exposed
more and more to the warmth of spring by the scores of channels they are
making, will break away gradually, and the river will flow on beneficent
and beautiful.
My work in this book is like that of the Russian mujik on the Neva. I
simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
mediaeval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among
us--a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the
whole normal evolution of society.
For behind this barrier also the flood is rapidly rising--the flood
of increased knowledge and new thought; and this barrier also, though
honeycombed and in many places thin, creates a danger--danger of a
sudden breaking away, distressing and calamitous, sweeping before it not
only out worn creeds and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles
and ideals, and even wrenching out most precious religious and moral
foundations of the whole social and political fabric.
My hope is to aid--even if it be but a little--in the gradual and
healthful dissolving away of this mass of unreason, that the stream of
"religion pure and undefiled" may flow on broad and clear, a blessing to
humanity.
And now a few words regarding the evolution of this book.
It is something over a quarter of a century since I labored with Ezra
Cornell in founding the university which bears his honored name.
Our purpose was to establish in the State of New York an institution for
advanced instruction and research, in which science, pure and applied,
should have an equal place with literature; in which the study of
literature, ancient and modern, should be emancipated as much as
possible from pedantry; and which should be free from various useless
trammels and vicious methods which at that period hampered many, if not
most, of the American universities and colleges.
We had especially determined that the institution should be under the
control of no political party and of no single religious sect, and with
Mr. Cornell's approval I embodied stringent provisions to this effect in
the charter.
It had certainly never entered into the mind of either of us that in all
this we were doing anything irreligious or unchristian. Mr. Cornell
was reared a member of the Society of Friends; he had from his fortune
liberally aided every form of Christian effort which he found going on
about him, and among the permanent trustees of the public library
which he had already founded, he had named all the clergymen of
the town--Catholic and Protestant. As for myself, I had been bred a
churchman, had recently been elected a trustee of one church college,
and a professor in another; those nearest and dearest to me were
devoutly religious; and, if I may be allowed to speak of a matter so
personal to my self, my most cherished friendships were among deeply
religious men and women, and my greatest sources of enjoyment were
ecclesiastical architecture, religious music, and the more devout forms
of poetry. So, far from wishing to injure Christianity, we both hoped to
promote it; but we did not confound religion with sectarianism, and we
saw in the sectarian character of American colleges and universities as
a whole, a reason for the poverty of the advanced instruction then given
in so many of them.
It required no great acuteness to see that a system of control which, in
selecting a Professor of Mathematics or Language or Rhetoric or Physics
or Chemistry, asked first and above all to what sect or even to what
wing or branch of a sect he belonged, could hardly do much to advance
the moral, religious, or intellectual development of mankind.
The reasons for the new foundation seemed to us, then, so cogent that
we expected the co-operation of all good citizens, and anticipated no
opposition from any source.
As I look back across the intervening years, I know not whether to be
more astonished or amused at our simplicity.
Opposition began at once. In the State Legislature it confronted us at
every turn, and it was soon in full blaze throughout the State--from the
good Protestant bishop who proclaimed that all professors should be in
holy orders, since to the Church alone was given the command, "Go, teach
all nations," to the zealous priest who published a charge that Goldwin
Smith--a profoundly Christian scholar--had come to Cornell in order
to inculcate the "infidelity of the Westminster Review"; and from the
eminent divine who went from city to city, denouncing the "atheistic
and pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the perfervid
minister who informed a denominational synod that Agassiz, the last
great opponent of Darwin, and a devout theist, was "preaching Darwinism
and atheism" in the new institution.
As the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions were introduced into
various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored clergymen solemnly warned
their flocks first against the "atheism," then against the "infidelity,"
and finally against the "indifferentism" of the university, as devoted
pastors endeavoured to dissuade young men from matriculation, I took the
defensive, and, in answer to various attacks from pulpits and religious
newspapers, attempted to allay the fears of the public. "Sweet
reasonableness" was fully tried. There was established and endowed in
the university perhaps the most effective Christian pulpit, and one of
the most vigorous branches of the Christian Association, then in the
United States; but all this did nothing to ward off the attack.
The clause in the charter of the university forbidding it to give
predominance to the doctrines of any sect, and above all the fact that
much prominence was given to instruction in various branches of science,
seemed to prevent all compromise, and it soon became clear that to stand
on the defensive only made matters worse. Then it was that there was
borne in upon me a sense of the real difficulty--the antagonism between
the theological and scientific view of the universe and of education in
relation to it; therefore it was that, having been invited to deliver a
lecture in the great hall of the Cooper Institute at New York, I took
as my subject The Battlefields of Science, maintaining this thesis which
follows:
In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed
interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference
may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion
and science, and invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammeled
scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of
its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted
in the highest good both of religion and science.
The lecture was next day published in the New York Tribune at the
request of Horace Greeley, its editor, who was also one of the Cornell
University trustees. As a result of this widespread publication and
of sundry attacks which it elicited, I was asked to maintain my thesis
before various university associations and literary clubs; and I shall
always remember with gratitude that among those who stood by me and
presented me on the lecture platform with words of approval and cheer
was my revered instructor, the Rev. Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, at that
time President of Yale College.
My lecture grew--first into a couple of magazine articles, and then into
a little book called The Warfare of Science, for which, when republished
in England, Prof. John Tyndall wrote a preface.
Sundry translations of this little book were published, but the
most curious thing in its history is the fact that a very friendly
introduction to the Swedish translation was written by a Lutheran
bishop.
Meanwhile Prof. John W. Draper published his book on The Conflict
between Science and Religion, a work of great ability, which, as I then
thought, ended the matter, so far as my giving it further attention was
concerned.
But two things led me to keep on developing my own work in this field:
First, I had become deeply interested in it, and could not refrain from
directing my observation and study to it; secondly, much as I admired
Draper's treatment of the questions involved, his point of view and mode
of looking at history were different from mine.
He regarded the struggle as one between Science and Religion. I believed
then, and am convinced now, that it was a struggle between Science and
Dogmatic Theology.
More and more I saw that it was the conflict between two epochs in the
evolution of human thought--the theological and the scientific.
So I kept on, and from time to time published New Chapters in the
Warfare of Science as magazine articles in The Popular Science Monthly.
This was done under many difficulties. For twenty years, as President of
Cornell University and Professor of History in that institution, I was
immersed in the work of its early development. Besides this, I could not
hold myself entirely aloof from public affairs, and was three times sent
by the Government of the United States to do public duty abroad: first
as a commissioner to Santo Domingo, in 1870; afterward as minister to
Germany, in 1879; finally, as minister to Russia, in 1892; and was
also called upon by the State of New York to do considerable labor in
connection with international exhibitions at Philadelphia and at Paris.
I was also obliged from time to time to throw off by travel the effects
of overwork.
The variety of residence and occupation arising from these causes may
perhaps explain some peculiarities in this book which might otherwise
puzzle my reader.
While these journeyings have enabled me to collect materials over a
very wide range--in the New World, from Quebec to Santo Domingo and from
Boston to Mexico, San Francisco, and Seattle, and in the Old World from
Trondhjem to Cairo and from St. Petersburg to Palermo--they have often
obliged me to write under circumstances not very favorable: sometimes
on an Atlantic steamer, sometimes on a Nile boat, and not only in my
own library at Cornell, but in those of Berlin, Helsingfors, Munich,
Florence, and the British Museum. This fact will explain to the
benevolent reader not only the citation of different editions of the
same authority in different chapters, but some iterations which in the
steady quiet of my own library would not have been made.
It has been my constant endeavour to write for the general reader,
avoiding scholastic and technical terms as much as possible and stating
the truth simply as it presents itself to me.
That errors of omission and commission will be found here and there is
probable--nay, certain; but the substance of the book will, I believe,
be found fully true. I am encouraged in this belief by the fact that, of
the three bitter attacks which this work in its earlier form has already
encountered, one was purely declamatory, objurgatory, and hortatory, and
the others based upon ignorance of facts easily pointed out.
And here I must express my thanks to those who have aided me. First and
above all to my former student and dear friend, Prof. George Lincoln
Burr, of Cornell University, to whose contributions, suggestions,
criticisms, and cautions I am most deeply indebted; also to my friends
U. G. Weatherly, formerly Travelling Fellow of Cornell, and now
Assistant Professor in the University of Indiana,--Prof. and Mrs. Earl
Barnes and Prof. William H. Hudson, of Stanford University,--and Prof.
E. P Evans, formerly of the University of Michigan, but now of Munich,
for extensive aid in researches upon the lines I have indicated to them,
but which I could never have prosecuted without their co-operation.
In libraries at home and abroad they have all worked for me most
effectively, and I am deeply grateful to them.
This book is presented as a sort of Festschrift--a tribute to Cornell
University as it enters the second quarter-century of its existence, and
probably my last tribute.
The ideas for which so bitter a struggle was made at its foundation
have triumphed. Its faculty, numbering over one hundred and, fifty;
its students, numbering but little short of two thousand; its noble
buildings and equipment; the munificent gifts, now amounting to millions
of dollars, which it has received from public-spirited men and women;
the evidences of public confidence on all sides; and, above all,
the adoption of its cardinal principles and main features by various
institutions of learning in other States, show this abundantly. But
there has been a triumph far greater and wider. Everywhere among the
leading modern nations the same general tendency is seen. During the
quarter-century just past the control of public instruction, not only in
America but in the leading nations of Europe, has passed more and more
from the clergy to the laity. Not only are the presidents of the larger
universities in the United States, with but one or two exceptions,
laymen, but the same thing is seen in the old European strongholds of
metaphysical theology. At my first visit to Oxford and Cambridge, forty
years ago, they were entirely under ecclesiastical control. Now, all
this is changed. An eminent member of the present British Government has
recently said, "A candidate for high university position is handicapped
by holy orders." I refer to this with not the slightest feeling of
hostility toward the clergy, for I have none; among them are many of my
dearest friends; no one honours their proper work more than I; but the
above fact is simply noted as proving the continuance of that evolution
which I have endeavoured to describe in this series of monographs--an
evolution, indeed, in which the warfare of Theology against Science has
been one of the most active and powerful agents. My belief is that in
the field left to them--their proper field--the clergy will more
and more, as they cease to struggle against scientific methods and
conclusions, do work even nobler and more beautiful than anything they
have heretofore done. And this is saying much. My conviction is that
Science, though it has evidently conquered Dogmatic Theology based on
biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand
with Religion; and that, although theological control will continue
to diminish, Religion, as seen in the recognition of "a Power in the
universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," and in the love
of God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger,
not only in the American institutions of learning but in the world
at large. Thus may the declaration of Micah as to the requirements of
Jehovah, the definition by St. James of "pure religion and undefiled,"
and, above all, the precepts and ideals of the blessed Founder of
Christianity himself, be brought to bear more and more effectively on
mankind.
I close this preface some days after its first lines were written.
The sun of spring has done its work on the Neva; the great river flows
tranquilly on, a blessing and a joy; the mujiks are forgotten. A. D. W.
LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, ST. PETERSBURG,
April 14,1894.
P.S.--Owing to a wish to give more thorough revision to some parts of my
work, it has been withheld from the press until the present date. A. D.
W.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N.Y.,
August 15, 1895.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.
I. The Visible Universe.
Ancient and medieval views regarding the manner of creation
Regarding the matter of creation
Regarding the time of creation
Regarding the date of creation
Regarding the Creator
Regarding light and darkness
Rise of the conception of an evolution: among the Chaldeans, the
Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans
Its survival through the Middle Ages, despite the disfavour of
the Church
Its development in modern times.--The nebular hypothesis and its
struggle with theology
The idea of evolution at last victorious
Our sacred books themselves an illustration of its truth
The true reconciliation of Science and Theology
II. Theological Teachings regarding the Animals and Man.
Ancient and medieval representations of the creation of man
Literal acceptance of the book of Genesis by the Christian
fathers
By the Reformers
By modern theologians, Catholic and Protestant
Theological reasoning as to the divisions of the animal kingdom
The Physiologus, the Bestiaries, the Exempila
Beginnings of sceptical observation
Development of a scientific method in the study of Nature
Breaking down of the theological theory of creation
III. Theological and Scientific Theories of an Evolution in
Animated Nature.
Ideas of evolution among the ancients
In the early Church
In the medieval Church
Development of these ideas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
centuries
The work of De Maillet
Of Linneus
Of Buffon
Contributions to the theory of evolution at the close of the
eighteenth century
The work of Treviranus and Lamarck
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier
Development of the theory up to the middle of the nineteenth
century
The contributions of Darwin and Wallace
The opposition of Agassiz
IV. The Final Effort of Theology.
Attacks on Darwin and his theories in England
In America
Formation of sacro-scientific organizations to combat the theory
of evolution
The attack in France
In Germany
Conversion of Lyell to the theory of evolution
The attack of Darwin's Descent of Man
Difference between this and the former attack
Hostility to Darwinism in America
Change in the tone of the controversy.--Attempts at compromise
Dying-out of opposition to evolution
Last outbursts of theological hostility
Final victory of evolution