Seville, 1590--the quaint English translation is of London, 1604; for
Abraham Milius, see his De Origine Animalium et Migratione Popularum,
Geneva, 1667; also Kosmos, 1877, H. I, S. 36; for Linnaeus's declaration
regarding species, see the Philosophia Botanica, 99, 157; for Calmet and
Linnaeus, see Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 237. As to the enormously increasing
numbers of species in zoology and botany, see President D. S. Jordan,
Science Sketches, pp. 176, 177; also for pithy statement, Laing's
Problems of the Future, chap. vi.
III. THEOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES, OF AN EVOLUTION IN ANIMATED
NATURE.
We have seen, thus far, how there came into the thinking of mankind
upon the visible universe and its inhabitants the idea of a creation
virtually instantaneous and complete, and of a Creator in human form
with human attributes, who spoke matter into existence literally by the
exercise of his throat and lips, or shaped and placed it with his hands
and fingers.
We have seen that this view came from far; that it existed in the
Chaldaeo-Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations, and probably in others
of the earliest date known to us; that its main features passed thence
into the sacred books of the Hebrews and then into the early Christian
Church, by whose theologians it was developed through the Middle Ages
and maintained during the modern period.
But, while this idea was thus developed by a succession of noble and
thoughtful men through thousands of years, another conception, to all
appearance equally ancient, was developed, sometimes in antagonism to
it, sometimes mingled with it--the conception of all living beings as
wholly or in part the result of a growth process--of an evolution.
This idea, in various forms, became a powerful factor in nearly all the
greater ancient theologies and philosophies. For very widespread among
the early peoples who attained to much thinking power was a conception
that, in obedience to the divine fiat, a watery chaos produced the
earth, and that the sea and land gave birth to their inhabitants.
This is clearly seen in those records of Chaldaeo-Babylonian thought
deciphered in these latter years, to which reference has already been
made. In these we have a watery chaos which, under divine action, brings
forth the earth and its inhabitants; first the sea animals and then the
land animals--the latter being separated into three kinds, substantially
as recorded afterward in the Hebrew accounts. At the various stages in
the work the Chaldean Creator pronounces it "beautiful," just as the
Hebrew Creator in our own later account pronounces it "good."
In both accounts there is placed over the whole creation a solid,
concave firmament; in both, light is created first, and the heavenly
bodies are afterward placed "for signs and for seasons"; in both, the
number seven is especially sacred, giving rise to a sacred division of
time and to much else. It may be added that, with many other features in
the Hebrew legends evidently drawn from the Chaldean, the account of the
creation in each is followed by a legend regarding "the fall of man" and
a deluge, many details of which clearly passed in slightly modified form
from the Chaldean into the Hebrew accounts.
It would have been a miracle indeed if these primitive conceptions,
wrought out with so much poetic vigour in that earlier civilization
on the Tigris and Euphrates, had failed to influence the Hebrews, who
during the most plastic periods of their development were under the
tutelage of their Chaldean neighbours. Since the researches of Layard,
George Smith, Oppert, Schrader, Jensen, Sayce, and their compeers, there
is no longer a reasonable doubt that this ancient view of the world,
elaborated if not originated in that earlier civilization, came thence
as a legacy to the Hebrews, who wrought it in a somewhat disjointed but
mainly monotheistic form into the poetic whole which forms one of the
most precious treasures of ancient thought preserved in the book of
Genesis.
Thus it was that, while the idea of a simple material creation literally
by the hands and fingers or voice of the Creator became, as we have
seen, the starting-point of a powerful stream of theological thought,
and while this stream was swollen from age to age by contributions from
the fathers, doctors, and learned divines of the Church, Catholic
and Protestant, there was poured into it this lesser current, always
discernible and at times clearly separated from it--a current of belief
in a process of evolution.
The Rev. Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, than whom no English-speaking scholar
carries more weight in a matter of this kind, has recently declared his
belief that the Chaldaeo-Babylonian theory was the undoubted source of
the similar theory propounded by the Ionic philosopher Anaximander--the
Greek thinkers deriving this view from the Babylonians through the
Phoenicians; he also allows that from the same source its main features
were adopted into both the accounts given in the first of our
sacred books, and in this general view the most eminent Christian
Assyriologists concur.
It is true that these sacred accounts of ours contradict each other. In
that part of the first or Elohistic account given in the first chapter
of Genesis the WATERS bring forth fishes, marine animals, and birds
(Genesis, i, 20); but in that part of the second or Jehovistic account
given in the second chapter of Genesis both the land animals and birds
are declared to have been created not out of the water, but "OUT OF THE
GROUND" (Genesis, ii, 19).
The dialectic skill of the fathers was easily equal to explaining away
this contradiction; but the old current of thought, strengthened by both
these legends, arrested their attention, and, passing through the
minds of a succession of the greatest men of the Church, influenced
theological opinion deeply, if not widely, for ages, in favour of an
evolution theory.
But there was still another ancient source of evolution ideas.
Thoughtful men of the early civilizations which were developed along the
great rivers in the warmer regions of the earth noted how the sun-god as
he rose in his fullest might caused the water and the rich soil to teem
with the lesser forms of life. In Egypt, especially, men saw how
under this divine power the Nile slime brought forth "creeping things
innumerable." Hence mainly this ancient belief that the animals and
man were produced by lifeless matter at the divine command, "in the
beginning," was supplemented by the idea that some of the lesser
animals, especially the insects, were produced by a later evolution,
being evoked after the original creation from various sources, but
chiefly from matter in a state of decay.
This crude, early view aided doubtless in giving germs of a better
evolution theory to the early Greeks. Anaximander, Empedocles,
Anaxagoras, and, greatest of all, Aristotle, as we have seen, developed
them, making their way at times by guesses toward truths since
established by observation. Aristotle especially, both by speculation
and observation, arrived at some results which, had Greek freedom
of thought continued, might have brought the world long since to its
present plane of biological knowledge; for he reached something like the
modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made
the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in Nature.
With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet
truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view
remained, and as a typical example of it we may note the opinion of St.
Basil the Great in the fourth century. Discussing the work of creation,
he declares that, at the command of God, "the waters were gifted with
productive power"; "from slime and muddy places frogs, flies, and gnats
came into being"; and he finally declares that the same voice which gave
this energy and quality of productiveness to earth and water shall be
similarly efficacious until the end of the world. St. Gregory of Nyssa
held a similar view.
This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took even
stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For St.
Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text, broke
from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of Scripture and
spurned the generally received belief of a creative process like that by
which a toymaker brings into existence a box of playthings. In his great
treatise on Genesis he says: "To suppose that God formed man from the
dust with bodily hands is very childish.... God neither formed man with
bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips."
St. Augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or
evolution theory, shows that "certain very small animals may not have
been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later
from putrefying matter," argues that, even if this be so, God is still
their creator, dwells upon such a potential creation as involved in the
actual creation, and speaks of animals "whose numbers the after-time
unfolded."
In his great treatise on the Trinity--the work to which he devoted the
best thirty years of his life--we find the full growth of this opinion.
He develops at length the view that in the creation of living beings
there was something like a growth--that God is the ultimate author,
but works through secondary causes; and finally argues that certain
substances are endowed by God with the power of producing certain
classes of plants and animals.(19)
(19) For the Chaldean view of creation, see George Smith, Chaldean
Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 14,15, and 64-86; also Lukas, as
above; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, Hibbert Lectures
for 1887, pp. 371 and elsewhere; as to the fall of man, Tower of Babel,
sacredness of the number seven, etc., see also Delitzsch, appendix to
the German translation of Smith, pp. 305 et seq.; as to the almost exact
adoption of the Chaldean legends into the Hebrew sacred account, see
all these, as also Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte
Testament, Giessen, 1883, early chapters; also article Babylonia in
the Encyclopedia Britannica; as to similar approval of creation by the
Creator in both accounts, see George Smith, p. 73; as to the migration
of the Babylonian legends to the Hebrews, see Schrader, Whitehouse's
translation, pp. 44,45; as to the Chaldaean belief ina solid firmament,
while Schrader in 1883 thought it not proved, Jensen in 1890 has found
it clearly expresses--see his Kosmologie der Babylonier, pp.9 et seq.,
also pp. 304-306, and elsewhere. Dr. Lukas in 1893 also fully accepts
this view of a Chaldean record of a "firmament"--see Kosmologie, pp.
43, etc.; see also Maspero and Sayce, the Dawn of Civilization, and for
crude early ideas of evolution in Egypt, see ibid., pp. 156 et seq.
For the seven-day week among the Chaldeans and rest on the seventh day,
and the proof that even the name "Sabbath" is of Chaldean origin, see
Delitzsch, Beiga-ben zu Smith's Chald. Genesis, pp. 300 and 306; also
Schrader; for St. Basil, see Hexaemeron and Homilies vii-ix; but for the
steadfastness of Basil's view in regard to the immutability of species,
see a Catholic writer on evolution and Faith in the Dublin Review for
July, 1871, p. 13; for citations of St. Augustine on Genesis, see the De
Genesi contra Manichoeos, lib. ii, cap. 14, in Migne, xxxiv, 188,--lib.
v, cap. 5 and cap. 23,--and lib vii, cap I; for the citations from his
work on the Trinity, see his De Trinitate, lib. iii, cap. 8 and 9, in
Migne, xlii, 877, 878; for the general subject very fully and adequately
presented, see Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, New York, 1894, chaps.
ii and iii.
This idea of a development by secondary causes apart from the original
creation was helped in its growth by a theological exigency. More and
more, as the organic world was observed, the vast multitude of petty
animals, winged creatures, and "creeping things" was felt to be a
strain upon the sacred narrative. More and more it became difficult to
reconcile the dignity of the Almighty with his work in bringing each
of these creatures before Adam to be named; or to reconcile the human
limitations of Adam with his work in naming "every living creature"; or
to reconcile the dimensions of Noah's ark with the space required for
preserving all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for their
sustenance, whether they were admitted by twos, as stated in one
scriptural account, or by sevens, as stated in the other.
The inadequate size of the ark gave especial trouble. Origen had dealt
with it by suggesting that the cubit was six times greater than had been
supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete so large a vessel by
supposing that he worked upon it during a hundred years; and, as to the
provision of food taken into it, he declared that there was no need of
a supply for more than one day, since God could throw the animals into
a deep sleep or otherwise miraculously make one day's supply sufficient;
he also lessened the strain on faith still more by diminishing
the number of animals taken into the ark--supporting his view upon
Augustine's theory of the later development of insects out of carrion.
Doubtless this theological necessity was among the main reasons which
led St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, to incorporate
this theory, supported by St. Basil and St. Augustine, into his great
encyclopedic work which gave materials for thought on God and Nature to
so many generations. He familiarized the theological world still further
with the doctrine of secondary creation, giving such examples of it as
that "bees are generated from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh,
grasshoppers from mules, scorpions from crabs," and, in order to give
still stronger force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells
on the biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken
strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that
other human beings had been changed into animals, especially into swine,
wolves, and owls.
This doctrine of after-creations went on gathering strength until, in
the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, in his theological summary, The
Sentences, so powerful in moulding the thought of the Church, emphasized
the distinction between animals which spring from carrion and those
which are created from earth and water; the former he holds to have been
created "potentially" the latter "actually."
In the century following, this idea was taken up by St. Thomas Aquinas
and virtually received from him its final form. In the Summa, which
remains the greatest work of medieval thought, he accepts the idea that
certain animals spring from the decaying bodies of plants and animals,
and declares that they are produced by the creative word of God either
actually or virtually. He develops this view by saying, "Nothing was
made by God, after the six days of creation, absolutely new, but it was
in some sense included in the work of the six days"; and that "even
new species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native
properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction."
The distinction thus developed between creation "causally" or
"potentially," and "materially" or "formally," was made much of by
commentators afterward. Cornelius a Lapide spread it by saying that
certain animals were created not "absolutely," but only "derivatively,"
and this thought was still further developed three centuries later by
Augustinus Eugubinus, who tells us that, after the first creative energy
had called forth land and water, light was made by the Almighty, the
instrument of all future creation, and that the light called everything
into existence.
All this "science falsely so called," so sedulously developed by the
master minds of the Church, and yet so futile that we might almost
suppose that the great apostle, in a glow of prophetic vision, had
foreseen it in his famous condemnation, seems at this distance very
harmless indeed; yet, to many guardians of the "sacred deposit of
doctrine" in the Church, even so slight a departure from the main
current of thought seemed dangerous. It appeared to them like pressing
the doctrine of secondary causes to a perilous extent; and about the
beginning of the seventeenth century we have the eminent Spanish Jesuit
and theologian Suarez denouncing it, and declaring St. Augustine a
heretic for his share in it.
But there was little danger to the older idea just then; the main
theological tendency was so strong that the world kept on as of old.
Biblical theology continued to spin its own webs out of its own bowels,
and all the lesser theological flies continued to be entangled in them;
yet here and there stronger thinkers broke loose from this entanglement
and helped somewhat to disentangle others.(20)
(20) For Bede's view of the ark and the origin of insects, see his
Hexaemeron, i and ii; for Isidore, see the Etymologiae, xi, 4, and xiii,
22; for Peter Lombard, see Sent., lib. ii, dist. xv, 4 (in Migne,
cxcii, 682); for St. Thomas Aquinas as to the laws of Nature, see Summae
Theologica, i, Quaest. lxvii, art. iv; for his discussion on Avicenna's
theory of the origin of animals, see ibid., i Quaest. lxxi, vol. i,
pp. 1184 and 1185, of Migne's edit.; for his idea as to the word of God
being the active producing principle, see ibid., i, Quaest. lxxi, art.
i; for his remarks on species, see ibid, i, Quaest. lxxii, art. i;
for his ideas on the necessity of the procreation of man, see ibid, i,
Quaest. lxxii, art. i; for the origin of animals from putrefaction,
see ibid, i, Quaest. lxxix, art. i, 3; for Cornelius a Lapide on the
derivative creation of animals, see his In Genesim Comment., cap. i,
cited by Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 282; for a reference to Suarez's
denunciation of the view of St. Augustine, see Huxley's Essays.
At the close of the Middle Ages, in spite of the devotion of the
Reformed Church to the letter of Scripture, the revival of learning and
the great voyages gave an atmosphere in which better thinking on the
problems of Nature began to gain strength. On all sides, in every field,
men were making discoveries which caused the general theological view to
appear more and more inadequate.
First of those who should be mentioned with reverence as beginning to
develop again that current of Greek thought which the system drawn
from our sacred books by the fathers and doctors of the Church had
interrupted for more than a thousand years, was Giordano Bruno. His
utterances were indeed vague and enigmatical, but this fault may well be
forgiven him, for he saw but too clearly what must be his reward for
any more open statements. His reward indeed came--even for his faulty
utterances--when, toward the end of the nineteenth century, thoughtful
men from all parts of the world united in erecting his statue on the
spot where he had been burned by the Roman Inquisition nearly three
hundred years before.
After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century,
Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought: his
theories, however superseded now, gave a great impulse to investigation
then. His genius in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the
mechanical formation of the solar system was great, and his mode of
thought strengthened the current of evolutionary doctrine generally; but
his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants,
led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. The
execution of Bruno had occurred in his childhood, and in the midst of
his career he had watched the Galileo struggle in all its stages. He had
seen his own works condemned by university after university under the
direction of theologians, and placed upon the Roman Index. Although
he gave new and striking arguments to prove the existence of God, and
humbled himself before the Jesuits, he was condemned by Catholics and
Protestants alike. Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been
so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression.
Near the close of the same century another great thinker, Leibnitz,
though not propounding any full doctrine on evolution, gave it an
impulse by suggesting a view contrary to the sacrosanct belief in the
immutability of species--that is, to the pious doctrine that every
species in the animal kingdom now exists as it left the hands of the
Creator, the naming process by Adam, and the door of Noah's ark.
His punishment at the hands of the Church came a few years later, when,
in 1712, the Jesuits defeated his attempt to found an Academy of Science
at Vienna. The imperial authorities covered him with honours, but the
priests--ruling in the confessionals and pulpits--would not allow
him the privilege of aiding his fellow-men to ascertain God's truths
revealed in Nature.
Spinoza, Hume, and Kant may also be mentioned as among those whose
thinking, even when mistaken, might have done much to aid in the
development of a truer theory had not the theologic atmosphere of their
times been so unpropitious; but a few years after Leibnitz's death came
in France a thinker in natural science of much less influence than any
of these, who made a decided step forward.
Early in the eighteenth century Benoist de Maillet, a man of the world,
but a wide observer and close thinker upon Nature, began meditating
especially upon the origin of animal forms, and was led into the idea of
the transformation of species and so into a theory of evolution, which
in some important respects anticipated modern ideas. He definitely,
though at times absurdly, conceived the production of existing species
by the modification of their predecessors, and he plainly accepted one
of the fundamental maxims of modern geology--that the structure of the
globe must be studied in the light of the present course of Nature.
But he fell between two ranks of adversaries. On one side, the Church
authorities denounced him as a freethinker; on the other, Voltaire
ridiculed him as a devotee. Feeling that his greatest danger was from
the orthodox theologians, De Maillet endeavoured to protect himself
by disguising his name in the title of his book, and by so wording its
preface and dedication that, if persecuted, he could declare it a mere
sport of fancy; he therefore announced it as the reverie of a Hindu sage
imparted to a Christian missionary. But this strategy availed nothing:
he had allowed his Hindu sage to suggest that the days of creation named
in Genesis might be long periods of time; and this, with other ideas of
equally fearful import, was fatal. Though the book was in type in 1735,
it was not published till 1748--three years after his death.
On the other hand, the heterodox theology of Voltaire was also aroused;
and, as De Maillet had seen in the presence of fossils on high mountains
a proof that these mountains were once below the sea, Voltaire,
recognising in this an argument for the deluge of Noah, ridiculed the
new thinker without mercy. Unfortunately, some of De Maillet's vagaries
lent themselves admirably to Voltaire's sarcasm; better material for it
could hardly be conceived than the theory, seriously proposed, that the
first human being was born of a mermaid.
Hence it was that, between these two extremes of theology, De Maillet
received no recognition until, very recently, the greatest men of
science in England and France have united in giving him his due. But
his work was not lost, even in his own day; Robinet and Bonnet pushed
forward victoriously on helpful lines.
In the second half of the eighteenth century a great barrier was thrown
across this current--the authority of Linnaeus. He was the most eminent
naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close thinker; but the
atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his being was saturated
with biblical theology, and this permeated all his thinking.
He who visits the tomb of Linnaeus to-day, entering the beautiful
cathedral of Upsala by its southern porch, sees above it, wrought in
stone, the Hebrew legend of creation. In a series of medallions, the
Almighty--in human form--accomplishes the work of each creative day. In
due order he puts in place the solid firmament with the waters above it,
the sun, moon, and stars within it, the beasts, birds, and plants below
it, and finishes his task by taking man out of a little hillock of "the
earth beneath," and woman out of man's side. Doubtless Linnaeus, as he
went to his devotions, often smiled at this childlike portrayal. Yet
he was never able to break away from the idea it embodied. At times, in
face of the difficulties which beset the orthodox theory, he ventured
to favour some slight concessions. Toward the end of his life he timidly
advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one genus constituted
at the creation one species; and from the last edition of his Systema
Naturae he quietly left out the strongly orthodox statement of the
fixity of each species, which he had insisted upon in his earlier works.
But he made no adequate declaration. What he might expect if he openly
and decidedly sanctioned a newer view he learned to his cost; warnings
came speedily both from the Catholic and Protestant sides.
At a time when eminent prelates of the older Church were eulogizing
debauched princes like Louis XV, and using the unspeakably obscene
casuistry of the Jesuit Sanchez in the education of the priesthood as to
the relations of men to women, the modesty of the Church authorities was
so shocked by Linnaeus's proofs of a sexual system in plants that for
many years his writings were prohibited in the Papal States and in
various other parts of Europe where clerical authority was strong enough
to resist the new scientific current. Not until 1773 did one of the
more broad-minded cardinals--Zelanda--succeed in gaining permission that
Prof. Minasi should discuss the Linnaean system at Rome.
And Protestantism was quite as oppressive. In a letter to Eloius,
Linnaeus tells of the rebuke given to science by one of the great
Lutheran prelates of Sweden, Bishop Svedberg. From various parts of
Europe detailed statements had been sent to the Royal Academy of Science
that water had been turned into blood, and well-meaning ecclesiastics
had seen in this an indication of the wrath of God, certainly against
the regions in which these miracles had occurred and possibly against
the whole world. A miracle of this sort appearing in Sweden, Linnaeus
looked into it carefully and found that the reddening of the water
was caused by dense masses of minute insects. News of this explanation
having reached the bishop, he took the field against it; he denounced
this scientific discovery as "a Satanic abyss" (abyssum Satanae), and
declared "The reddening of the water is NOT natural," and "when God
allows such a miracle to take place Satan endeavours, and so do his
ungodly, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and worldly tools, to make it
signify nothing." In face of this onslaught Linnaeus retreated; he tells
his correspondent that "it is difficult to say anything in this matter,"
and shields himself under the statement "It is certainly a miracle that
so many millions of creatures can be so suddenly propagated," and "it
shows undoubtedly the all-wise power of the Infinite."
The great naturalist, grown old and worn with labours for science, could
no longer resist the contemporary theology; he settled into obedience
to it, and while the modification of his early orthodox view was, as we
have seen, quietly imbedded in the final edition of his great work, he
made no special effort to impress it upon the world. To all appearance
he continued to adhere to the doctrine that all existing species had
been created by the Almighty "in the beginning," and that since "the
beginning" no new species had appeared.
Yet even his great authority could not arrest the swelling tide;
more and more vast became the number of species, more and more
incomprehensible under the old theory became the newly ascertained
facts in geographical distribution, more and more it was felt that the
universe and animated beings had come into existence by some process
other than a special creation "in the beginning," and the question was
constantly pressing, "By WHAT process?"
Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century one man was at work on
natural history who might have contributed much toward an answer to this
question: this man was Buffon. His powers of research and thought were
remarkable, and his gift in presenting results of research and thought
showed genius. He had caught the idea of an evolution in Nature by the
variation of species, and was likely to make a great advance with it;
but he, too, was made to feel the power of theology.
As long as he gave pleasing descriptions of animals the Church petted
him, but when he began to deduce truths of philosophical import the
batteries of the Sorbonne were opened upon him; he was made to know that
"the sacred deposit of truth committed to the Church" was, that "in the
beginning God made the heavens and the earth" and that "all things were
made at the beginning of the world." For his simple statement of truths
in natural science which are to-day truisms, he was, as we have seen,
dragged forth by the theological faculty, forced to recant publicly, and
to print his recantation. In this he announced, "I abandon everything in
my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which
may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."(21)
(21) For Descartes and his relation to the Copernican theory, see
Saisset, Descartes et ses Precurseurs; also Fouillee, Descartes, Paris,
1893, chaps. ii and iii; also other authorities cited in my chapter
on Astronomy; for his relation to the theory of evolution, see the
Principes de Philosophie, 3eme partie, S 45. For de Maillet, see
Quatrefages, Darwin et ses Precurseurs francais, chap i, citing
D'Archiac, Paleontologie, Stratigraphie, vol. i; also, Perrier, La
Philosophie zoologique avant Darwin, chap. vi; also the admirable
article Evolution, by Huxley, in Ency. Brit. The title of De Maillet's
book is Telliamed, ou Entretiens d'un Philosophe indien avec un
Missionaire francais sur la Diminution de la Mer, 1748, 1756. For
Buffon, see the authorities previously given, also the chapter on
Geology in this work. For the resistance of both Catholic and Protestant
authorities to the Linnaean system and ideas, see Alberg, Life of
Linnaeus, London, 1888, pp. 143-147, and 237. As to the creation
medallions at the Cathedral of Upsala, it is a somewhat curious
coincidence that the present writer came upon them while visiting that
edifice during the preparation of this chapter.
But all this triumph of the Chaldeo-Babylonian creation legends which
the Church had inherited availed but little.
For about the end of the eighteenth century fruitful suggestions and
even clear presentations of this or that part of a large evolutionary
doctrine came thick and fast, and from the most divergent quarters.
Especially remarkable were those which came from Erasmus Darwin in
England, from Maupertuis in France, from Oken in Switzerland, and from
Herder, and, most brilliantly of all, from Goethe in Germany.
Two men among these thinkers must be especially mentioned--Treviranus in
Germany and Lamarck in France; each independently of the other drew the
world more completely than ever before in this direction.
From Treviranus came, in 1802, his work on biology, and in this he gave
forth the idea that from forms of life originally simple had arisen all
higher organizations by gradual development; that every living feature
has a capacity for receiving modifications of its structure from
external influences; and that no species had become really extinct, but
that each had passed into some other species. From Lamarck came
about the same time his Researches, and a little later his Zoological
Philosophy, which introduced a new factor into the process of
evolution--the action of the animal itself in its efforts toward a
development to suit new needs--and he gave as his principal conclusions
the following:
1. Life tends to increase the volume of each living body and of all its
parts up to a limit determined by its own necessities.
2. New wants in animals give rise to new organs.
3. The development of these organs is in proportion to their employment.
4. New developments may be transmitted to offspring.
His well-known examples to illustrate these views, such as that of
successive generations of giraffes lengthening their necks by stretching
them to gather high-growing foliage, and of successive generations of
kangaroos lengthening and strengthening their hind legs by the necessity
of keeping themselves erect while jumping, provoked laughter, but
the very comicality of these illustrations aided to fasten his main
conclusion in men's memories.
In both these statements, imperfect as they were, great truths were
embodied--truths which were sure to grow.
Lamarck's declaration, especially, that the development of organs is in
ratio to their employment, and his indications of the reproduction
in progeny of what is gained or lost in parents by the influence of
circumstances, entered as a most effective force into the development of
the evolution theory.
The next great successor in the apostolate of this idea of the universe
was Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. As early as 1795 he had begun to form a
theory that species are various modifications of the same type, and this
theory he developed, testing it at various stages as Nature was more
and more displayed to him. It fell to his lot to bear the brunt in a
struggle against heavy odds which lasted many years.
For the man who now took up the warfare, avowedly for science
but unconsciously for theology, was the foremost naturalist then
living--Cuvier. His scientific eminence was deserved; the highest
honours of his own and other countries were given him, and he bore
them worthily. An Imperial Councillor under Napoleon; President of the
Council of Public Instruction and Chancellor of the University under
the restored Bourbons; Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, a Peer of
France, Minister of the Interior, and President of the Council of State
under Louis Philippe; he was eminent in all these capacities, and yet
the dignity given by such high administrative positions was as nothing
compared to his leadership in natural science. Science throughout the
world acknowledged in him its chief contemporary ornament, and to this
hour his fame rightly continues. But there was in him, as in Linnaeus,
a survival of certain theological ways of looking at the universe and
certain theological conceptions of a plan of creation; it must be said,
too, that while his temperament made him distrust new hypotheses, of
which he had seen so many born and die, his environment as a great
functionary of state, honoured, admired, almost adored by the greatest,
not only in the state but in the Church, his solicitude lest science
should receive some detriment by openly resisting the Church, which
had recaptured Europe after the French Revolution, and had made of its
enemies its footstool--all these considerations led him to oppose the
new theory. Amid the plaudits, then, of the foremost church-men he
threw across the path of the evolution doctrines the whole mass of
his authority in favour of the old theory of catastrophic changes and
special creations.
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire stoutly withstood him, braving non-recognition,
ill-treatment, and ridicule. Treviranus, afar off in his mathematical
lecture-room at Bremen, seemed simply forgotten.
But the current of evolutionary thought could not thus be checked:
dammed up for a time, it broke out in new channels and in ways and
places least expected; turned away from France, it appeared especially
in England, where great paleontologists and geologists arose whose work
culminated in that of Lyell. Specialists throughout all the world now
became more vigorous than ever, gathering facts and thinking upon them
in a way which caused the special creation theory to shrink more and
more. Broader and more full became these various rivulets, soon to unite
in one great stream of thought.
In 1813 Dr. Wells developed a theory of evolution by natural selection
to account for varieties in the human race. About 1820 Dean Herbert,
eminent as an authority in horticulture, avowed his conviction that
species are but fixed varieties. In 1831 Patrick Matthews stumbled upon
and stated the main doctrine of natural selection in evolution; and
others here and there, in Europe and America, caught an inkling of it.
But no one outside of a circle apparently uninfluential cared for
these things: the Church was serene: on the Continent it had obtained
reactionary control of courts, cabinets, and universities; in England,
Dean Cockburn was denouncing Mary Somerville and the geologists to the
delight of churchmen; and the Rev. Mellor Brown was doing the same thing
for the edification of dissenters.
In America the mild suggestions of Silliman and his compeers were met
by the protestations of the Andover theologians headed by Moses Stuart.
Neither of the great English universities, as a rule, took any notice of
the innovators save by sneers.
To this current of thought there was joined a new element when, in
1844, Robert Chambers published his Vestiges of Creation. The book was
attractive and was widely read. In Chambers's view the several series of
animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most
recent, were the result of two distinct impulses, each given once and
for all time by the Creator. The first of these was an impulse imparted
to forms of life, lifting them gradually through higher grades; the
second was an impulse tending to modify organic substances in accordance
with external circumstances; in fact, the doctrine of the book was
evolution tempered by miracle--a stretching out of the creative act
through all time--a pious version of Lamarck.
Two results followed, one mirth-provoking, the other leading to serious
thought. The amusing result was that the theologians were greatly
alarmed by the book: it was loudly insisted that it promoted atheism.
Looking back along the line of thought which has since been developed,
one feels that the older theologians ought to have put up thanksgivings
for Chambers's theory, and prayers that it might prove true. The
more serious result was that it accustomed men's minds to a belief in
evolution as in some form possible or even probable. In this way it was
provisionally of service.
Eight years later Herbert Spencer published an essay contrasting the
theories of creation and evolution--reasoning with great force in favour
of the latter, showing that species had undoubtedly been modified by
circumstances; but still only few and chosen men saw the significance
of all these lines of reasoning which had been converging during so many
years toward one conclusion.
On July 1, 1858, there were read before the Linnaean Society at London
two papers--one presented by Charles Darwin, the other by Alfred Russel
Wallace--and with the reading of these papers the doctrine of evolution
by natural selection was born. Then and there a fatal breach was made in
the great theological barrier of the continued fixity of species since
the creation.
The story of these papers the scientific world knows by heart: how
Charles Darwin, having been sent to the University of Cambridge to
fit him for the Anglican priesthood, left it in 1831 to go upon the
scientific expedition of the Beagle; how for five years he studied with
wonderful vigour and acuteness the problems of life as revealed on
land and at sea--among volcanoes and coral reefs, in forests and on the
sands, from the tropics to the arctic regions; how, in the Cape Verde
and the Galapagos Islands, and in Brazil, Patagonia, and Australia
he interrogated Nature with matchless persistency and skill; how he
returned unheralded, quietly settled down to his work, and soon set the
world thinking over its first published results, such as his book on
Coral Reefs, and the monograph on the Cirripedia; and, finally, how he
presented his paper, and followed it up with treatises which made him
one of the great leaders in the history of human thought.
The scientific world realizes, too, more and more, the power of
character shown by Darwin in all this great career; the faculty of
silence, the reserve of strength seen in keeping his great thought--his
idea of evolution by natural selection--under silent study and
meditation for nearly twenty years, giving no hint of it to the world
at large, but working in every field to secure proofs or disproofs,
and accumulating masses of precious material for the solution of the
questions involved.
To one man only did he reveal his thought--to Dr. Joseph Hooker, to
whom in 1844, under the seal of secrecy, he gave a summary of his
conclusions. Not until fourteen years later occurred the event which
showed him that the fulness of time had come--the letter from Alfred
Russel Wallace, to whom, in brilliant researches during the decade from
1848 to 1858, in Brazil and in the Malay Archipelago, the same truth of
evolution by natural selection had been revealed. Among the proofs that
scientific study does no injury to the more delicate shades of sentiment
is the well-known story of this letter. With it Wallace sent Darwin a
memoir, asking him to present it to the Linnaean Society: on examining
it, Darwin found that Wallace had independently arrived at conclusions
similar to his own--possibly had deprived him of fame; but Darwin was
loyal to his friend, and his friend remained ever loyal to him. He
publicly presented the paper from Wallace, with his own conclusions; and
the date of this presentation--July 1, 1858--separates two epochs in the
history, not merely of natural science, but of human thought.
In the following year, 1859, came the first instalment of his work in
its fuller development--his book on The Origin of Species. In this
book one at least of the main secrets at the heart of the evolutionary
process, which had baffled the long line of investigators and
philosophers from the days of Aristotle, was more broadly revealed. The
effective mechanism of evolution was shown at work in three ascertained
facts: in the struggle for existence among organized beings; in the
survival of the fittest; and in heredity. These facts were presented
with such minute research, wide observation, patient collation,
transparent honesty, and judicial fairness, that they at once commanded
the world's attention. It was the outcome of thirty years' work and
thought by a worker and thinker of genius, but it was yet more than
that--it was the outcome, also, of the work and thought of another man
of genius fifty years before. The book of Malthus on the Principle
of Population, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a
geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the earth,
had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. But
the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and now the
thought of Malthus was joined to the new current. Meditating upon it in
connection with his own observations of the luxuriance of Nature, Darwin
had arrived at his doctrine of natural selection and survival of the
fittest.
As the great dogmatic barrier between the old and new views of the
universe was broken down, the flood of new thought pouring over the
world stimulated and nourished strong growths in every field of research
and reasoning: edition after edition of the book was called for; it
was translated even into Japanese and Hindustani; the stagnation of
scientific thought, which Buckle, only a few years before, had so deeply
lamented, gave place to a widespread and fruitful activity; masses of
accumulated observations, which had seemed stale and unprofitable,
were made alive; facts formerly without meaning now found their
interpretation. Under this new influence an army of young men took
up every promising line of scientific investigation in every land.
Epoch-making books appeared in all the great nations. Spencer, Wallace,
Huxley, Galton, Tyndall, Tylor, Lubbock, Bagehot, Lewes, in England,
and a phalanx of strong men in Germany, Italy, France, and America gave
forth works which became authoritative in every department of biology.
If some of the older men in France held back, overawed perhaps by the
authority of Cuvier, the younger and more vigorous pressed on.
One source of opposition deserves to be especially mentioned--Louis
Agassiz.
A great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble man, he
had received and elaborated a theory of animated creation which he could
not readily change. In his heart and mind still prevailed the atmosphere
of the little Swiss parsonage in which he was born, and his religious
and moral nature, so beautiful to all who knew him, was especially
repelled by sundry evolutionists, who, in their zeal as neophytes, made
proclamations seeming to have a decidedly irreligious if not immoral
bearing. In addition to this was the direction his thinking had received
from Cuvier. Both these influences combined to prevent his acceptance of
the new view.
He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a barrier
across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnaeus in the second half
of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first half, and Agassiz in the
second half of the nineteenth--all made the same effort. Each remains
great; but not all of them together could arrest the current. Agassiz's
strong efforts throughout the United States, and indeed throughout
Europe, to check it, really promoted it. From the great museum he had
founded at Cambridge, from his summer school at Penikese, from his
lecture rooms at Harvard and Cornell, his disciples went forth full of
love and admiration for him, full of enthusiasm which he had stirred
and into fields which he had indicated; but their powers, which he had
aroused and strengthened, were devoted to developing the truth he failed
to recognise; Shaler, Verrill, Packard, Hartt, Wilder, Jordan, with a
multitude of others, and especially the son who bore his honoured name,
did justice to his memory by applying what they had received from him to
research under inspiration of the new revelation.
Still another man deserves especial gratitude and honour in this
progress--Edward Livingston Youmans. He was perhaps the first in America
to recognise the vast bearings of the truths presented by Darwin,
Wallace, and Spencer. He became the apostle of these truths, sacrificing
the brilliant career on which he had entered as a public lecturer,
subordinating himself to the three leaders, and giving himself to
editorial drudgery in the stimulation of research and the announcement
of results.
In support of the new doctrine came a world of new proofs; those which
Darwin himself added in regard to the cross-fertilization of plants,
and which he had adopted from embryology, led the way, and these were
followed by the discoveries of Wallace, Bates, Huxley, Marsh, Cope,
Leidy, Haeckel, Muller, Gaudry, and a multitude of others in all
lands.(22)
(22) For Agassiz's opposition to evolution, see the Essay on
Classification, vol. i, 1857, as regards Lamark, and vol. iii, as
regards Darwin; also Silliman's Journal, July 1860; also the Atlantic
Monthly, January 1874; also his Life and Correspondence, vol. ii, p.
647; also Asa Gray, Scientific Papers, vol. ii, p. 484. A reminiscence
of my own enables me to appreciate his deep ethical and religious
feeling. I was passing the day with him at Nahant in 1868, consulting
him regarding candidates for various scientific chairs at the newly
established Cornell University, in which he took a deep interest. As we
discussed one after another of the candidates, he suddenly said: "Who is
to be your Professor of Moral Philosophy? That is a far more important
position than all the others."
IV. THE FINAL EFFORT OF THEOLOGY.
Darwin's Origin of Species had come into the theological world like
a plough into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakened from
their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused.
Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker
from all sides.
The keynote was struck at once in the Quarterly Review by Wilberforce,
Bishop of Oxford. He declared that Darwin was guilty of "a tendency to
limit God's glory in creation"; that "the principle of natural selection
is absolutely incompatible with the word of God"; that it "contradicts
the revealed relations of creation to its Creator"; that it is
"inconsistent with the fulness of his glory"; that it is "a dishonouring
view of Nature"; and that there is "a simpler explanation of the
presence of these strange forms among the works of God": that
explanation being--"the fall of Adam." Nor did the bishop's efforts end
here; at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement
of Science he again disported himself in the tide of popular applause.
Referring to the ideas of Darwin, who was absent on account of illness,
he congratulated himself in a public speech that he was not descended
from a monkey. The reply came from Huxley, who said in substance: "If
I had to choose, I would prefer to be a descendant of a humble monkey
rather than of a man who employs his knowledge and eloquence in
misrepresenting those who are wearing out their lives in the search for
truth."
This shot reverberated through England, and indeed through other
countries.
The utterances of this the most brilliant prelate of the Anglican Church
received a sort of antiphonal response from the leaders of the English
Catholics. In an address before the "Academia," which had been organized
to combat "science falsely so called," Cardinal Manning declared his
abhorrence of the new view of Nature, and described it as "a brutal
philosophy--to wit, there is no God, and the ape is our Adam."
These attacks from such eminent sources set the clerical fashion for
several years. One distinguished clerical reviewer, in spite of Darwin's
thirty years of quiet labour, and in spite of the powerful summing up
of his book, prefaced a diatribe by saying that Darwin "might have been
more modest had he given some slight reason for dissenting from
the views generally entertained." Another distinguished clergyman,
vice-president of a Protestant institute to combat "dangerous" science,
declared Darwinism "an attempt to dethrone God." Another critic spoke of
persons accepting the Darwinian views as "under the frenzied inspiration
of the inhaler of mephitic gas," and of Darwin's argument as "a jungle
of fanciful assumption." Another spoke of Darwin's views as suggesting
that "God is dead," and declared that Darwin's work "does open violence
to everything which the Creator himself has told us in the Scriptures
of the methods and results of his work." Still another theological
authority asserted: "If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a
lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the
revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and
a snare." Another, who had shown excellent qualities as an observing
naturalist, declared the Darwinian view "a huge imposture from the
beginning."
Echoes came from America. One review, the organ of the most widespread
of American religious sects, declared that Darwin was "attempting to
befog and to pettifog the whole question"; another denounced Darwin's
views as "infidelity"; another, representing the American branch of
the Anglican Church, poured contempt over Darwin as "sophistical and
illogical," and then plunged into an exceedingly dangerous line of
argument in the following words: "If this hypothesis be true, then is
the Bible an unbearable fiction;... then have Christians for nearly two
thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie.... Darwin requires us to
disbelieve the authoritative word of the Creator." A leading journal
representing the same church took pains to show the evolution theory to
be as contrary to the explicit declarations of the New Testament as to
those of the Old, and said: "If we have all, men and monkeys, oysters
and eagles, developed from an original germ, then is St. Paul's grand
deliverance--'All flesh is not the same flesh; there is one kind of
flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, and another of
birds'--untrue."
Another echo came from Australia, where Dr. Perry, Lord Bishop of
Melbourne, in a most bitter book on Science and the Bible, declared that
the obvious object of Chambers, Darwin, and Huxley is "to produce in
their readers a disbelief of the Bible."
Nor was the older branch of the Church to be left behind in this chorus.
Bayma, in the Catholic World, declared, "Mr. Darwin is, we have reason
to believe, the mouthpiece or chief trumpeter of that infidel clique
whose well-known object is to do away with all idea of a God."
Worthy of especial note as showing the determination of the theological
side at that period was the foundation of sacro-scientific organizations
to combat the new ideas. First to be noted is the "Academia," planned by
Cardinal Wiseman. In a circular letter the cardinal, usually so moderate
and just, sounded an alarm and summed up by saying, "Now it is for the
Church, which alone possesses divine certainty and divine discernment,
to place itself at once in the front of a movement which threatens even
the fragmentary remains of Christian belief in England." The necessary
permission was obtained from Rome, the Academia was founded, and the
"divine discernment" of the Church was seen in the utterances which
came from it, such as those of Cardinal Manning, which every thoughtful
Catholic would now desire to recall, and in the diatribes of Dr. Laing,
which only aroused laughter on all sides. A similar effort was seen in
Protestant quarters; the "Victoria institute" was created, and perhaps
the most noted utterance which ever came from it was the declaration of
its vice-president, the Rev. Walter Mitchell, that "Darwinism endeavours
to dethrone God."(23)
(23) For Wilberforce's article, see Quarterly Review, July, 1860. For
the reply of Huxley to the bishop's speech I have relied on the account
given in Quatrefages, who had it from Carpenter; a somewhat different
version is given in the Life and Letters of Darwin. For Cardinal
Manning's attack, see Essays on Religion and Literature, London, 1865.
For the review articles, see the Quarterly already cited, and that
for July, 1874; also the North British Review, May 1860; also, F. O.
Morris's letter in the Record, reprinted at Glasgow, 1870; also the
Addresses of Rev. Walter Mitchell before the Victoria Institute, London,
1867; also Rev. B. G. Johns, Moses not Darwin, a Sermon, March 31, 1871.
For the earlier American attacks, see Methodist Quarterly Review, April
1871; The American Church Review, July and October, 1865, and January,
1866. For the Australian attack, see Science and the Bible, by the Right
Reverend Charles Perry, D. D., Bishop of Melbourne, London, 1869. For
Bayma, see the Catholic World, vol. xxvi, p.782. For the Academia, see
Essays edited by Cardinal Manning, above cited; and for the Victoria
Institute, see Scientia Scientarum, by a member of the Victoria
Institute, London, 1865.
In France the attack was even more violent. Fabre d'Envieu brought
out the heavy artillery of theology, and in a long series of elaborate
propositions demonstrated that any other doctrine than that of the
fixity and persistence of species is absolutely contrary to Scripture.
The Abbe Desorges, a former Professor of Theology, stigmatized Darwin as
a "pedant," and evolution as "gloomy". Monseigneur Segur, referring
to Darwin and his followers, went into hysterics and shrieked: "These
infamous doctrines have for their only support the most abject
passions. Their father is pride, their mother impurity, their offspring
revolutions. They come from hell and return thither, taking with them
the gross creatures who blush not to proclaim and accept them."
In Germany the attack, if less declamatory, was no less severe. Catholic
theologians vied with Protestants in bitterness. Prof. Michelis declared
Darwin's theory "a caricature of creation." Dr. Hagermann asserted that
it "turned the Creator out of doors."
Dr. Schund insisted that "every idea of the Holy Scriptures, from
the first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to
the Darwinian theory"; and, "if Darwin be right in his view of the
development of man out of a brutal condition, then the Bible teaching in
regard to man is utterly annihilated." Rougemont in Switzerland called
for a crusade against the obnoxious doctrine. Luthardt, Professor of
Theology at Leipsic, declared: "The idea of creation belongs to religion
and not to natural science; the whole superstructure of personal
religion is built upon the doctrine of creation"; and he showed the
evolution theory to be in direct contradiction to Holy Writ.
But in 1863 came an event which brought serious confusion to the
theological camp: Sir Charles Lyell, the most eminent of living
geologists, a man of deeply Christian feeling and of exceedingly
cautious temper, who had opposed the evolution theory of Lamarck
and declared his adherence to the idea of successive creations, then
published his work on the Antiquity of Man, and in this and other
utterances showed himself a complete though unwilling convert to the
fundamental ideas of Darwin. The blow was serious in many ways, and
especially so in two--first, as withdrawing all foundation in fact from
the scriptural chronology, and secondly, as discrediting the creation
theory. The blow was not unexpected; in various review articles against
the Darwinian theory there had been appeals to Lyell, at times almost
piteous, "not to flinch from the truths he had formerly proclaimed." But
Lyell, like the honest man he was, yielded unreservedly to the mass of
new proofs arrayed on the side of evolution against that of creation.
At the same time came Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, giving new and
most cogent arguments in favour of evolution by natural selection.
In 1871 was published Darwin's Descent of Man. Its doctrine had been
anticipated by critics of his previous books, but it made, none the
less, a great stir; again the opposing army trooped forth, though
evidently with much less heart than before. A few were very violent.
The Dublin University Magazine, after the traditional Hibernian fashion,
charged Mr. Darwin with seeking "to displace God by the unerring action
of vagary," and with being "resolved to hunt God out of the world." But
most notable from the side of the older Church was the elaborate
answer to Darwin's book by the eminent French Catholic physician, Dr.
Constantin James. In his work, On Darwinism, or the Man-Ape, published
at Paris in 1877, Dr. James not only refuted Darwin scientifically but
poured contempt on his book, calling it "a fairy tale," and insisted
that a work "so fantastic and so burlesque" was, doubtless, only a huge
joke, like Erasmus's Praise of Folly, or Montesquieu's Persian Letters.
The princes of the Church were delighted. The Cardinal Archbishop
of Paris assured the author that the book had become his "spiritual
reading," and begged him to send a copy to the Pope himself. His
Holiness, Pope Pius IX, acknowledged the gift in a remarkable letter. He
thanked his dear son, the writer, for the book in which he "refutes
so well the aberrations of Darwinism." "A system," His Holiness adds,
"which is repugnant at once to history, to the tradition of all peoples,
to exact science, to observed facts, and even to Reason herself, would
seem to need no refutation, did not alienation from God and the leaning
toward materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek a support in all this
tissue of fables.... And, in fact, pride, after rejecting the Creator of
all things and proclaiming man independent, wishing him to be his own
king, his own priest, and his own God--pride goes so far as to degrade
man himself to the level of the unreasoning brutes, perhaps even of
lifeless matter, thus unconsciously confirming the Divine declaration,
WHEN PRIDE COMETH, THEN COMETH SHAME. But the corruption of this age,
the machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that
such fancies, altogether absurd though they are, should--since they
borrow the mask of science--be refuted by true science." Wherefore the
Pope thanked Dr. James for his book, "so opportune and so perfectly
appropriate to the exigencies of our time," and bestowed on him the
apostolic benediction. Nor was this brief all. With it there came
a second, creating the author an officer of the Papal Order of St.
Sylvester. The cardinal archbishop assured the delighted physician that
such a double honour of brief and brevet was perhaps unprecedented, and
suggested only that in a new edition of his book he should "insist a
little more on the relation existing between the narratives of Genesis
and the discoveries of modern science, in such fashion as to convince
the most incredulous of their perfect agreement." The prelate urged also
a more dignified title. The proofs of this new edition were accordingly
all submitted to His Eminence, and in 1882 it appeared as Moses and
Darwin: the Man of Genesis compared with the Man-Ape, or Religious
Education opposed to Atheistic. No wonder the cardinal embraced the
author, thanking him in the name of science and religion. "We have at
last," he declared, "a handbook which we can safely put into the hands
of youth."
Scarcely less vigorous were the champions of English Protestant
orthodoxy. In an address at Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone remarked: "Upon
the grounds of what is termed evolution God is relieved of the labour
of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws he is discharged from
governing the world"; and, when Herbert Spencer called his attention
to the fact that Newton with the doctrine of gravitation and with the
science of physical astronomy is open to the same charge, Mr. Gladstone
retreated in the Contemporary Review under one of his characteristic
clouds of words. The Rev. Dr. Coles, in the British and Foreign
Evangelical Review, declared that the God of evolution is not the
Christian's God. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, in a sermon preached before
the University of Oxford, pathetically warned the students that "those
who refuse to accept the history of the creation of our first parents
according to its obvious literal intention, and are for substituting the
modern dream of evolution in its place, cause the entire scheme of man's
salvation to collapse." Dr. Pusey also came into the fray with most
earnest appeals against the new doctrine, and the Rev. Gavin Carlyle
was perfervid on the same side. The Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge published a book by the Rev. Mr. Birks, in which the evolution
doctrine was declared to be "flatly opposed to the fundamental doctrine
of creation." Even the London Times admitted a review stigmatizing
Darwin's Descent of Man as an "utterly unsupported hypothesis," full of
"unsubstantiated premises, cursory investigations, and disintegrating
speculations," and Darwin himself as "reckless and unscientific."(24)
(24) For the French theological opposition to the Darwinian theory, see
Pozzy, La Terre at le Recit Biblique de la Creation, 1874, especially
pp. 353, 363; also Felix Ducane, Etudes sur la Transformisme, 1876,
especially pp. 107 to 119. As to Fabre d'Envieu, see especially
his Proposition xliii. For the Abbe Desogres, "former Professor of
Philosophy and Theology," see his Erreurs Modernes, Paris, 1878, pp. 677
and 595 to 598. For Monseigneur Segur, see his La Foi devant la Science
Moderne, sixth ed., Paris, 1874, pp. 23, 34, etc. For Herbert Spencer's
reply to Mr. Gladstone, see his study of Sociology; for the passage in
the Dublin Review, see the issue for July, 1871. For the Review in the
London Times, see Nature for April 20, 1871. For Gavin Carlyle, see The
Battle of Unbelief, 1870, pp. 86 and 171. For the attacks by Michelis
and Hagermann, see Natur und Offenbarung, Munster, 1861 to 1869. For
Schund, see his Darwin's Hypothese und ihr Verhaaltniss zu Religion
und Moral, Stuttgart, 1869. For Luthardt, see Fundamental Truths of
Christianity, translated by Sophia Taylor, second ed., Edinburgh, 1869.
For Rougemont, see his L'Homme et le Singe, Neuchatel, 1863 (also
in German trans.). For Constantin James, see his Mes Entretiens avec
l'Empereur Don Pedro sur la Darwinisme, Paris, 1888, where the papal
briefs are printed in full. For the English attacks on Darwin's Descent
of Man, see the Edinburgh Review July, 1871 and elsewhere; the Dublin
Review, July, 1871; the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, April,
1886. See also The Scripture Doctrine of Creation, by the Rev. T.
R. Birks, London, 1873, published by the S. P. C. K. For Dr. Pusey's
attack, see his Unscience, not Science, adverse to Faith, 1878; also
Darwin's Life and Letters, vol. ii, pp. 411, 412.
But it was noted that this second series of attacks, on the Descent
of Man, differed in one remarkable respect--so far as England was
concerned--from those which had been made over ten years before on the
Origin of Species. While everything was done to discredit Darwin, to
pour contempt upon him, and even, of all things in the world, to make
him--the gentlest of mankind, only occupied with the scientific side of
the problem--"a persecutor of Christianity," while his followers were
represented more and more as charlatans or dupes, there began to be in
the most influential quarters careful avoidance of the old argument that
evolution--even by natural selection--contradicts Scripture.
It began to be felt that this was dangerous ground. The defection of
Lyell had, perhaps, more than anything else, started the question among
theologians who had preserved some equanimity, "WHAT IF, AFTER ALL, THE
DARWINIAN THEORY SHOULD PROVE TO BE TRUE?" Recollections of the position
in which the Roman Church found itself after the establishment of the
doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo naturally came into the minds of
the more thoughtful. In Germany this consideration does not seem to
have occurred at quite so early a day. One eminent Lutheran clergyman at
Magdeburg called on his hearers to choose between Darwin and religion;
Delitszch, in his new commentary on Genesis, attempted to bring science
back to recognise human sin as an important factor in creation; Prof.
Heinrich Ewald, while carefully avoiding any sharp conflict between the
scriptural doctrine and evolution, comforted himself by covering Darwin
and his followers with contempt; Christlieb, in his address before the
Evangelical Alliance at New York in 1873, simply took the view that
the tendencies of the Darwinian theory were "toward infidelity," but
declined to make any serious battle on biblical grounds; the Jesuit,
Father Pesch, in Holland, drew up in Latin, after the old scholastic
manner, a sort of general indictment of evolution, of which one may say
that it was interesting--as interesting as the display of a troop in
chain armour and with cross-bows on a nineteenth-century battlefield.
From America there came new echoes. Among the myriad attacks on the
Darwinian theory by Protestants and Catholics two should be especially
mentioned. The first of these was by Dr. Noah Porter, President of
Yale College, an excellent scholar, an interesting writer, a noble
man, broadly tolerant, combining in his thinking a curious mixture
of radicalism and conservatism. While giving great latitude to the
evolutionary teaching in the university under his care, he felt it his
duty upon one occasion to avow his disbelief in it; but he was too wise
a man to suggest any necessary antagonism between it and the Scriptures.
He confined himself mainly to pointing out the tendency of the evolution
doctrine in this form toward agnosticism and pantheism.
To those who knew and loved him, and had noted the genial way in which
by wise neglect he had allowed scientific studies to flourish at Yale,
there was an amusing side to all this. Within a stone's throw of his
college rooms was the Museum of Paleontology, in which Prof. Marsh
had laid side by side, among other evidences of the new truth, that
wonderful series of specimens showing the evolution of the horse from
the earliest form of the animal, "not larger than a fox, with five
toes," through the whole series up to his present form and size--that
series which Huxley declared an absolute proof of the existence of
natural selection as an agent in evolution. In spite of the veneration
and love which all Yale men felt for President Porter, it was hardly
to be expected that these particular arguments of his would have much
permanent effect upon them when there was constantly before their eyes
so convincing a refutation.
But a far more determined opponent was the Rev. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton;
his anger toward the evolution doctrine was bitter: he denounced it as
thoroughly "atheistic"; he insisted that Christians "have a right to
protest against the arraying of probabilities against the clear evidence
of the Scriptures"; he even censured so orthodox a writer as the Duke of
Argyll, and declared that the Darwinian theory of natural selection is
"utterly inconsistent with the Scriptures," and that "an absent God, who
does nothing, is to us no God"; that "to ignore design as manifested in
God's creation is to dethrone God"; that "a denial of design in Nature
is virtually a denial of God"; and that "no teleologist can be a
Darwinian." Even more uncompromising was another of the leading
authorities at the same university--the Rev. Dr. Duffield. He declared
war not only against Darwin but even against men like Asa Gray, Le
Conte, and others, who had attempted to reconcile the new theory with
the Bible: he insisted that "evolutionism and the scriptural account of
the origin of man are irreconcilable"--that the Darwinian theory is
"in direct conflict with the teaching of the apostle, 'All scripture
is given by inspiration of God'"; he pointed out, in his opposition to
Darwin's Descent of Man and Lyell's Antiquity of Man, that in the Bible
"the genealogical links which connect the Israelites in Egypt with
Adam and Eve in Eden are explicitly given." These utterances of Prof.
Duffield culminated in a declaration which deserves to be cited as
showing that a Presbyterian minister can "deal damnation round the land"
ex cathedra in a fashion quite equal to that of popes and bishops. It is
as follows: "If the development theory of the origin of man," wrote
Dr. Duffield in the Princeton Review, "shall in a little while take
its place--as doubtless it will--with other exploded scientific
speculations, then they who accept it with its proper logical
consequences will in the life to come have their portion with those who
in this life 'know not God and obey not the gospel of his Son.'"
Fortunately, at about the time when Darwin's Descent of Man was
published, there had come into Princeton University "deus ex machina"
in the person of Dr. James McCosh. Called to the presidency, he at once
took his stand against teachings so dangerous to Christianity as those
of Drs. Hodge, Duffield, and their associates. In one of his personal
confidences he has let us into the secret of this matter. With that hard
Scotch sense which Thackeray had applauded in his well-known verses, he
saw that the most dangerous thing which could be done to Christianity
at Princeton was to reiterate in the university pulpit, week after week,
solemn declarations that if evolution by natural selection, or indeed
evolution at all, be true, the Scriptures are false. He tells us that he
saw that this was the certain way to make the students unbelievers;
he therefore not only checked this dangerous preaching but preached an
opposite doctrine. With him began the inevitable compromise, and, in
spite of mutterings against him as a Darwinian, he carried the day.
Whatever may be thought of his general system of philosophy, no one can
deny his great service in neutralizing the teachings of his predecessors
and colleagues--so dangerous to all that is essential in Christianity.
Other divines of strong sense in other parts of the country began to
take similar ground--namely, that men could be Christians and at the
same time Darwinians. There appeared, indeed, here and there, curious
discrepancies: thus in 1873 the Monthly Religious Magazine of Boston
congratulated its readers that the Rev. Mr. Burr had "demolished the
evolution theory, knocking the breath of life out of it and throwing it
to the dogs." This amazing performance by the Rev. Mr. Burr was repeated
in a very striking way by Bishop Keener before the Oecumenical Council
of Methodism at Washington in 1891. In what the newspapers described
as an "admirable speech," he refuted evolution doctrines by saying that
evolutionists had "only to make a journey of twelve hours from the place
where he was then standing to find together the bones of the muskrat,
the opossum, the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus." He asserted that
Agassiz--whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think
an evolutionist--when he visited these beds near Charleston, declared:
"These old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed the work of a
lifetime." And the Methodist prelate ended by saying: "Now, gentlemen,
brethren, take these facts home with you; get down and look at them.
This is the watch that was under the steam hammer--the doctrine of
evolution; and this steam hammer is the wonderful deposit of the Ashley
beds." Exhibitions like these availed little. While the good bishop amid
vociferous applause thus made comically evident his belief that Agassiz
was a Darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording
in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an
evolution by natural selection. While the Rev. Mr. Burr was so loudly
praised for "throwing Darwinism to the dogs," Marsh was completing his
series leading from the five-toed ungulates to the horse. While Dr.
Tayler Lewis at Union, and Drs. Hodge and Duffield at Princeton, were
showing that if evolution be true the biblical accounts must be false,
the indefatigable Yale professor was showing his cretaceous birds, and
among them Hesperornis and Ichthyornis with teeth. While in Germany
Luthardt, Schund, and their compeers were demonstrating that Scripture
requires a belief in special and separate creations, the Archaeopteryx,
showing a most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was
discovered.
While in France Monseigneur Segur and others were indulging in diatribes
against "a certain Darwin," Gaudry and Filhol were discovering a
striking series of "missing links" among the carnivora. In view of the
proofs accumulating in favour of the new evolutionary hypothesis, the
change in the tone of controlling theologians was now rapid. From all
sides came evidences of desire to compromise with the theory. Strict
adherents of the biblical text pointed significantly to the verses in
Genesis in which the earth and sea were made to bring forth birds and
fishes, and man was created out of the dust of the ground. Men of larger
mind like Kingsley and Farrar, with English and American broad churchmen
generally, took ground directly in Darwin's favour. Even Whewell took
pains to show that there might be such a thing as a Darwinian argument
for design in Nature; and the Rev. Samuel Houghton, of the Royal
Society, gave interesting suggestions of a divine design in evolution.
Both the great English universities received the new teaching as a
leaven: at Oxford, in the very front of the High Church party at Keble
College, was elaborated a statement that the evolution doctrine is "an
advance in our theological thinking." And Temple, Bishop of London,
perhaps the most influential thinker then in the Anglican episcopate,
accepted the new revelation in the following words: "It seems something
more majestic, more befitting him to whom a thousand years are as one
day, thus to impress his will once for all on his creation, and provide
for all the countless varieties by this one original impress, than
by special acts of creation to be perpetually modifying what he had
previously made."
In Scotland the Duke of Argyll, head and front of the orthodox party,
dissenting in many respects from Darwin's full conclusions, made
concessions which badly shook the old position.
Curiously enough, from the Roman Catholic Church, bitter as some of its
writers had been, now came argument to prove that the Catholic faith
does not prevent any one from holding the Darwinian theory, and
especially a declaration from an authority eminent among American
Catholics--a declaration which has a very curious sound, but which it
would be ungracious to find fault with--that "the doctrine of evolution
is no more in opposition to the doctrine of the Catholic Church than is
the Copernican theory or that of Galileo."
Here and there, indeed, men of science like Dawson, Mivart, and Wigand,
in view of theological considerations, sought to make conditions; but
the current was too strong, and eminent theologians in every country
accepted natural selection as at least a very important part in the
mechanism of evolution.
At the death of Darwin it was felt that there was but one place in
England where his body should be laid, and that this place was next the
grave of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. The noble address of
Canon Farrar at his funeral was echoed from many pulpits in Europe and
America, and theological opposition as such was ended. Occasionally
appeared, it is true, a survival of the old feeling: the Rev. Dr. Laing
referred to the burial of Darwin in Westminster Abbey as "a proof that
England is no longer a Christian country," and added that this burial
was a desecration--that this honour was given him because he had been
"the chief promoter of the mock doctrine of evolution of the species and
the ape descent of man."
Still another of these belated prophets was, of all men, Thomas Carlyle.
Soured and embittered, in the same spirit which led him to find more
heroism in a marauding Viking or in one of Frederick the Great's
generals than in Washington, or Lincoln, or Grant, and which caused him
to see in the American civil war only the burning out of a foul chimney,
he, with the petulance natural to a dyspeptic eunuch, railed at Darwin
as an "apostle of dirt worship."
The last echoes of these utterances reverberated between Scotland and
America. In the former country, in 1885, the Rev. Dr. Lee issued a
volume declaring that, if the Darwinian view be true, "there is no place
for God"; that "by no method of interpretation can the language of Holy
Scripture be made wide enough to re-echo the orang-outang theory of
man's natural history"; that "Darwinism reverses the revelation of God"
and "implies utter blasphemy against the divine and human character of
our Incarnate Lord"; and he was pleased to call Darwin and his followers
"gospellers of the gutter." In one of the intellectual centres
of America the editor of a periodical called The Christian urged
frantically that "the battle be set in array, and that men find out
who is on the Lord's side and who is on the side of the devil and the
monkeys."
To the honour of the Church of England it should be recorded that a
considerable number of her truest men opposed such utterances as these,
and that one of them--Farrar, Archdeacon of Westminster--made a protest
worthy to be held in perpetual remembrance. While confessing his own
inability to accept fully the new scientific belief, he said: "We should
consider it disgraceful and humiliating to try to shake it by an
ad captandum argument, or by a clap-trap platform appeal to the
unfathomable ignorance and unlimited arrogance of a prejudiced assembly.
We should blush to meet it with an anathema or a sneer."
All opposition had availed nothing; Darwin's work and fame were secure.
As men looked back over his beautiful life--simple, honest, tolerant,
kindly--and thought upon his great labours in the search for truth, all
the attacks faded into nothingness.
There were indeed some dark spots, which as time goes on appear darker.
At Trinity College, Cambridge, Whewell, the "omniscient," author of the
History of the Inductive Sciences, refused to allow a copy of the Origin
of Species to be placed in the library. At multitudes of institutions
under theological control--Protestant as well as Catholic--attempts were
made to stamp out or to stifle evolutionary teaching. Especially was
this true for a time in America, and the case of the American College
at Beyrout, where nearly all the younger professors were dismissed for
adhering to Darwin's views, is worthy of remembrance. The treatment of
Dr. Winchell at the Vanderbilt University in Tennessee showed the same
spirit; one of the truest of men, devoted to science but of deeply
Christian feeling, he was driven forth for views which centred in the
Darwinian theory.
Still more striking was the case of Dr. Woodrow. He had, about 1857,
been appointed to a professorship of Natural Science as connected with
Revealed Religion, in the Presbyterian Seminary at Columbia, South
Carolina. He was a devoted Christian man, and his training had led him
to accept the Presbyterian standards of faith. With great gifts
for scientific study he visited Europe, made a most conscientious
examination of the main questions under discussion, and adopted the
chief points in the doctrine of evolution by natural selection. A
struggle soon began. A movement hostile to him grew more and more
determined, and at last, in spite of the efforts made in his behalf by
the directors of the seminary and by a large and broad-minded minority
in the representative bodies controlling it, an orthodox storm, raised
by the delegates from various Presbyterian bodies, drove him from
his post. Fortunately, he was received into a professorship at the
University of South Carolina, where he has since taught with more power
than ever before.
This testimony to the faith by American provincial Protestantism was
very properly echoed from Spanish provincial Catholicism. In the year
1878 a Spanish colonial man of science, Dr. Chil y Marango, published a
work on the Canary Islands. But Dr. Chil had the imprudence to sketch,
in his introduction, the modern hypothesis of evolution, and to exhibit
some proofs, found in the Canary Islands, of the barbarism of primitive
man. The ecclesiastical authorities, under the lead of Bishop Urquinaona
y Bidot, at once grappled with this new idea. By a solemn act they
declared it "falsa, impia, scandalosa"; all persons possessing copies
of the work were ordered to surrender them at once to the
proper ecclesiastics, and the author was placed under the major
excommunication.
But all this opposition may be reckoned among the last expiring
convulsions of the old theologic theory. Even from the new Catholic
University at Washington has come an utterance in favour of the new
doctrine, and in other universities in the Old World and in the New the
doctrine of evolution by natural selection has asserted its right to
full and honest consideration. More than this, it is clearly evident
that the stronger men in the Church have, in these latter days, not
only relinquished the struggle against science in this field, but have
determined frankly and manfully to make an alliance with it. In two
very remarkable lectures given in 1892 at the parish church of Rochdale,
Wilson, Archdeacon of Manchester, not only accepted Darwinism as true,
but wrought it with great argumentative power into a higher view of
Christianity; and what is of great significance, these sermons were
published by the same Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge
which only a few years before had published the most bitter attacks
against the Darwinian theory. So, too, during the year 1893, Prof. Henry
Drummond, whose praise is in all the dissenting churches, developed a
similar view most brilliantly in a series of lectures delivered before
the American Chautauqua schools, and published in one of the most
widespread of English orthodox newspapers.
Whatever additional factors may be added to natural selection--and
Darwin himself fully admitted that there might be others--the theory of
an evolution process in the formation of the universe and of animated
nature is established, and the old theory of direct creation is gone
forever. In place of it science has given us conceptions far more noble,
and opened the way to an argument for design infinitely more beautiful
than any ever developed by theology.(24)
(24) For the causes of bitterness shown regarding the Darwinian
hypothesis, see Reusch, Bibel und Natur, vol. ii, pp. 46 et seq. For
hostility in the United States regarding the Darwinian theory, see,
among a multitude of writers, the following: Dr. Charles Hodge, of
Princeton, monograph, What is Darwinism? New York, 1874; also his
Systematic Theology, New York, 1872, vol. ii, part 2, Anthropology; also
The Light by which we see Light, or Nature and the Scriptures, Vedder
Lectures, 1875, Rutgers College, New York, 1875; also Positivism and
Evolutionism, in the American Catholic Quarterly, October 1877, pp. 607,
619; and in the same number, Professor Huxley and Evolution, by Rev. A.
M. Kirsch, pp. 662, 664; The Logic of Evolution, by Prof. Edward F. X.
McSweeney, D. D., July, 1879, p. 561; Das Hexaemeron und die Geologie,
von P. Eirich, Pastor in Albany, N. Y., Lutherischer Concordia-Verlag,
St. Louis, Mo., 1878, pp. 81, 82, 84, 92-94; Evolutionism respecting
Man and the Bible, by John T. Duffield, of Princeton, January, 1878,
Princeton Review, pp. 151, 153, 154, 158, 159, 160, 188; a Lecture on
Evolution, before the Nineteenth Century Club of New York, May 25, 1886,
by ex-President Noah Porter, pp. 4, 26-29. For the laudatory notice of
the Rev. E. F. Burr's demolition of evolution in his book Pater Mundi,
see Monthly Religious Magazine, Boston, May, 1873, p. 492. Concerning
the removal of Dr. James Woodrow, Professor of Natural Science in the
Columbia Theological Seminary, see Evolution or Not, in the New York
Weekly Sun, October 24, 1888. For the dealings of Spanish
ecclesiastics with Dr. Chil and his Darwinian exposition, see the Revue
d'Anthropologie, cited in the Academy for April 6, 1878; see also the
Catholic World, xix, 433, A Discussion with an Infidel, directed against
Dr. Louis Buchner and his Kraft und Stoff; also Mind and Matter, by Rev.
james Tait, of Canada, p. 66 (in the third edition the author bemoans
the "horrible plaudits" that "have accompanied every effort to establish
man's brutal descent"); also The Church Journal, New York, May 28, 1874.
For the effort in favour of a teleological evolution, see Rev. Samuel
Houghton, F. R. S., Principles of Animal Mechanics, London, 1873,
preface and p. 156 and elsewhere. For the details of the persecutions
of Drs. Winchell and Woodrow, and of the Beyrout professors, with
authorities cited, see my chapter on The Fall of Man and Anthropology.
For more liberal views among religious thinkers regarding the Darwinian
theory, and for efforts to mitigate and adapt it to theological
views, see, among the great mass of utterances, the following: Charles
Kingsley's letters to Darwin, November 18, 1859, in Darwin's Life and
Letters, vol. ii, p. 82; Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin, December 24,
1859, see ibid., vol. ii, pp. 356-359; the same to Miss Gerard, January
2, 1860, see Sedgewick's Life and Letters, vol. ii, pp. 359, 360; the
same in The Spectator, London, March 24, 1860; The Rambler, March 1860,
cited by Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 30; The Dublin Review, May,
1860; The Christian Examiner, May, 1860; Charles Kingsley to F. D.
Maurice in 1863, in Kingsley's Life, vol. ii, p. 171; Adam Sedgwick
to Livingstone (the explorer), March 16, 1865, in Life and Letters of
Sedgwick, vol. ii, pp. 410-412; the Duke of Argyll, The Reign of Law,
New York, pp. 16, 18, 31, 116, 117, 120, 159; Joseph P. Thompson, D. D.,
LL.D., Man in Genesis and Geology, New York, 1870, pp. 48, 49, 82; Canon
H. P. Liddon, Sermons preached before the University of Oxford,
1871, Sermon III; St. George Mivart, Evolution and its Consequences,
Contemporary Review, Jan. 1872; British and Foreign Evangelical Review,
1872, article on The Theory of Evolution; The Lutheran Quarterly,
Gettysburg, Pa., April, 1872, article by Rev. Cyrus Thomas, Assistant
United States Geological Survey on The Descent of Man, pp. 214, 239,
372-376; The Lutheran Quarterly, July, 1873, article on Some Assumptions
against Christianity, by Rev. C. A. Stork, Baltimore, Md., pp. 325, 326;
also, in the same number, see a review of Dr. Burr's Pater Mundi, pp.
474, 475, and contrast with the review in the Andover Review of that
period; an article in the Religious Magazine and Monthly Review, Boston,
on Religion and Evolution, by Rev. S. R. Calthrop, September, 1873,
p. 200; The Popular Science Monthly, January, 1874, article Genesis,
Geology, and Evolution; article by Asa Gray, Nature, London, June 4,
1874; Materialism, by Rev. W. Streissguth, Lutheran Quarterly, July,
1875, originally written in German, and translated by J. G. Morris,
D. D., pp. 406, 408; Darwinismus und Christenthum, von R. Steck, Ref.
Pfarrer in Dresden, Berlin, 1875, pp. 5,6, and 26, reprinted from
the Protestantische Kirchenzeitung, and issued as a tract by the
Protestantenverein; Rev. W. E. Adams, article in the Lutheran Quarterly,
April, 1879, on Evolution: Shall it be Atheistic? John Wood, Bible
Anticipations of Modern Science, 1880, pp. 18, 19, 22; Lutheran
Quarterly, January, 1881, Some Postulates of the New Ethics, by Rev.
C. A. Stork, D. D.; Lutheran Quarterly, January, 1882, The Religion of
Evolution as against the Religion of Jesus, by Prof. W. H. Wynn, Iowa
State Agricultural College--this article was republished as a pamphlet;
Canon Liddon, prefatory note to sermon on The Recovery of St. Thomas,
pp. 4, 11, 12, 13, and 26, preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, April 23,
1882; Lutheran Quarterly, January 1882, Evolution and the Scripture, by
Rev. John A. Earnest, pp. 101, 105; Glimpses in the Twilight, by Rev.
F. G. Lee, D. D., Edinburgh, 1885, especially pp. 18 and 19; the Hibbert
Lectures for 1883, by Rev. Charles Beard, pp. 392, 393, et seq.; F.
W. Farrar, D. D., Canon of Westminster, The History of Interpretation,
being the Bampton Lectures for 1885, pp. 426, 427; Bishop Temple,
Bampton Lectures, pp. 184-186; article Evolution in the Dictionary
of Religion, edited by Rev. William Benham, 1887; Prof. Huxley, An
Episcopal Trilogy, Nineteenth Century, November, 1887--this article
discusses three sermons delivered by the bishops of Carlisle, Bedford,
and Manchester, in Manchester Cathedral, during the meeting of the
British Association, September, 1887--these sermons were afterward
published in pamphlet form under the title The Advance of Science; John
Fiske, Darwinism, and Other Essays, Boston, 1888; Harriet Mackenzie,
Evolution illuminating the Bible, London, 1891, dedicated to Prof.
Huxley; H. E. Rye, Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, The Early
Narratives of Genesis, London, 1892, preface, pp. vii-ix, pp. 7, 9, 11;
Rev. G. M. Searle, of the Catholic University, Washington, article in
the Catholic World, November, 1892, pp. 223, 227, 229, 231; for the
statement from Keble College, see Rev. Mr. Illingworth, in Lux Mundi.
For Bishop Temple, see citation in Laing. For a complete and admirable
acceptance of the evolutionary theory as lifting Christian doctrine and
practice to a higher plane, with suggestions for a new theology, see two
Sermons by Archdeacon Wilson, of Manchester, S. P. C. K.. London,
and Young & Co., New York, 1893; and for a characteristically lucid
statement of the most recent development of evolution doctrines, and the
relations of Spencer, Weismann, Galton, and others to them, see Lester
F. Ward's Address as President of the Biological Society, Washington,
1891; also, recent articles in the leading English reviews. For a
brilliant glorification of evolution by natural selection as a doctrine
necessary to then highest and truest view of Christianity, see Prof.
Drummond's Chautauqua Lectures, published in the British Weekly, London,
from April 20 to May 11, 1893.
CHAPTER II. GEOGRAPHY.
I. THE FORM OF THE EARTH.
Among various rude tribes we find survivals of a primitive idea that the
earth is a flat table or disk, ceiled, domed, or canopied by the sky,
and that the sky rests upon the mountains as pillars. Such a belief is
entirely natural; it conforms to the appearance of things, and hence at
a very early period entered into various theologies.
In the civilizations of Chaldea and Egypt it was very fully developed.
The Assyrian inscriptions deciphered in these latter years represent the
god Marduk as in the beginning creating the heavens and the earth: the
earth rests upon the waters; within it is the realm of the dead; above
it is spread "the firmament"--a solid dome coming down to the horizon on
all sides and resting upon foundations laid in the "great waters" which
extend around the earth.
On the east and west sides of this domed firmament are doors, through
which the sun enters in the morning and departs at night; above it
extends another ocean, which goes down to the ocean surrounding the
earth at the horizon on all sides, and which is supported and kept away
from the earth by the firmament. Above the firmament and the upper ocean
which it supports is the interior of heaven.
The Egyptians considered the earth as a table, flat and oblong, the sky
being its ceiling--a huge "firmament" of metal. At the four corners of
the earth were the pillars supporting this firmament, and on this solid
sky were the "waters above the heavens." They believed that, when chaos
was taking form, one of the gods by main force raised the waters on high
and spread them out over the firmament; that on the under side of this
solid vault, or ceiling, or firmament, the stars were suspended to light
the earth, and that the rains were caused by the letting down of the
waters through its windows. This idea and others connected with it seem
to have taken strong hold of the Egyptian priestly caste, entering
into their theology and sacred science: ceilings of great temples, with
stars, constellations, planets, and signs of the zodiac figured upon
them, remain to-day as striking evidences of this.
In Persia we have theories of geography based upon similar conceptions
and embalmed in sacred texts.
From these and doubtless from earlier sources common to them all came
geographical legacies to the Hebrews. Various passages in their sacred
books, many of them noble in conception and beautiful in form, regarding
"the foundation of the earth upon the waters," "the fountains of the
great deep," "the compass upon the face of the depth," the "firmament,"
the "corners of the earth," the "pillars of heaven," the "waters above
the firmament," the "windows of heaven," and "doors of heaven," point us
back to both these ancient springs of thought.(25)
(25) For survivals of the early idea, among the Eskimos, of the sky as
supported by mountains, and, among sundry Pacific islanders, of the sky
as a firmament or vault of stone, see Tylor, Early History of Mankind,
second edition, London, 1870, chap. xi; Spencer, Sociology, vol. i, chap
vii, also Andrew Lang, La Mythologie, Paris, 1886, pp. 68-73. For the
Babylonian theories, see George Smith's Chaldean Genesis, and especially
the German translation by Delitzsch, Leipsic, 1876; also, Jensen, Die
Kosmogonien der Babylonier, Strasburg, 1890; see especially in the
appendices, pp. 9 and 10, a drawing representing the whole Babylonian
scheme so closely followed in the Hebrew book Genesis. See also Lukas,
Die Grundbegriffe in den Kosmogonien der alten Volker, Leipsic, 1893,
for a most thorough summing up of the whole subject, with texts showing
the development of Hebrew out of Chaldean and Egyptian conceptions, pp.
44, etc.; also pp. 127 et seq. For the early view in India and
Persia, see citations from the Vedas and the Zend-Avesta in Lethaby,
Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, chap. i. For the Egyptian view, see
Champollion; also Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne, Maspero, and others. As
to the figures of the heavens upon the ceilings of Egyptian temples,
see Maspero, Archeologie Egyptienne, Paris, 1890; and for engravings of
them, see Lepsius, Denkmaler, vol. i, Bl. 41, and vol. ix, Abth. iv, Bl.
35; also the Description de l'Egypte, published by order of Napoleon,
tome ii, Pl. 14; also Prisse d'Avennes, Art Egyptien, Atlas, tome i, Pl.
35; and especially for a survival at the Temple of Denderah, see Denon,
Voyage en Egypte, Planches 129, 130. For the Egyptian idea of "pillars
of heaven," as alluded to on the stele of victory of Thotmes III,in the
Cairo Museum, see Ebers, Uarda, vol. ii, p. 175, note, Leipsic, 1877. For
a similar Babylonian belief, see Sayce's Herodotus, Appendix, p. 403.
For the belief of Hebrew scriptural writers in a solid "firmament,"
see especially Job, xxxviii, 18; also Smith's Bible Dictionary. For
engravings showing the earth and heaven above it as conceived by
Egyptians and Chaldeans, with "pillars of heaven" and "firmament," see
Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of Civilization, London, 1894, pp. 17 and 543.
But, as civilization was developed, there were evolved, especially among
the Greeks, ideas of the earth's sphericity. The Pythagoreans, Plato,
and Aristotle especially cherished them. These ideas were vague, they
were mixed with absurdities, but they were germ ideas, and even amid the
luxuriant growth of theology in the early Christian Church these germs
began struggling into life in the minds of a few thinking men, and these
men renewed the suggestion that the earth is a globe.(26)
(26) The agency of the Pythagoreans in first spreading the doctrine of
the earth's sphericity is generally acknowledged, but the first full and
clear utterance of it to the world was by Aristotle. Very fruitful, too,
was the statement of the new theory given by Plato in the Timaeus; see
Jowett's translation, 62, c. Also the Phaedo, pp.449 et seq. See also
Grote on Plato's doctrine on the sphericity of the earth; also Sir G. C.
Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, London, 1862, chap. iii, section i,
and note. Cicero's mention of the antipodes, and his reference to the
passage in the Timaeus, are even more remarkable than the latter, in
that they much more clearly foreshadow the modern doctrine. See his
Academic Questions, ii; also Tusc. Quest., i and v, 24. For a very full
summary of the views of the ancients on the sphericity of the earth,
see Kretschmer, Die physische Erkunde im christlichen Mittelalter,
Wien, 1889, pp. 35 et seq.; also Eiken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen
Weltanschauung, Stuttgart, 1887, Dritter Theil, chap. vi. For citations
and summaries, see Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences, vol. i, p. 189, and
St. Martin, Hist. de la Geog., Paris, 1873, p. 96; also Leopardi, Saggio
sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi, Firenze, 1851, chap. xii, pp.
184 et seq.
A few of the larger-minded fathers of the Church, influenced possibly
by Pythagorean traditions, but certainly by Aristotle and Plato, were
willing to accept this view, but the majority of them took fright at
once. To them it seemed fraught with dangers to Scripture, by which, of
course, they meant their interpretation of Scripture. Among the first
who took up arms against it was Eusebius. In view of the New Testament
texts indicating the immediately approaching, end of the world, he
endeavoured to turn off this idea by bringing scientific studies
into contempt. Speaking of investigators, he said, "It is not through
ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their
useless labour, that we think little of these matters, turning our
souls to better things." Basil of Caesarea declared it "a matter of no
interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or a disk, or
concave in the middle like a fan." Lactantius referred to the ideas
of those studying astronomy as "bad and senseless," and opposed the
doctrine of the earth's sphericity both from Scripture and reason.
St. John Chrysostom also exerted his influence against this scientific
belief; and Ephraem Syrus, the greatest man of the old Syrian Church,
widely known as the "lute of the Holy Ghost," opposed it no less
earnestly.
But the strictly biblical men of science, such eminent fathers and
bishops as Theophilus of Antioch in the second century, and Clement of
Alexandria in the third, with others in centuries following, were not
content with merely opposing what they stigmatized as an old heathen
theory; they drew from their Bibles a new Christian theory, to which
one Church authority added one idea and another, until it was fully
developed. Taking the survival of various early traditions, given in
the seventh verse of the first chapter of Genesis, they insisted on the
clear declarations of Scripture that the earth was, at creation, arched
over with a solid vault, "a firmament," and to this they added the
passages from Isaiah and the Psalms, in which it declared that the
heavens are stretched out "like a curtain," and again "like a tent to
dwell in." The universe, then, is like a house: the earth is its ground
floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs out
the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night. This
ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and in this is a
cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says, "like a bathing-tank,"
and containing "the waters which are above the firmament." These waters
are let down upon the earth by the Almighty and his angels through the
"windows of heaven." As to the movement of the sun, there was a citation
of various passages in Genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various
proportions, and this was thought to give ample proofs from the Bible
that the earth could not be a sphere.(27)
(27) For Eusebius, see the Proep. Ev., xv, 61. For Basil, see the
Hexaemeron, Hom. ix. For Lactantius, see his Inst. Div., lib. iii, cap.
3; also citations in Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sciences, London, 1857, vol.
i, p. 194, and in St. Martin, Histoire de la Geographie, pp. 216, 217.
For the views of St. John Chrysostom, Ephraem Syrus, and other great
churchmen, see Kretschmer as above, chap i.
In the sixth century this development culminated in what was nothing
less than a complete and detailed system of the universe, claiming to
be based upon Scripture, its author being the Egyptian monk Cosmas
Indicopleustes. Egypt was a great treasure-house of theologic thought
to various religions of antiquity, and Cosmas appears to have urged upon
the early Church this Egyptian idea of the construction of the world,
just as another Egyptian ecclesiastic, Athanasius, urged upon the Church
the Egyptian idea of a triune deity ruling the world. According to
Cosmas, the earth is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas.
It is four hundred days' journey long and two hundred broad. At the
outer edges of these four seas arise massive walls closing in the whole
structure and supporting the firmament or vault of the heavens, whose
edges are cemented to the walls. These walls inclose the earth and all
the heavenly bodies.
The whole of this theologico-scientific structure was built most
carefully and, as was then thought, most scripturally. Starting with the
expression applied in the ninth chapter of Hebrews to the tabernacle in
the desert, Cosmas insists, with other interpreters of his time, that it
gives the key to the whole construction of the world. The universe
is, therefore, made on the plan of the Jewish tabernacle--boxlike and
oblong. Going into details, he quotes the sublime words of Isaiah: "It
is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth;... that stretcheth out
the heavens like a curtain, and spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell
in"; and the passage in Job which speaks of the "pillars of heaven." He
works all this into his system, and reveals, as he thinks, treasures of
science.
This vast box is divided into two compartments, one above the other. In
the first of these, men live and stars move; and it extends up to the
first solid vault, or firmament, above which live the angels, a main
part of whose business it is to push and pull the sun and planets to and
fro. Next, he takes the text, "Let there be a firmament in the midst
of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," and other
texts from Genesis; to these he adds the text from the Psalms, "Praise
him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens"
then casts all, and these growths of thought into his crucible together,
finally brings out the theory that over this first vault is a vast
cistern containing "the waters." He then takes the expression in Genesis
regarding the "windows of heaven" and establishes a doctrine regarding
the regulation of the rain, to the effect that the angels not only push
and pull the heavenly bodies to light the earth, but also open and close
the heavenly windows to water it.
To understand the surface of the earth, Cosmas, following the methods
of interpretation which Origen and other early fathers of the Church had
established, studies the table of shew-bread in the Jewish tabernacle.
The surface of this table proves to him that the earth is flat, and
its dimensions prove that the earth is twice as long as broad; its four
corners symbolize the four seasons; the twelve loaves of bread,
the twelve months; the hollow about the table proves that the ocean
surrounds the earth. To account for the movement of the sun, Cosmas
suggests that at the north of the earth is a great mountain, and that
at night the sun is carried behind this; but some of the commentators
ventured to express a doubt here: they thought that the sun was pushed
into a pit at night and pulled out in the morning.
Nothing can be more touching in its simplicity than Cosmas's summing up
of his great argument, He declares, "We say therefore with Isaiah that
the heaven embracing the universe is a vault, with Job that it is joined
to the earth, and with Moses that the length of the earth is greater
than its breadth." The treatise closes with rapturous assertions that
not only Moses and the prophets, but also angels and apostles, agree to
the truth of his doctrine, and that at the last day God will condemn all
who do not accept it.
Although this theory was drawn from Scripture, it was also, as we have
seen, the result of an evolution of theological thought begun long
before the scriptural texts on which it rested were written. It was not
at all strange that Cosmas, Egyptian as he was, should have received
this old Nile-born doctrine, as we see it indicated to-day in the
structure of Egyptian temples, and that he should have developed it by
the aid of the Jewish Scriptures; but the theological world knew nothing
of this more remote evolution from pagan germs; it was received as
virtually inspired, and was soon regarded as a fortress of scriptural
truth. Some of the foremost men in the Church devoted themselves to
buttressing it with new texts and throwing about it new outworks of
theological reasoning; the great body of the faithful considered it a
direct gift from the Almighty. Even in the later centuries of the Middle
Ages John of San Geminiano made a desperate attempt to save it. Like
Cosmas, he takes the Jewish tabernacle as his starting-point, and shows
how all the newer ideas can be reconciled with the biblical accounts of
its shape, dimensions, and furniture.(28)
(28) For a notice of the views of Cosmas in connection with those of
Lactantius, Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and others, see Schoell,
Histoire de la Litterature Grecque, vol. vii, p. 37. The main scriptural
passages referred to are as follows: (1) Isaiah xi, 22; (2) Genesis
i, 6; (3) Genesis vii, 11; (4) Exodus xxiv, 10; (5) Job xxvi, 11, and
xxxvii, 18 (6) Psalm cxlviii, 4, and civ, 9; (7) Ezekiel i, 22-26. For
Cosmas's theory, see Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, Paris, 1706,
vol. ii, p.188; also pp. 298, 299. The text is illustrated with
engravings showing walls and solid vault (firmament), with the whole
apparatus of "fountains of the great deep," "windows of heaven," angels,
and the mountain behind which the sun is drawn. For reduction of one of
them, see Peschel, Gesschichte der Erdkunds, p. 98; also article
Maps, in Knight's Dictionary of Mechanics, New York, 1875. For curious
drawings showing Cosmas's scheme in a different way from that given by
Montfaucon, see extracts from a Vatican codex of the ninth century in
Garucci, Storia de l'Arte Christiana, vol. iii, pp. 70 et seq. For
a good discussion of Cosmas's ideas, see Santarem, Hist. de la
Cosmographie, vol. ii, pp. 8 et seq., and for a very thorough discussion
of its details, Kretschmer, as above. For still another theory, very
droll, and thought out on similar principles, see Mungo Park, cited
in De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 309. For Cosmas's joyful summing up, see
Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, vol. ii, p. 255. For the curious
survival in the thirteenth century of the old idea of the "waters above
the heavens," see the story in Gervase of Tilbury, how in his time some
people coming out of church in England found an anchor let down by a
rope out of the heavens, how there came voices from sailors above trying
to loose the anchor, and, finally, how a sailor came down the rope,
who, on reaching the earth, died as if drowned in water. See Gervase of
Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, edit. Liebrecht, Hanover, 1856, Prima Decisio,
cap. xiii. The work was written about 1211. For John of San Germiniano,
see his Summa de Exemplis, lib. ix, cap. 43. For the Egyptian
Trinitarian views, see Sharpe, History of Egypt, vol. i, pp. 94, 102.
From this old conception of the universe as a sort of house, with heaven
as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor, flowed important
theological ideas into heathen, Jewish, and Christian mythologies.
Common to them all are legends regarding attempts of mortals to invade
the upper apartment from the lower. Of such are the Greek legends of
the Aloidae, who sought to reach heaven by piling up mountains, and were
cast down; the Chaldean and Hebrew legends of the wicked who at Babel
sought to build "a tower whose top may reach heaven," which Jehovah
went down from heaven to see, and which he brought to naught by the
"confusion of tongues"; the Hindu legend of the tree which sought to
grow into heaven and which Brahma blasted; and the Mexican legend of the
giants who sought to reach heaven by building the Pyramid of Cholula,
and who were overthrown by fire from above.
Myths having this geographical idea as their germ developed in
luxuriance through thousands of years. Ascensions to heaven and descents
from it, "translations," "assumptions," "annunciations," mortals "caught
up" into it and returning, angels flying between it and the earth,
thunderbolts hurled down from it, mighty winds issuing from its corners,
voices speaking from the upper floor to men on the lower, temporary
openings of the floor of heaven to reveal the blessedness of the good,
"signs and wonders" hung out from it to warn the wicked, interventions
of every kind--from the heathen gods coming down on every sort of
errand, and Jehovah coming down to walk in Eden in the cool of the day,
to St. Mark swooping down into the market-place of Venice to break the
shackles of a slave--all these are but features in a vast evolution of
myths arising largely from this geographical germ.
Nor did this evolution end here. Naturally, in this view of things, if
heaven was a loft, hell was a cellar; and if there were ascensions
into one, there were descents into the other. Hell being so near,
interferences by its occupants with the dwellers of the earth just above
were constant, and form a vast chapter in medieval literature. Dante
made this conception of the location of hell still more vivid, and we
find some forms of it serious barriers to geographical investigation.
Many a bold navigator, who was quite ready to brave pirates and
tempests, trembled at the thought of tumbling with his ship into one of
the openings into hell which a widespread belief placed in the Atlantic
at some unknown distance from Europe. This terror among sailors was one
of the main obstacles in the great voyage of Columbus. In a medieval
text-book, giving science the form of a dialogue, occur the following
question and answer: "Why is the sun so red in the evening?" "Because he
looketh down upon hell."
But the ancient germ of scientific truth in geography--the idea of the
earth's sphericity--still lived. Although the great majority of the
early fathers of the Church, and especially Lactantius, had sought to
crush it beneath the utterances attributed to Isaiah, David, and
St. Paul, the better opinion of Eudoxus and Aristotle could not be
forgotten. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had even supported it.
Ambrose and Augustine had tolerated it, and, after Cosmas had held sway
a hundred years, it received new life from a great churchman of southern
Europe, Isidore of Seville, who, however fettered by the dominant
theology in many other things, braved it in this. In the eighth century
a similar declaration was made in the north of Europe by another great
Church authority, Bede. Against the new life thus given to the old
truth, the sacred theory struggled long and vigorously but in vain.
Eminent authorities in later ages, like Albert the Great, St. Thomas
Aquinas, Dante, and Vincent of Beauvais, felt obliged to accept the
doctrine of the earth's sphericity, and as we approach the modern period
we find its truth acknowledged by the vast majority of thinking men. The
Reformation did not at first yield fully to this better theory. Luther,
Melanchthon, and Calvin were very strict in their adherence to the exact
letter of Scripture. Even Zwingli, broad as his views generally were,
was closely bound down in this matter, and held to the opinion of the
fathers that a great firmament, or floor, separated the heavens from the
earth; that above it were the waters and angels, and below it the earth
and man.
The main scope given to independent thought on this general subject
among the Reformers was in a few minor speculations regarding the
universe which encompassed Eden, the exact character of the conversation
of the serpent with Eve, and the like.
In the times immediately following the Reformation matters were even
worse. The interpretations of Scripture by Luther and Calvin became as
sacred to their followers as the Scripture itself. When Calixt ventured,
in interpreting the Psalms, to question the accepted belief that "the
waters above the heavens" were contained in a vast receptacle upheld by
a solid vault, he was bitterly denounced as heretical.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century Musaeus interpreted the
accounts in Genesis to mean that first God made the heavens for the roof
or vault, and left it there on high swinging until three days later he
put the earth under it. But the new scientific thought as to the earth's
form had gained the day. The most sturdy believers were obliged to
adjust their, biblical theories to it as best they could.(29)
(29) For a discussion of the geographical views of Isidore and Bede, see
Santarem, Cosmographie, vol i, pp. 22-24. For the gradual acceptance
of the idea of the earth's sphericity after the eighth century, see
Kretschmer, pp. 51 et seq., where citations from a multitude of authors
are given. For the views of the Reformers, see Zockler, vol. i, pp. 679
and 693. For Calixt, Musaeus, and others, ibid., pp. 673-677 and 761.
II. THE DELINEATION OF THE EARTH.
Every great people of antiquity, as a rule, regarded its own central
city or most holy place as necessarily the centre of the earth.
The Chaldeans held that their "holy house of the gods" was the centre.
The Egyptians sketched the world under the form of a human figure,
in which Egypt was the heart, and the centre of it Thebes. For the
Assyrians, it was Babylon; for the Hindus, it was Mount Meru; for the
Greeks, so far as the civilized world was concerned, Olympus or the
temple at Delphi; for the modern Mohammedans, it is Mecca and its sacred
stone; the Chinese, to this day, speak of their empire as the "middle
kingdom." It was in accordance, then, with a simple tendency of human
thought that the Jews believed the centre of the world to be Jerusalem.
The book of Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem as in the middle of the earth,
and all other parts of the world as set around the holy city. Throughout
the "ages of faith" this was very generally accepted as a direct
revelation from the Almighty regarding the earth's form. St. Jerome, the
greatest authority of the early Church upon the Bible, declared, on
the strength of this utterance of the prophet, that Jerusalem could
be nowhere but at the earth's centre; in the ninth century Archbishop
Rabanus Maurus reiterated the same argument; in the eleventh
century Hugh of St. Victor gave to the doctrine another scriptural
demonstration; and Pope Urban, in his great sermon at Clermont urging
the Franks to the crusade, declared, "Jerusalem is the middle point of
the earth"; in the thirteenth century an ecclesiastical writer much in
vogue, the monk Caesarius of Heisterbach, declared, "As the heart in
the midst of the body, so is Jerusalem situated in the midst of our
inhabited earth,"--"so it was that Christ was crucified at the centre
of the earth." Dante accepted this view of Jerusalem as a certainty,
wedding it to immortal verse; and in the pious book of travels ascribed
to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages, it is
declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear
standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox.
Ezekiel's statement thus became the standard of orthodoxy to early
map-makers. The map of the world at Hereford Cathedral, the maps of
Andrea Bianco, Marino Sanuto, and a multitude of others fixed this view
in men's minds, and doubtless discouraged during many generations any
scientific statements tending to unbalance this geographical centre
revealed in Scripture.(30)
(30) For beliefs of various nations of antiquity that the earth's center
was in their most sacred place, see citations from Maspero, Charton,
Sayce, and others in Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, chap.
iv. As to the Greeks, we have typical statements in the Eumenides of
Aeschylus, where the stone in the altar at Delphi is repeatedly called
"the earth's navel"--which is precisely the expression used regarding
Jerusalem in the Septuagint translation of Ezekiel (see below). The
proof texts on which the mediaeval geographers mainly relied as to the
form of the earth were Ezekiel v, 5, and xxxviii, 12. The progress
of geographical knowledge evidently caused them to be softened down
somewhat in our King James's version; but the first of them reads, in
the Vulgate, "Ista est Hierusalem, in medio gentium posui eam et in
circuitu ejus terrae"; and the second reads, in the Vulgate, "in medio
terrae," and in the Septuagint, [Greek]. That the literal centre of the
earth was understood, see proof in St. Jerome, Commentat. in Ezekiel,
lib. ii; and for general proof, see Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori
popolari degli antichi, pp. 207, 208. For Rabanus Maurus, see his De
Universo, lib. xii, cap. 4, in Migne, tome cxi, p. 339. For Hugh of
St. Victor, se his De Situ Terrarum, cap. ii. For Dante's belief, see
Inferno, canto xxxiv, 112-115:
"E se' or sotto l'emisperio giunto, Ch' e opposito a quel che la gran secca
Coverchia, e sotto il cui colmo consunto Fu l'uom che nacque e visse senza pecca."
For orthodox geography in the Middle Ages, see Wright's Essays on
Archaeology, vol. ii, chapter on the map of the world in Hereford
Cathedral; also the rude maps in Cardinal d'Ailly's Ymago Mundi; also
copies of maps of Marino Sanuto and others in Peschel, Erdkunde, p. 210;
also Munster, Fac Simile dell' Atlante di Andrea Bianco, Venezia, 1869.
And for discussions of the whole subject, see Satarem, vol. ii, p. 295,
vol. iii, pp. 71, 183, 184, and elsewhere. For a brief summary with
citations, see Eiken, Geschichte, etc., pp. 622, 623.
Nor did medieval thinkers rest with this conception. In accordance with
the dominant view that physical truth must be sought by theological
reasoning, the doctrine was evolved that not only the site of the cross
on Calvary marked the geographical centre of the world, but that on this
very spot had stood the tree which bore the forbidden fruit in Eden.
Thus was geography made to reconcile all parts of the great theologic
plan. This doctrine was hailed with joy by multitudes; and we find in
the works of medieval pilgrims to Palestine, again and again, evidence
that this had become precious truth to them, both in theology and
geography. Even as late as 1664 the eminent French priest Eugene Roger,
in his published travels in Palestine, dwelt upon the thirty-eighth
chapter of Ezekiel, coupled with a text from Isaiah, to prove that the
exact centre of the earth is a spot marked on the pavement of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, and that on this spot once stood the tree which
bore the forbidden fruit and the cross of Christ.(31)
(31) For the site of the cross on Calvary, as the point where stood "the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil" in Eden, at the centre of the
earth, see various Eastern travellers cited in Tobler; but especially
the travels of Bishop Arculf in the Holy Land, in Wright's Early Travels
in Palestine, p. 8; also Travels of Saewulf, ibid, p. 38; also Sir John
Mandeville, ibid., pp. 166, 167. For Roger, see his La Terre Saincte,
Paris, 1664, pp. 89-217, etc.; see also Quaresmio, Terrae Sanctae
Elucidatio, 1639, for similar view; and, for one narrative in which the
idea was developed into an amazing mass of pious myths, see Pilgrimage
of the Russian Abbot Daniel, edited by Sir C. W. Wilson, London, 1885,
p. 14. (The passage deserves to be quoted as an example of myth-making;
it is as follows: "At the time of our Lord's crucifixion, when he gave
up the ghost on the cross, the veil of the temple was rent, and the rock
above Adam's skull opened, and the blood and water which flowed from
Christ's side ran down through the fissure upon the skull, thus washing
away the sins of men.")
Nor was this the only misconception which forced its way from our sacred
writings into medieval map-making: two others were almost as marked.
First of these was the vague terror inspired by Gog and Magog. Few
passages in the Old Testament are more sublime than the denunciation
of these great enemies by Ezekiel; and the well-known statement in the
Apocalypse fastened the Hebrew feeling regarding them with a new meaning
into the mind of the early Church: hence it was that the medieval
map-makers took great pains to delineate these monsters and their
habitations on the maps. For centuries no map was considered orthodox
which did not show them.
The second conception was derived from the mention in our sacred books
of the "four winds." Hence came a vivid belief in their real existence,
and their delineation on the maps, generally as colossal heads with
distended cheeks, blowing vigorously toward Jerusalem.