to breast this theological tide in northern Europe. He had won a great
reputation in various fields, but especially in natural science,
as science was then understood. Seeing the folly and cruelty of the
prevailing theory, he attempted to modify it, and in 1518, as Syndic of
Metz, endeavoured to save a poor woman on trial for witchcraft. But the
chief inquisitor, backed by the sacred Scriptures, the papal bulls, the
theological faculties, and the monks, was too strong for him; he was not
only forced to give up his office, but for this and other offences of a
similar sort was imprisoned, driven from city to city and from country
to country, and after his death his clerical enemies, especially the
Dominicans, pursued his memory with calumny, and placed over his grave
probably the most malignant epitaph ever written.
As to argument, these efforts were met especially by Jean Bodin in his
famous book, the Demonomanie des Sorciers, published in 1580. It was a
work of great power by a man justly considered the leading thinker in
France, and perhaps in Europe. All the learning of the time, divine
and human, he marshalled in support of the prevailing theory. With
inexorable logic he showed that both the veracity of sacred Scripture
and the infallibility of a long line of popes and councils of the Church
were pledged to it, and in an eloquent passage this great publicist
warned rulers and judges against any mercy to witches--citing the
example of King Ahab condemned by the prophet to die for having pardoned
a man worthy of death, and pointing significantly to King Charles IX of
France, who, having pardoned a sorcerer, died soon afterward.(253)
(253) To the argument cited above, Bodin adds: "Id certissimam daemonis
praesentiam significat; nam ubicunque daemones cum hominibus nefaria
societatis fide copulantur, foedissimum semper relinquunt sulphuris
odorem, quod sortilegi saepissime experiuntur et confitentur." See
Bodin's Universae Naturae Theatrum, Frankfort, 1597, pp. 208-211. The
first edition of the book by Pomponatius, which was the earliest of his
writings, is excessively rare, but it was reprinted at Venice just a
half-century later. It is in his De incantationibus, however, that he
speaks especially of devils. As to Pomponatius, see, besides these,
Creighton's History of the Papacy during the Reformation, and an
excellent essay in Franck's Moralistes et Philosophes. For Agrippa,
see his biography by Prof. Henry Morley, London, 1856. For Bodin, see
a statement of his general line of argument in Lecky, Rationalism in
Europe, vol. i, chap. 1.
In the last years of the sixteenth century the persecutions for
witchcraft and magic were therefore especially cruel; and in the western
districts of Germany the main instrument in them was Binsfeld, Suffragan
Bishop of Treves.
At that time Cornelius Loos was a professor at the university of
that city. He was a devoted churchman, and one of the most brilliant
opponents of Protestantism, but he finally saw through the prevailing
belief regarding occult powers, and in an evil hour for himself embodied
his idea in a book entitled True and False Magic. The book, though
earnest, was temperate, but this helped him and his cause not at all.
The texts of Scripture clearly sanctioning belief in sorcery and magic
stood against him, and these had been confirmed by the infallible
teachings of the Church and the popes from time immemorial; the book was
stopped in the press, the manuscript confiscated, and Loos thrown into a
dungeon.
The inquisitors having wrought their will upon him, in the spring of
1593 he was brought out of prison, forced to recant on his knees
before the assembled dignitaries of the Church, and thenceforward kept
constantly under surveillance and at times in prison. Even this was
considered too light a punishment, and his arch-enemy, the Jesuit
Delrio, declared that, but for his death by the plague, he would have
been finally sent to the stake.(254)
(254) What remains of the manuscript of Loos, which until recently was
supposed to be lost, was found, hidden away on the shelves of the old
Jesuit library at Treves, by Mr. George Lincoln Burr, now a professor
at Cornell University; and Prof. Burr's copy of the manuscript is now in
the library of that institution. For a full account of the discovery
and its significance, see the New York Nation for November 11, 1886. The
facts regarding the after-life of Loos were discovered by Prof. Burr in
manuscript records at Brussels.
That this threat was not unmeaning had been seen a few years earlier in
a case even more noted, and in the same city. During the last decades of
the sixteenth century, Dietrich Flade, an eminent jurist, was rector of
the University of Treves, and chief judge of the Electoral Court, and
in the latter capacity he had to pass judgment upon persons tried on
the capital charge of magic and witchcraft. For a time he yielded to the
long line of authorities, ecclesiastical and judicial, supporting the
reality of this crime; but he at last seems to have realized that it
was unreal, and that the confessions in his torture chamber, of
compacts with Satan, riding on broomsticks to the witch-sabbath, raising
tempests, producing diseases, and the like, were either the results of
madness or of willingness to confess anything and everything, and even
to die, in order to shorten the fearful tortures to which the accused
were in all cases subjected until a satisfactory confession was
obtained.
On this conviction of the unreality of many at least of the charges
Flade seems to have acted, and he at once received his reward. He was
arrested by the authority of the archbishop and charged with having sold
himself to Satan--the fact of his hesitation in the persecution being
perhaps what suggested his guilt. He was now, in his turn, brought into
the torture chamber over which he had once presided, was racked until
he confessed everything which his torturers suggested, and finally, in
1589, was strangled and burnt.
Of that trial a record exists in the library of Cornell University
in the shape of the original minutes of the case, and among them the
depositions of Flade when under torture, taken down from his own lips
in the torture chamber. In these depositions this revered and venerable
scholar and jurist acknowledged the truth of every absurd charge brought
against him--anything, everything, which would end the fearful torture:
compared with that, death was nothing.(255)
(255) For the case of Flade, see the careful study by Prof. Burr,
The Fate of Dietrich Flade, in the Papers of the American Historical
Association, 1891.
Nor was even a priest secure who ventured to reveal the unreality of
magic. When Friedrich Spee, the Jesuit poet of western Germany, found,
in taking the confessions of those about to be executed for magic, that
without exception, just when about to enter eternity and utterly beyond
hope of pardon, they all retracted their confessions made under torture,
his sympathies as a man rose above his loyalty to his order, and he
published his Cautio Criminalis as a warning, stating with entire
moderation the facts he had observed and the necessity of care. But he
did not dare publish it under his own name, nor did he even dare publish
it in a Catholic town; he gave it to the world anonymously, and,
in order to prevent any tracing of the work to him through the
confessional, he secretly caused it to be published in the Protestant
town of Rinteln.
Nor was this all. Nothing shows so thoroughly the hold that this belief
in magic had obtained as the conduct of Spee's powerful friend and
contemporary, John Philip von Schonborn, later the Elector and Prince
Archbishop of Mayence.
As a youth, Schonborn had loved and admired Spee, and had especially
noted his persistent melancholy and his hair whitened even in his
young manhood. On Schonborn's pressing him for the cause, Spee at last
confessed that his sadness, whitened hair, and premature old age were
due to his recollections of the scores of men and women and children
whom he had been obliged to see tortured and sent to the scaffold
and stake for magic and witchcraft, when he as their father confessor
positively knew them to be innocent. The result was that, when
Schonborn became Elector and Archbishop of Mayence, he stopped the witch
persecutions in that province, and prevented them as long as he lived.
But here was shown the strength of theological and ecclesiastical
traditions and precedents. Even a man so strong by family connections,
and enjoying such great temporal and spiritual power as Schonborn, dared
not openly give his reasons for this change of policy. So far as is
known, he never uttered a word publicly against the reality of magic,
and under his successor in the electorate witch trials were resumed.
The great upholders of the orthodox view retained full possession of the
field. The victorious Bishop Binsfeld, of Treves, wrote a book to prove
that everything confessed by the witches under torture, especially the
raising of storms and the general controlling of the weather, was worthy
of belief; and this book became throughout Europe a standard authority,
both among Catholics and Protestants. Even more inflexible was Remigius,
criminal judge in Lorraine. On the title-page of his manual he boasts
that within fifteen years he had sent nine hundred persons to death for
this imaginary crime.(256)
(256) For Spee and Schonborn, see Soldan and other German authorities.
There are copies of the first editions of the Cautio Criminalis in
the library of Cornell University. Binsfeld's book bore the title of
Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum. First published
at Treves in 1589, it appeared subsequently four times in the original
Latin, as well as in two distinct German translations, and in a French
one. Remigius's manual was entitled Daemonolatreia, and was first
printed at Lyons in 1595.
Protestantism fell into the superstition as fully as Catholicism. In the
same century John Wier, a disciple of Agrippa, tried to frame a pious
theory which, while satisfying orthodoxy, should do something to check
the frightful cruelties around him. In his book De Praestigiis Daemonum,
published in 1563, he proclaimed his belief in witchcraft, but suggested
that the compacts with Satan, journeys through the air on broomsticks,
bearing children to Satan, raising storms and producing diseases--to
which so many women and children confessed under torture--were delusions
suggested and propagated by Satan himself, and that the persons charged
with witchcraft were therefore to be considered "as possessed"--that is,
rather as sinned against than sinning.(257)
(257) For Wier, or Weyer, see, besides his own works, the excellent
biography by Prof. Binz, of Bonn.
But neither Catholics nor Protestants would listen for a moment to any
such suggestion. Wier was bitterly denounced and persecuted. Nor did
Bekker, a Protestant divine in Holland, fare any better in the following
century. For his World Bewitched, in which he ventured not only to
question the devil's power over the weather, but to deny his bodily
existence altogether, he was solemnly tried by the synod of his Church
and expelled from his pulpit, while his views were condemned as heresy,
and overwhelmed with a flood of refutations whose mere catalogue would
fill pages; and these cases were typical of many.
The Reformation had, indeed, at first deepened the superstition; the new
Church being anxious to show itself equally orthodox and zealous with
the old. During the century following the first great movement, the
eminent Lutheran jurist and theologian Benedict Carpzov, whose boast was
that he had read the Bible fifty-three times, especially distinguished
himself by his skill in demonstrating the reality of witchcraft, and by
his cruelty in detecting and punishing it. The torture chambers were
set at work more vigorously than ever, and a long line of theological
jurists followed to maintain the system and to extend it.
To argue against it, or even doubt it, was exceedingly dangerous. Even
as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Christian
Thomasius, the greatest and bravest German between Luther and Lessing,
began the efforts which put an end to it in Protestant Germany, he did
not dare at first, bold as he was, to attack it in his own name,
but presented his views as the university thesis of an irresponsible
student.(258)
(258) For Thomasius, see his various bigraphies by Luden and others;
also the treatises on witchcraft by Soldan and others. Manuscript notes
of his lectures, and copies of his earliest books on witchcraft as well
as on other forms of folly, are to be found in the library of Cornell
University.
The same stubborn resistance to the gradual encroachment of the
scientific spirit upon the orthodox doctrine of witchcraft was seen in
Great Britain. Typical as to the attitude both of Scotch and English
Protestants were the theory and practice of King James I, himself the
author of a book on Demonology, and nothing if not a theologian. As to
theory, his treatise on Demonology supported the worst features of the
superstition; as to practice, he ordered the learned and acute work of
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, one of the best treatises
ever written on the subject, to be burned by the hangman, and he applied
his own knowledge to investigating the causes of the tempests which
beset his bride on her voyage from Denmark. Skilful use of unlimited
torture soon brought these causes to light. A Dr. Fian, while his legs
were crushed in the "boots" and wedges were driven under his finger
nails, confessed that several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve
from the port of Leith, and had raised storms and tempests to drive back
the princess.
With the coming in of the Puritans the persecution was even more
largely, systematically, and cruelly developed. The great witch-finder,
Matthew Hopkins, having gone through the county of Suffolk and tested
multitudes of poor old women by piercing them with pins and needles,
declared that county to be infested with witches. Thereupon Parliament
issued a commission, and sent two eminent Presbyterian divines to
accompany it, with the result that in that county alone sixty persons
were hanged for witchcraft in a single year. In Scotland matters were
even worse. The auto da fe of Spain was celebrated in Scotland under
another name, and with Presbyterian ministers instead of Roman Catholic
priests as the main attendants. At Leith, in 1664, nine women were
burned together. Condemnations and punishments of women in batches were
not uncommon. Torture was used far more freely than in England, both in
detecting witches and in punishing them. The natural argument developed
in hundreds of pulpits was this: If the Allwise God punishes his
creatures with tortures infinite in cruelty and duration, why should not
his ministers, as far as they can, imitate him?
The strongest minds in both branches of the Protestant Church in Great
Britain devoted themselves to maintaining the superstition. The newer
scientific modes of thought, and especially the new ideas regarding the
heavens, revealed first by Copernicus and Galileo and later by Newton,
Huygens, and Halley, were gradually dissipating the whole domain of the
Prince of the Power of the Air; but from first to last a long line of
eminent divines, Anglican and Calvinistic, strove to resist the new
thought. On the Anglican side, in the seventeenth century, Meric
Casaubon, Doctor of Divinity and a high dignitary of Canterbury,--Henry
More, in many respects the most eminent scholar in the
Church,--Cudworth, by far the most eminent philosopher, and Dr. Joseph
Glanvil, the most cogent of all writers in favour of witchcraft,
supported the orthodox superstition in treatises of great power; and Sir
Matthew Hale, the greatest jurist of the period, condemning two women
to be burned for witchcraft, declared that he based his judgment on the
direct testimony of Holy Scripture. On the Calvinistic side were the
great names of Richard Baxter, who applauded some of the worst cruelties
in England, and of Increase and Cotton Mather, who stimulated the worst
in America; and these marshalled in behalf of this cruel superstition
a long line of eminent divines, the most earnest of all, perhaps, being
John Wesley.
Nor was the Lutheran Church in Sweden and the other Scandinavian
countries behind its sister churches, either in persecuting witchcraft
or in repressing doubts regarding the doctrine which supported it.
But in spite of all these great authorities in every land, in spite of
such summary punishments as those of Flade, Loos, and Bekker, and in
spite of the virtual exclusion from church preferment of all who doubted
the old doctrine, the new scientific view of the heavens was developed
more and more; the physical sciences were more and more cultivated; the
new scientific atmosphere in general more and more prevailed; and at the
end of the seventeenth century this vast growth of superstition began to
wither and droop. Montaigne, Bayle, and Voltaire in France, Thomasius in
Germany, Calef in New England, and Beccaria in Italy, did much also to
create an intellectual and moral atmosphere fatal to it.
And here it should be stated, to the honour of the Church of England,
that several of her divines showed great courage in opposing the
dominant doctrine. Such men as Harsnet, Archbishop of York, and Morton,
Bishop of Lichfield, who threw all their influence against witch-finding
cruelties even early in the seventeenth century, deserve lasting
gratitude. But especially should honour be paid to the younger men in
the Church, who wrote at length against the whole system: such men as
Wagstaffe and Webster and Hutchinson, who in the humbler ranks of the
clergy stood manfully for truth, with the certainty that by so doing
they were making their own promotion impossible.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century the doctrine was evidently
dying out. Where torture had been abolished, or even made milder,
"weather-makers" no longer confessed, and the fundamental proofs in
which the system was rooted were evidently slipping away. Even the great
theologian Fromundus, at the University of Louvain, the oracle of his
age, who had demonstrated the futility of the Copernican theory, had
foreseen this and made the inevitable attempt at compromise, declaring
that devils, though OFTEN, are not ALWAYS or even for the most part
the causes of thunder. The learned Jesuit Caspar Schott, whose Physica
Curiosa was one of the most popular books of the seventeenth century,
also ventured to make the same mild statement. But even such concessions
by such great champions of orthodoxy did not prevent frantic efforts in
various quarters to bring the world back under the old dogma: as late as
1743 there was published in Catholic Germany a manual by Father Vincent
of Berg, in which the superstition was taught to its fullest extent,
with the declaration that it was issued for the use of priests under
the express sanction of the theological professors of the University
of Cologne; and twenty-five years later, in 1768, we find in Protestant
England John Wesley standing firmly for witchcraft, and uttering his
famous declaration, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving
up of the Bible." The latest notable demonstration in Scotland was made
as late as 1773, when "the divines of the Associated Presbytery" passed
a resolution declaring their belief in witchcraft, and deploring the
general scepticism regarding it.(259)
(259) For Carpzov and his successors, see authorities already given.
The best account of James's share in the extortion of confessions may
be found in the collection of Curious Tracts published at Edinburgh in
1820. See also King James's own Demonologie, and Pitcairn's Criminal
Trials of Scotland, vol. i, part ii, pp. 213-223. For Casaubon, see his
Credulity and Incredulity in Things Natural, pp. 66, 67. For Glanvil,
More, Casaubon, Baxter, Wesley, and others named, see Lecky, as above.
As to Increase Mather, in his sermons, already cited, on The Voice
of God in Stormy Winds, Boston, 1704, he says: "when there are great
tempests, the Angels oftentimes have a Hand therein.. .. Yea, and
sometimes, by Divine Permission, Evil Angels have a Hand in such Storms
and Tempests as are very hurtful to Men on the Earth." Yet "for the most
part, such Storms are sent by the Providence of God as a Sign of His
Displeasure for the Sins of Men," and sometimes "as Prognosticks and
terrible Warnings of Great Judgements not far off." From the height
of his erudition Mather thus rebukes the timid voice of scientific
scepticism: "There are some who would be esteemed the Wits of the World,
that ridicule those as Superstitious and Weak Persons, which look upon
Dreadful Tempests as Prodromous of other Judgements. Nevertheless,
the most Learned and Judicious Writers, not only of the Gentiles, but
amongst Christians, have Embraced such a Persuasion; their Sentiments
therein being Confirmed by the Experience of many Ages." For another
curious turn given to this theory, with reference to sanitary science,
see Deodat Lawson's famous sermon at Salem, in 1692, on Christ's
Fidelity a Shield against Satan's Malignity, p. 21 of the second
edition. For Cotton Mather, see his biography by Barrett Wendell, pp.
91, 92; also the chapter on Diabolism and Hysteria in this work. For
Fromundus, see his Meteorologica (London, 1656), lib. iii, c. 9, and
lib. ii, c. 3. For Schott, see his Physica Curiosa (edition of Wurzburg,
1667), p. 1249. For Father Vincent of Berg, see his Enchiridium
quadripartitum (Cologne, 1743). Besides benedictions and exorcisms for
all emergencies, it contains full directions for the manufacture of
Agnes Dei, and of another sacred panacea called "Heiligthum," not less
effective against evil powers,--gives formulae to be worn for protection
against the devil,--suggests a list of signs by which diabolical
possession may be recognised, and prescribes the question to be asked by
priests in the examination of witches. For Wesley, see his Journal for
1768. The whole citation is given in Lecky.
IV. FRANKLIN'S LIGHTNING-ROD.
But in the midst of these efforts by Catholics like Father Vincent
and by Protestants like John Wesley to save the old sacred theory, it
received its death-blow. In 1752 Franklin made his experiments with the
kite on the banks of the Schuylkill; and, at the moment when he drew
the electric spark from the cloud, the whole tremendous fabric of
theological meteorology reared by the fathers, the popes, the
medieval doctors, and the long line of great theologians, Catholic and
Protestant, collapsed; the "Prince of the Power of the Air" tumbled from
his seat; the great doctrine which had so long afflicted the earth was
prostrated forever.
The experiment of Franklin was repeated in various parts of Europe, but,
at first, the Church seemed careful to take no notice of it. The old
church formulas against the Prince of the Power of the Air were still
used, but the theological theory, especially in the Protestant Church,
began to grow milder. Four years after Franklin's discovery Pastor
Karl Koken, member of the Consistory and official preacher to the City
Council of Hildesheim, was moved by a great hailstorm to preach and
publish a sermon on The Revelation of God in Weather. Of "the Prince of
the Power of the Air" he says nothing; the theory of diabolical agency
he throws overboard altogether; his whole attempt is to save the older
and more harmless theory, that the storm is the voice of God. He insists
that, since Christ told Nicodemus that men "know not whence the wind
cometh," it can not be of mere natural origin, but is sent directly
by God himself, as David intimates in the Psalm, "out of His secret
places." As to the hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of
hail sent by the Almighty upon Egypt, and clinches all by insisting
that God showed at Mount Sinai his purpose to startle the body before
impressing the conscience.
While the theory of diabolical agency in storms was thus drooping and
dying, very shrewd efforts were made at compromise. The first of these
attempts we have already noted, in the effort to explain the efficacy of
bells in storms by their simple use in stirring the faithful to prayer,
and in the concession made by sundry theologians, and even by the great
Lord Bacon himself, that church bells might, under the sanction of
Providence, disperse storms by agitating the air. This gained ground
somewhat, though it was resisted by one eminent Church authority, who
answered shrewdly that, in that case, cannon would be even more pious
instruments. Still another argument used in trying to save this part of
the theological theory was that the bells were consecrated instruments
for this purpose, "like the horns at whose blowing the walls of Jericho
fell."(260)
(260) For Koken, see his Offenbarung Gottes in Wetter, Hildesheim,
c1756; and for the answer to Bacon, see Gretser's De Benedictionibus,
lib. ii, cap. 46.
But these compromises were of little avail. In 1766 Father Sterzinger
attacked the very groundwork of the whole diabolic theory. He was, of
course, bitterly assailed, insulted, and hated; but the Church thought
it best not to condemn him. More and more the "Prince of the Power
of the Air" retreated before the lightning-rod of Franklin. The older
Church, while clinging to the old theory, was finally obliged to confess
the supremacy of Franklin's theory practically; for his lightning-rod
did what exorcisms, and holy water, and processions, and the Agnus
Dei, and the ringing of church bells, and the rack, and the burning of
witches, had failed to do. This was clearly seen, even by the poorest
peasants in eastern France, when they observed that the grand spire of
Strasburg Cathedral, which neither the sacredness of the place, nor the
bells within it, nor the holy water and relics beneath it, could protect
from frequent injuries by lightning, was once and for all protected by
Franklin's rod. Then came into the minds of multitudes the answer to the
question which had so long exercised the leading theologians of Europe
and America, namely, "Why should the Almighty strike his own consecrated
temples, or suffer Satan to strike them?"
Yet even this practical solution of the question was not received
without opposition.
In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed, especially in
Massachusetts, to Franklin's rod. The Rev. Thomas Prince, pastor of the
Old South Church, published a sermon on the subject, and in the appendix
expressed the opinion that the frequency of earthquakes may be due to
the erection of "iron points invented by the sagacious Mr. Franklin." He
goes on to argue that "in Boston are more erected than anywhere else in
New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is
no getting out of the mighty hand of God."
Three years later, John Adams, speaking of a conversation with
Arbuthnot, a Boston physician, says: "He began to prate upon the
presumption of philosophy in erecting iron rods to draw the lightning
from the clouds. He railed and foamed against the points and the
presumption that erected them. He talked of presuming upon God, as
Peter attempted to walk upon the water, and of attempting to control the
artillery of heaven."
As late as 1770 religious scruples regarding lightning-rods were still
felt, the theory being that, as thunder and lightning were tokens of
the Divine displeasure, it was impiety to prevent their doing their full
work. Fortunately, Prof. John Winthrop, of Harvard, showed himself wise
in this, as in so many other things: in a lecture on earthquakes he
opposed the dominant theology; and as to arguments against Franklin's
rods, he declared, "It is as much our duty to secure ourselves against
the effects of lightning as against those of rain, snow, and wind by the
means God has put into our hands."
Still, for some years theological sentiment had to be regarded
carefully. In Philadelphia, a popular lecturer on science for some time
after Franklin's discovery thought it best in advertising his lectures
to explain that "the erection of lightning-rods is not chargeable
with presumption nor inconsistent with any of the principles either of
natural or revealed religion."(261)
(261) Regarding opposition to Franklin's rods in America, see Prince's
sermon, especially p. 23; also Quincy, History of Harvard University,
vol. ii, p. 219; also Works of John Adams, vol. ii, pp. 51, 52; also
Parton's Life of Franklin, vol. i, p. 294.
In England, the first lightning conductor upon a church was not put
up until 1762, ten years after Franklin's discovery. The spire of St.
Bride's Church in London was greatly injured by lightning in 1750, and
in 1764 a storm so wrecked its masonry that it had to be mainly
rebuilt; yet for years after this the authorities refused to attach a
lightning-rod. The Protestant Cathedral of St. Paul's, in London, was
not protected until sixteen years after Franklin's discovery, and the
tower of the great Protestant church at Hamburg not until a year
later still. As late as 1783 it was declared in Germany, on excellent
authority, that within a space of thirty-three years nearly four hundred
towers had been damaged and one hundred and twenty bell-ringers killed.
In Roman Catholic countries a similar prejudice was shown, and its
cost at times was heavy. In Austria, the church of Rosenberg, in the
mountains of Carinthia, was struck so frequently and with such loss of
life that the peasants feared at last to attend service. Three times
was the spire rebuilt, and it was not until 1778--twenty-six years
after Franklin's discovery--that the authorities permitted a rod to be
attached. Then all trouble ceased.
A typical case in Italy was that of the tower of St. Mark's, at Venice.
In spite of the angel at its summit and the bells consecrated to ward
off the powers of the air, and the relics in the cathedral hard by, and
the processions in the adjacent square, the tower was frequently injured
and even ruined by lightning. In 1388 it was badly shattered; in 1417,
and again in 1489, the wooden spire surmounting it was utterly consumed;
it was again greatly injured in 1548, 1565, 1653, and in 1745 was struck
so powerfully that the whole tower, which had been rebuilt of stone and
brick, was shattered in thirty-seven places. Although the invention of
Franklin had been introduced into Italy by the physicist Beccaria, the
tower of St. Mark's still went unprotected, and was again badly struck
in 1761 and 1762; and not until 1766--fourteen years after Franklin's
discovery--was a lightning-rod placed upon it; and it has never been
struck since.(262)
(262) For reluctance in England to protect churches with Franklin's
rods, see Priestley, History of Electricity, London, 1775, vol. i, pp.
407, 465 et seq.
So, too, though the beautiful tower of the Cathedral of Siena, protected
by all possible theological means, had been struck again and again, much
opposition was shown to placing upon it what was generally known as
"the heretical rod," but the tower was at last protected by Franklin's
invention, and in 1777, though a very heavy bolt passed down the rod,
the church received not the slightest injury. This served to reconcile
theology and science, so far as that city was concerned; but the case
which did most to convert the Italian theologians to the scientific view
was that of the church of San Nazaro, at Brescia. The Republic of Venice
had stored in the vaults of this church over two hundred thousand pounds
of powder. In 1767, seventeen years after Franklin's discovery, no rod
having been placed upon it, it was struck by lightning, the powder in
the vaults was exploded, one sixth of the entire city destroyed, and
over three thousand lives were lost.(263)
(263) See article on Lightning in the Edinburgh Review for October,
1844.
Such examples as these, in all parts of Europe, had their effect. The
formulas for conjuring off storms, for consecrating bells to ward off
lightning and tempests, and for putting to flight the powers of the air,
were still allowed to stand in the liturgies; but the lightning-rod,
the barometer, and the thermometer, carried the day. A vigorous line of
investigators succeeding Franklin completed his victory, The traveller
in remote districts of Europe still hears the church bells ringing
during tempests; the Polish or Italian peasant is still persuaded to
pay fees for sounding bells to keep off hailstorms; but the universal
tendency favours more and more the use of the lightning-rod, and of the
insurance offices where men can be relieved of the ruinous results of
meteorological disturbances in accordance with the scientific laws
of average, based upon the ascertained recurrence of storms. So, too,
though many a poor seaman trusts to his charm that has been bathed in
holy water, or that has touched some relic, the tendency among mariners
is to value more and more those warnings which are sent far and wide
each day over the earth and under the sea by the electric wires in
accordance with laws ascertained by observation.
Yet, even in our own time, attempts to revive the old theological
doctrine of meteorology have not been wanting. Two of these, one in a
Roman Catholic and another in a Protestant country, will serve as types
of many, to show how completely scientific truth has saturated and
permeated minds supposed to be entirely surrendered to the theological
view.
The Island of St. Honorat, just off the southern coast of France,
is deservedly one of the places most venerated in Christendom. The
monastery of Lerins, founded there in the fourth century, became a
mother of similar institutions in western Europe, and a centre of
religious teaching for the Christian world. In its atmosphere, legends
and myths grew in beauty and luxuriance. Here, as the chroniclers tell
us, at the touch of St. Honorat, burst forth a stream of living water,
which a recent historian of the monastery declares a greater miracle
than that of Moses; here he destroyed, with a touch of his staff, the
reptiles which infested the island, and then forced the sea to wash away
their foul remains. Here, to please his sister, Sainte-Marguerite, a
cherry tree burst into full bloom every month; here he threw his cloak
upon the waters and it became a raft, which bore him safely to visit the
neighbouring island; here St. Patrick received from St. Just the staff
with which he imitated St. Honorat by driving all reptiles from Ireland.
Pillaged by Saracens and pirates, the island was made all the more
precious by the blood of Christian martyrs. Popes and kings made
pilgrimages to it; saints, confessors, and bishops went forth from it
into all Europe; in one of its cells St. Vincent of Lerins wrote that
famous definition of pure religion which, for nearly fifteen hundred
years, has virtually superseded that of St. James. Naturally the
monastery became most illustrious, and its seat "the Mediterranean Isle
of Saints."
But toward the close of the last century, its inmates having become
slothful and corrupt, it was dismantled, all save a small portion torn
down, and the island became the property first of impiety, embodied in a
French actress, and finally of heresy, embodied in an English clergyman.
Bought back for the Church by the Bishop of Frejus in 1859, there
was little revival of life for twelve years. Then came the reaction,
religious and political, after the humiliation of France and the Vatican
by Germany; and of this reaction the monastery of St. Honorat was made
one of the most striking outward and visible signs. Pius IX interested
himself directly in it, called into it a body of Cistercian monks,
and it became the chief seat of their order in France. To restore its
sacredness the strict system of La Trappe was established--labour,
silence, meditation on death. The word thus given from Rome was seconded
in France by cardinals, archbishops, and all churchmen especially
anxious for promotion in this world or salvation in the next. Worn-out
dukes and duchesses of the Faubourg Saint-Germain united in this
enterprise of pious reaction with the frivolous youngsters, the petits
creves, who haunt the purlieus of Notre Dame de Lorette. The great
church of the monastery was handsomely rebuilt and a multitude of
altars erected; and beautiful frescoes and stained windows came from
the leaders of the reaction. The whole effect was, perhaps, somewhat
theatrical and thin, but it showed none the less earnestness in making
the old "Isle of Saints" a protest against the hated modern world.
As if to bid defiance still further to modern liberalism, great store of
relics was sent in; among these, pieces of the true cross, of the
white and purple robes, of the crown of thorns, sponge, lance, and
winding-sheet of Christ,--the hair, robe, veil, and girdle of the
Blessed Virgin; relics of St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Mary
Magdalene, St. Paul, St. Barnabas, the four evangelists, and a multitude
of other saints: so many that the bare mention of these treasures
requires twenty-four distinct heads in the official catalogue recently
published at the monastery. Besides all this--what was considered even
more powerful in warding off harm from the revived monastery--the bones
of Christian martyrs were brought from the Roman catacombs and laid
beneath the altars.(264)
(264) See the Guide des Visiteurs a Lerins, published at the Monastery
in 1880, p. 204; also the Histoire de Lerins, mentioned below.
All was thus conformed to the medieval view; nothing was to be left
which could remind one of the nineteenth century; the "ages of faith"
were to be restored in their simplicity. Pope Leo XIII commended to the
brethren the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas as their one great object of
study, and works published at the monastery dwelt upon the miracles of
St. Honorat as the most precious refutation of modern science.
High in the cupola, above the altars and relics, were placed the bells.
Sent by pious donors, they were solemnly baptized and consecrated
in 1871, four bishops officiating, a multitude of the faithful being
present from all parts of Europe, and the sponsors of the great tenor
bell being the Bourbon claimant to the ducal throne of Parma and his
duchess. The good bishop who baptized the bells consecrated them with
a formula announcing their efficacy in driving away the "Prince of the
Power of the Air" and the lightning and tempests he provokes.
And then, above all, at the summit of the central spire, high above
relics, altars, and bells, was placed--A LIGHTNING-ROD!(265)
(265) See Guide, as above, p. 84. Les Isles de Lerins, by the Abbe
Alliez (Paris, 1860), and the Histoire de Lerins, by the same author,
are the authorities for the general history of the abbey, and are
especially strong in presenting the miracles of St. Honorat, etc. The
Cartulaire of the monastery, recently published, is also valuable. But
these do not cover the recent revival, for an account of which recourse
must be had to the very interesting and naive Guide already cited.
The account of the monastery, published under the direction of the
present worthy abbot, more than hints at the saving, by its bells, of
a ship which was wrecked a few years since on that coast; and yet, to
protect the bells and church and monks and relics from the very foe
whom, in the medieval faith, all these were thought most powerful
to drive away, recourse was had to the scientific discovery of that
"arch-infidel," Benjamin Franklin!
Perhaps the most striking recent example in Protestant lands of this
change from the old to the new occurred not long since in one of the
great Pacific dependencies of the British crown. At a time of severe
drought an appeal was made to the bishop, Dr. Moorhouse, to order public
prayers for rain. The bishop refused, advising the petitioners for the
future to take better care of their water supply, virtually telling
them, "Heaven helps those who help themselves." But most noteworthy in
this matter was it that the English Government, not long after, scanning
the horizon to find some man to take up the good work laid down by the
lamented Bishop Fraser, of Manchester, chose Dr. Moorhouse; and his
utterance upon meteorology, which a few generations since would have
been regarded by the whole Church as blasphemy, was universally alluded
to as an example of strong good sense, proving him especially fit for
one of the most important bishoprics in England.
Throughout Christendom, the prevalence of the conviction that
meteorology is obedient to laws is more and more evident. In cities
especially, where men are accustomed each day to see posted in public
places charts which show the storms moving over various parts of the
country, and to read in the morning papers scientific prophecies as to
the weather, the old view can hardly be very influential.
Significant of this was the feeling of the American people during the
fearful droughts a few years since in the States west of the Missouri.
No days were appointed for fasting and prayer to bring rain; there was
no attribution of the calamity to the wrath of God or the malice of
Satan; but much was said regarding the folly of our people in allowing
the upper regions of their vast rivers to be denuded of forests, thus
subjecting the States below to alternations of drought and deluge.
Partly as a result of this, a beginning has been made of teaching forest
culture in many schools, tree-planting societies have been formed, and
"Arbor Day" is recognised in several of the States. A true and noble
theology can hardly fail to recognise, in the love of Nature and care
for our fellow-men thus promoted, something far better, both from a
religious and a moral point of view, than any efforts to win the Divine
favour by flattery, or to avert Satanic malice by fetichism.
CHAPTER XII. FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.
I.
In all the earliest developments of human thought we find a strong
tendency to ascribe mysterious powers over Nature to men and women
especially gifted or skilled. Survivals of this view are found to
this day among savages and barbarians left behind in the evolution
of civilization, and especially is this the case among the tribes of
Australia, Africa, and the Pacific coast of America. Even in the most
enlightened nations still appear popular beliefs, observances, or
sayings, drawn from this earlier phase of thought.
Between the prehistoric savage developing this theory, and therefore
endeavouring to deal with the powers of Nature by magic, and the modern
man who has outgrown it, appears a long line of nations struggling
upward through it. As the hieroglyphs, cuneiform inscriptions, and
various other records of antiquity are read, the development of this
belief can be studied in Egypt, India, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, and
Phoenicia. From these civilizations it came into the early thought of
Greece and Rome, but especially into the Jewish and Christian sacred
books. Both in the Old Testament and in the New we find magic,
witchcraft, and soothsaying constantly referred to as realities.(266)
(266) For magic in prehistoric times and survivals of it since, with
abundant citation of authorities, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap.
iv; also The Early History of Mankind, by the same author, third
edition, pp. 115 et seq., also p. 380.; also Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual,
and Religion, vol. i, chap iv. For magic in Egypt, see Lenormant,
Chaldean Magic, chaps. vi-viii; also Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des
Peuples de l'Orient; also Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization,
p. 282, and for the threat of magicians to wreck heaven, see ibid, p.
17, note, and especially the citations from Chabas, Le Papyrus Magique
Harris, in chap. vii; also Maury, La Magie et l'Astrologie dans
l'Antiquite et au Moyen Age. For magic in Chaldea, see Lenormant as
above; also Maspero and Sayce, pp. 780 et seq. For examples of magical
powers in India, see Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East, vol. xvi,
pp. 121 et seq. For a legendary view of magic in Media, see the Zend
Avesta, part i, p. 14, translated by Darmsteter; and for a more highly
developed view, see the Zend Avesta, part iii, p. 239, translated by
Mill. For magic in Greece and Rome, and especially in the Neoplatonic
school, as well as in the Middle Ages, see especially Maury, La Magie
et l'Astrologie, chaps. iii-v. For various sorts of magic recognised and
condemned in our sacred books, see Deuteronomy xviii, 10, 11; and for
the burning of magical books at Ephesus under the influence of St.
Paul, see Acts xix, 14. See also Ewald, History of Israel, Martineau's
translation, fourth edition, vol. iii, pp. 45-51. For a very elaborate
summing up of the passages in our sacred books recognizing magic as a
fact, see De Haen, De Magia, Leipsic, 1775, chaps. i, ii, and iii, of
the first part. For the general subject of magic, see Ennemoser, History
of Magic, translated by Howitt, which, however, constantly mixes sorcery
with magic proper.
The first distinct impulse toward a higher view of research into
natural laws was given by the philosophers of Greece. It is true that
philosophical opposition to physical research was at times strong, and
that even a great thinker like Socrates considered certain physical
investigations as an impious intrusion into the work of the gods. It
is also true that Plato and Aristotle, while bringing their thoughts
to bear upon the world with great beauty and force, did much to draw
mankind away from those methods which in modern times have produced the
best results.
Plato developed a world in which the physical sciences had little if any
real reason for existing; Aristotle, a world in which the same sciences
were developed largely indeed by observation of what is, but still more
by speculation on what ought to be. From the former of these two great
men came into Christian theology many germs of medieval magic, and from
the latter sundry modes of reasoning which aided in the evolution of
these; yet the impulse to human thought given by these great masters
was of inestimable value to our race, and one legacy from them was
especially precious--the idea that a science of Nature is possible, and
that the highest occupation of man is the discovery of its laws. Still
another gift from them was greatest of all, for they gave scientific
freedom. They laid no interdict upon new paths; they interposed no
barriers to the extension of knowledge; they threatened no doom in this
life or in the next against investigators on new lines; they left the
world free to seek any new methods and to follow any new paths which
thinking men could find.
This legacy of belief in science, of respect for scientific pursuits,
and of freedom in scientific research, was especially received by the
school of Alexandria, and above all by Archimedes, who began, just
before the Christian era, to open new paths through the great field of
the inductive sciences by observation, comparison, and experiment.(267)
(267) As to the beginnings of physical science in Greece, and of
the theological opposition to physical science, also Socrates's view
regarding certain branches as interdicted to human study, see Grote's
History of Greece, vol. i, pp. 495 and 504, 505; also Jowett's
introduction to his translation of the Timaeus, and Whewell's History
of the Inductive Sciences. For examples showing the incompatibility of
Plato's methods in physical science with that pursued in modern times,
see Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, English translation by Alleyne
and Goodwin, pp. 375 et. seq. The supposed opposition to freedom of
opinion in the Laws of Plato, toward the end of his life, can hardly
make against the whole spirit of Greek thought.
The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of
theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for
over fifteen hundred years. The cause of this arrest was twofold: First,
there was created an atmosphere in which the germs of physical science
could hardly grow--an atmosphere in which all seeking in Nature for
truth as truth was regarded as futile. The general belief derived from
the New Testament Scriptures was, that the end of the world was at
hand; that the last judgment was approaching; that all existing physical
nature was soon to be destroyed: hence, the greatest thinkers in the
Church generally poured contempt upon all investigators into a science
of Nature, and insisted that everything except the saving of souls was
folly.
This belief appears frequently through the entire period of the Middle
Ages; but during the first thousand years it is clearly dominant. From
Lactantius and Eusebius, in the third century, pouring contempt, as
we have seen, over studies in astronomy, to Peter Damian, the noted
chancellor of Pope Gregory VII, in the eleventh century, declaring all
worldly sciences to be "absurdities" and "fooleries," it becomes a very
important element in the atmosphere of thought.(268)
(268) For the view of Peter Damian and others through the Middle Ages
as to the futility of scientific investigation, see citations in Eicken,
Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, chap. vi.
Then, too, there was established a standard to which all science which
did struggle up through this atmosphere must be made to conform--a
standard which favoured magic rather than science, for it was a standard
of rigid dogmatism obtained from literal readings in the Jewish and
Christian Scriptures. The most careful inductions from ascertained facts
were regarded as wretchedly fallible when compared with any view of
nature whatever given or even hinted at in any poem, chronicle, code,
apologue, myth, legend, allegory, letter, or discourse of any sort which
had happened to be preserved in the literature which had come to be held
as sacred.
For twelve centuries, then, the physical sciences were thus discouraged
or perverted by the dominant orthodoxy. Whoever studied nature studied
it either openly to find illustrations of the sacred text, useful in the
"saving of souls," or secretly to gain the aid of occult powers, useful
in securing personal advantage. Great men like Bede, Isidore of Seville,
and Rabanus Maurus, accepted the scriptural standard of science and used
it as a means of Christian edification. The views of Bede and Isidore on
kindred subjects have been shown in former chapters; and typical of the
view taken by Rabanus is the fact that in his great work on the Universe
there are only two chapters which seem directly or indirectly to
recognise even the beginnings of a real philosophy of nature. A
multitude of less-known men found warrant in Scripture for magic applied
to less worthy purposes.(269)
(269) As typical examples, see utterances of Eusibius and Lactantius
regarding astronomers given in the chapter on Astronomy. For a summary
of Rabanus Maurus's doctrine of physics, see Heller, Geschichte der
Physik, vol. i, pp. 172 et seq. For Bede and Isidore, see the earlier
chapters of this work. For an excellent statement regarding the
application of scriptural standards to scientific research in the
Middle Ages, see Kretschemr, Die physische Erdkunde im christlichen
Mittelalter, pp. 5 et seq. For the distinctions in magic recognised in
the mediaeval Church, see the long catalogue of various sorts given in
the Abbe Migne's Encyclopedie Theologique, third series, article Magic.
But after the thousand years had passed to which various thinkers in the
Church, upon supposed scriptural warrant, had lengthened out the term of
the earth's existence, "the end of all things" seemed further off than
ever; and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, owing to causes which
need not be dwelt upon here, came a great revival of thought, so that
the forces of theology and of science seemed arrayed for a contest. On
one side came a revival of religious fervour, and to this day the works
of the cathedral builders mark its depth and strength; on the other side
came a new spirit of inquiry incarnate in a line of powerful thinkers.
First among these was Albert of Bollstadt, better known as Albert the
Great, the most renowned scholar of his time. Fettered though he was by
the methods sanctioned in the Church, dark as was all about him, he
had conceived better methods and aims; his eye pierced the mists of
scholasticism. he saw the light, and sought to draw the world toward it.
He stands among the great pioneers of physical and natural science; he
aided in giving foundations to botany and chemistry; he rose above his
time, and struck a heavy blow at those who opposed the possibility of
human life on opposite sides of the earth; he noted the influence of
mountains, seas, and forests upon races and products, so that Humboldt
justly finds in his works the germs of physical geography as a
comprehensive science.
But the old system of deducing scientific truth from scriptural
texts was renewed in the development of scholastic theology, and
ecclesiastical power, acting through thousands of subtle channels, was
made to aid this development. The old idea of the futility of physical
science and of the vast superiority of theology was revived. Though
Albert's main effort was to Christianize science, he was dealt with
by the authorities of the Dominican order, subjected to suspicion and
indignity, and only escaped persecution for sorcery by yielding to the
ecclesiastical spirit of the time, and working finally in theological
channels by, scholastic methods.
It was a vast loss to the earth; and certainly, of all organizations
that have reason to lament the pressure of ecclesiasticism which turned
Albert the Great from natural philosophy to theology, foremost of all in
regret should be the Christian Church, and especially the Roman branch
of it. Had there been evolved in the Church during the thirteenth
century a faith strong enough to accept the truths in natural science
which Albert and his compeers could have given, and to have encouraged
their growth, this faith and this encouragement would to this day have
formed the greatest argument for proving the Church directly under
Divine guidance; they would have been among the brightest jewels in
her crown. The loss to the Church by this want of faith and courage has
proved in the long run even greater than the loss to science.(270)
(270) For a very careful discussion of Albert's strength in
investigation and weakness in yielding to scholastic authority, see
Kopp, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der Chemie von Geber bis Stahl,
Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 64 et seq. For a very extended and enthusiastic
biographical sketch, see Pouchet. For comparison of his work with that
of Thomas Aquinas, see Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol. vi,
p. 461. "Il etat aussi tres-habile dans les arts mecaniques, ce que le
fit soupconner d'etre sorcier" (Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, vol.
ii, p. 389). For Albert's biography treated strictly in accordance
with ecclesiastical methods, see Albert the Great, by Joachim Sighart,
translated by the Rev. T. A. Dickson, of the Order of Preachers,
published under the sanction of the Dominican censor and of the Cardinal
Archbishop of Westminster, London, 1876. How an Englishman like Cardinal
Manning could tolerate among Englishmen such glossing over of historical
truth is one of the wonders of contemporary history. For choice
specimens, see chapters ii, and iv. For one of the best and most recent
summaries, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i,
pp. 179 et seq.
The next great man of that age whom the theological and ecclesiastical
forces of the time turned from the right path was Vincent of Beauvais.
During the first half of the twelfth century he devoted himself to the
study of Nature in several of her most interesting fields. To astronomy,
botany, and zoology he gave special attention, but in a larger way
he made a general study of the universe, and in a series of treatises
undertook to reveal the whole field of science. But his work simply
became a vast commentary on the account of creation given in the book of
Genesis. Beginning with the work of the Trinity at the creation, he
goes on to detail the work of angels in all their fields, and makes
excursions into every part of creation, visible and invisible, but
always with the most complete subordination of his thought to the
literal statements of Scripture. Could he have taken the path of
experimental research, the world would have been enriched with most
precious discoveries; but the force which had given wrong direction to
Albert of Bollstadt, backed as it was by the whole ecclesiastical power
of his time, was too strong, and in all the life labour of Vincent
nothing appears of any permanent value. He reared a structure which
the adaptation of facts to literal interpretations of Scripture and the
application of theological subtleties to nature combine to make one of
the most striking monuments of human error.(271)
(271) For Vincent de Beauvais, see Etudes sur Vincent de Beauvais, par
l'Abbe Bourgeat, chaps. xii, xiii, and xiv; also Pouchet, Histoire des
Sciences Naturelles au Moyen Age, Paris, 1853, pp. 470 et seq; also
other histories cited hereafter.
But the theological spirit of the thirteenth century gained its greatest
victory in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. In him was the theological
spirit of his age incarnate. Although he yielded somewhat at one period
to love of natural science, it was he who finally made that great treaty
or compromise which for ages subjected science entirely to theology. He
it was who reared the most enduring barrier against those who in that
age and in succeeding ages laboured to open for science the path by its
own methods toward its own ends.
He had been the pupil of Albert the Great, and had gained much from him.
Through the earlier systems of philosophy, as they were then known, and
through the earlier theologic thought, he had gone with great labour
and vigour; and all his mighty powers, thus disciplined and cultured, he
brought to bear in making a truce which was to give theology permanent
supremacy over science.
The experimental method had already been practically initiated: Albert
of Bollstadt and Roger Bacon had begun their work in accordance with its
methods; but St. Thomas gave all his thoughts to bringing science again
under the sway of theological methods and ecclesiastical control. In his
commentary on Aristotle's treatise upon Heaven and Earth he gave to the
world a striking example of what his method could produce, illustrating
all the evils which arise in combining theological reasoning and literal
interpretation of Scripture with scientific facts; and this work remains
to this day a monument of scientific genius perverted by theology.(272)
(272) For citations showing this subordination of science to theology,
see Eicken, chap. vi.
The ecclesiastical power of the time hailed him as a deliverer, it was
claimed that miracles were vouchsafed, proving that the blessing of
Heaven rested upon his labours, and among the legends embodying this
claim is that given by the Bollandists and immortalized by a renowned
painter. The great philosopher and saint is represented in the habit
of his order, with book and pen in hand, kneeling before the image
of Christ crucified, and as he kneels the image thus addresses him:
"Thomas, thou hast written well concerning me; what price wilt thou
receive for thy labour?" The myth-making faculty of the people at large
was also brought into play. According to a widespread and circumstantial
legend, Albert, by magical means, created an android--an artificial man,
living, speaking, and answering all questions with such subtlety that
St. Thomas, unable to answer its reasoning, broke it to pieces with his
staff.
Historians of the Roman Church like Rohrbacher, and historians of
science like Pouchet, have found it convenient to propitiate the Church
by dilating upon the glories of St. Thomas Aquinas in thus making
an alliance between religious and scientific thought, and laying the
foundations for a "sanctified science"; but the unprejudiced historian
can not indulge in this enthusiastic view: the results both for the
Church and for science have been most unfortunate. It was a wretched
delay in the evolution of fruitful thought, for the first result of this
great man's great compromise was to close for ages that path in science
which above all others leads to discoveries of value--the experimental
method--and to reopen that old path of mixed theology and science which,
as Hallam declares, "after three or four hundred years had not untied
a single knot or added one unequivocal truth to the domain of
philosophy"--the path which, as all modern history proves, has ever
since led only to delusion and evil.(273)
(273) For the work of Aquinas, see his Liber de Caelo et Mundo, section
xx; also Life and Labours of St. Thomas of Aquin, by Archbishop Vaughn,
pp. 459 et seq. For his labours in natural science, see Hoefer, Histoire
de la Chimie, Paris, 1843, vol. i, p. 381. For theological views of
science in the Middle Ages, and rejoicing thereat, see Pouchet, Hist.
des Sci. Nat. au Moyen Age, ubi supra. Pouchet says: " En general au
milieu du moyen age les sciences sont essentiellement chretiennes,
leur but est tout-a-fait religieux, et elles sembent beaucoup moins
s'inquieter de l'avancement intellectuel de l'homme que de son salut
eternel." Pouchet calls this "conciliation" into a "harmonieux ensemble"
"la plus glorieuse des conquetes intellectuelles du moyen age." Pouchet
belongs to Rouen, and the shadow of the Rouen Cathedral seems thrown
over all his history. See, also, l'Abbe Rohrbacher, Hist. de l'Eglise
Catholique, Paris, 1858, vol. xviii, pp. 421 et seq. The abbe dilates
upon the fact that "the Church organizes the agreement of all the
sciences by the labours of St. Thomas of Aquin and his contemporaries."
For the complete subordination of science to theology by St. Thomas, see
Eicken, chap. vi. For the theological character of science in the
Middle Ages, recognised by a Protestant philosophic historian, see the
well-known passage in Guizot, History of Civilization in Europe; and
by a noted Protestant ecclesiatic, see Bishop Hampden's Life of Thomas
Aquinas, chaps. xxxvi, xxxvii; see also Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. ix.
For dealings of Pope John XXII, of the Kings of France and England, and
of the Republic of Venice, see Figuier, L'Alchimie et la Alchimistes,
pp. 140, 141, where, in a note, the text of the bull Spondet paritur is
given. For popular legends regarding Albert and St. Thomas, see Eliphas
Levi, Hist. de la Magie, liv. iv, chap. iv.
The theological path thus opened by these strong men became the main
path for science during ages, and it led the world ever further
and further from any fruitful fact or useful method. Roger Bacon's
investigations already begun were discredited: worthless mixtures of
scriptural legends with imperfectly authenticated physical facts took
their place. Thus it was that for twelve hundred years the minds in
control of Europe regarded all real science as FUTILE, and diverted the
great current of earnest thought into theology.
The next stage in this evolution was the development of an idea which
acted with great force throughout the Middle Ages--the idea that science
is DANGEROUS. This belief was also of very ancient origin. From the time
when the Egyptian magicians made their tremendous threat that unless
their demands were granted they would reach out to the four corners of
the earth, pull down the pillars of heaven, wreck the abodes of the gods
above and crush those of men below, fear of these representatives of
science is evident in the ancient world.
But differences in the character of magic were recognised, some sorts
being considered useful and some baleful. Of the former was magic used
in curing diseases, in determining times auspicious for enterprises, and
even in contributing to amusement; of the latter was magic used to bring
disease and death on men and animals or tempests upon the growing crops.
Hence gradually arose a general distinction between white magic, which
dealt openly with the more beneficent means of nature, and black magic,
which dealt secretly with occult, malignant powers.
Down to the Christian era the fear of magic rarely led to any
persecution very systematic or very cruel. While in Greece and Rome laws
were at times enacted against magicians, they were only occasionally
enforced with rigour, and finally, toward the end of the pagan empire,
the feeling against them seemed dying out altogether. As to its more
kindly phases, men like Marcus Aurelius and Julian did not hesitate to
consult those who claimed to foretell the future. As to black magic, it
seemed hardly worth while to enact severe laws, when charms, amulets,
and even gestures could thwart its worst machinations.
Moreover, under the old empire a real science was coming in, and thought
was progressing. Both the theory and practice of magic were more and
more held up to ridicule. Even as early a writer as Ennius ridiculed
the idea that magicians, who were generally poor and hungry themselves,
could bestow wealth on others; Pliny, in his Natural Philosophy, showed
at great length their absurdities and cheatery; others followed in the
same line of thought, and the whole theory, except among the very lowest
classes, seemed dying out.
But with the development of Christian theology came a change. The idea
of the active interference of Satan in magic, which had come into the
Hebrew mind with especial force from Persia during the captivity of
Israel, had passed from the Hebrew Scriptures into Christianity, and
had been made still stronger by various statements in the New Testament.
Theologians laid stress especially upon the famous utterances of the
Psalmist that "all the gods of the heathen are devils," and of St.
Paul that "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice
to devils"; and it was widely held that these devils were naturally
indignant at their dethronement and anxious to wreak vengeance upon
Christianity. Magicians were held to be active agents of these dethroned
gods, and this persuasion was strengthened by sundry old practitioners
in the art of magic--impostors who pretended to supernatural powers, and
who made use of old rites and phrases inherited from paganism.
Hence it was that as soon as Christianity came into power it more than
renewed the old severities against the forbidden art, and one of the
first acts of the Emperor Constantine after his conversion was to enact
a most severe law against magic and magicians, under which the main
offender might be burned alive. But here, too, it should be noted that
a distinction between the two sorts of magic was recognised, for
Constantine shortly afterward found it necessary to issue a proclamation
stating that his intention was only to prohibit deadly and malignant
magic; that he had no intention of prohibiting magic used to cure
diseases and to protect the crops from hail and tempests. But as new
emperors came to the throne who had not in them that old leaven of
paganism which to the last influenced Constantine, and as theology
obtained a firmer hold, severity against magic increased. Toleration of
it, even in its milder forms, was more and more denied. Black magic and
white were classed together.
This severity went on increasing and threatened the simplest efforts in
physics and chemistry; even the science of mathematics was looked upon
with dread. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the older theology
having arrived at the climax of its development in Europe, terror of
magic and witchcraft took complete possession of the popular mind. In
sculpture, painting, and literature it appeared in forms ever more and
more striking. The lives of saints were filled with it. The cathedral
sculpture embodied it in every part. The storied windows made it all
the more impressive. The missal painters wrought it not only into prayer
books, but, despite the fact that hardly a trace of the belief appears
in the Psalms, they illustrated it in the great illuminated psalters
from which the noblest part of the service was sung before the high
altar. The service books showed every form of agonizing petition for
delivery from this dire influence, and every form of exorcism for
thwarting it.
All the great theologians of the Church entered into this belief and
aided to develop it. The fathers of the early Church were full and
explicit, and the medieval doctors became more and more minute in
describing the operations of the black art and in denouncing them.
It was argued that, as the devil afflicted Job, so he and his minions
continue to cause diseases; that, as Satan is the Prince of the power
of the air, he and his minions cause tempests; that the cases of
Nebuchadnezzar and Lot's wife prove that sorcerers can transform human
beings into animals or even lifeless matter; that, as the devils of
Gadara were cast into swine, all animals could be afflicted in the same
manner; and that, as Christ himself had been transported through the air
by the power of Satan, so any human being might be thus transported to
"an exceeding high mountain."
Thus the horror of magic and witchcraft increased on every hand, and in
1317 Pope John XXII issued his bull Spondent pariter, levelled at the
alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the beginnings of
chemical science. That many alchemists were knavish is no doubt true,
but no infallibility in separating the evil from the good was shown by
the papacy in this matter. In this and in sundry other bulls and
briefs we find Pope John, by virtue of his infallibility as the world's
instructor in all that pertains to faith and morals, condemning real
science and pseudo-science alike. In two of these documents, supposed
to be inspired by wisdom from on high, he complains that both he and
his flock are in danger of their lives by the arts of the sorcerers;
he declares that such sorcerers can send devils into mirrors and finger
rings, and kill men and women by a magic word; that they had tried to
kill him by piercing a waxen image of him with needles in the name
of the devil. He therefore called on all rulers, secular and
ecclesiastical, to hunt down the miscreants who thus afflicted the
faithful, and he especially increased the powers of inquisitors in
various parts of Europe for this purpose.
The impulse thus given to childish fear and hatred against the
investigation of nature was felt for centuries; more and more chemistry
came to be known as one of the "seven devilish arts."
Thus began a long series of demonstrations against magic from the centre
of Christendom. In 1437, and again in 1445, Pope Eugene IV issued
bulls exhorting inquisitors to be more diligent in searching out and
delivering over to punishment magicians and witches who produced bad
weather, the result being that persecution received a fearful impulse.
But the worst came forty years later still, when, in 1484, there came
the yet more terrible bull of Pope Innocent VIII, known as Summis
Desiderantes, which let inquisitors loose upon Germany, with Sprenger
at their head, armed with the Witch-Hammer, the fearful manual Malleus
Maleficarum, to torture and destroy men and women by tens of thousands
for sorcery and magic. Similar bulls were issued in 1504 by Julius II,
and in 1523 by Adrian VI.
The system of repression thus begun lasted for hundreds of years. The
Reformation did little to change it, and in Germany, where Catholics and
Protestants vied with each other in proving their orthodoxy, it was at
its worst. On German soil more than one hundred thousand victims
are believed to have been sacrificed to it between the middle of the
fifteenth and the middle of the sixteenth centuries.
Thus it was that from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas, from Aquinas
to Luther, and from Luther to Wesley, theologians of both branches of
the Church, with hardly an exception, enforced the belief in magic and
witchcraft, and, as far as they had power, carried out the injunction,
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
How this was ended by the progress of scientific modes of thought I
shall endeavour to show elsewhere: here we are only concerned with the
effect of this widespread terrorism on the germs and early growth of the
physical sciences.
Of course, the atmosphere created by this persecution of magicians was
deadly to any open beginnings of experimental science. The conscience of
the time, acting in obedience to the highest authorities of the Church,
and, as was supposed, in defence of religion, now brought out a missile
which it hurled against scientific investigators with deadly effect. The
mediaeval battlefields of thought were strewn with various forms of it.
This missile was the charge of unlawful compact with Satan, and it was
most effective. We find it used against every great investigator of
nature in those times and for ages after. The list of great men in
those centuries charged with magic, as given by Naude, is astounding; it
includes every man of real mark, and in the midst of them stands one of
the most thoughtful popes, Sylvester II (Gerbert), and the foremost of
mediaeval thinkers on natural science, Albert the Great. It came to be
the accepted idea that, as soon as a man conceived a wish to study the
works of God, his first step must be a league with the devil.
It was entirely natural, then, that in 1163 Pope Alexander III, in
connection with the Council of Tours, forbade the study of physics to
all ecclesiastics, which, of course, in that age meant prohibition of
all such scientific studies to the only persons likely to make them.
What the Pope then expressly forbade was, in the words of the papal
bull, "the study of physics or the laws of the world," and it was
added that any person violating this rule "shall be avoided by all and
excommunicated."(274)
(274) For the charge of magic against scholars and others, see Naude,
Apologie pour les Grands Hommes soupconnes de Magie, passim; also Maury,
Hist. de la Magie, troisieme edition, pp. 214, 215; also Cuvier, Hist.
des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 396. For the prohibition by the
Council of Tours and Alexander III, see the Acta Conciliorum (ed.
Harduin), tom. vi, pars ii, p. 1598, Canon viii.
The first great thinker who, in spite of some stumbling into theologic
pitfalls, persevered in a truly scientific path, was Roger Bacon. His
life and works seem until recently to have been generally misunderstood:
he was formerly ranked as a superstitious alchemist who happened upon
some inventions, but more recent investigation has shown him to be one
of the great masters in the evolution of human thought. The advance of
sound historical judgment seems likely to bring the fame of the two who
bear the name of Bacon nearly to equality. Bacon of the chancellorship
and of the Novum Organum may not wane, but Bacon of the prison cell and
the Opus Majus steadily approaches him in brightness.
More than three centuries before Francis Bacon advocated the
experimental method, Roger Bacon practised it, and the results as now
revealed are wonderful. He wrought with power in many sciences, and his
knowledge was sound and exact. By him, more than by any other man of
the Middle Ages, was the world brought into the more fruitful paths
of scientific thought--the paths which have led to the most precious
inventions; and among these are clocks, lenses, and burning specula,
which were given by him to the world, directly or indirectly. In his
writings are found formulae for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and
bismuth. It is even claimed, with much appearance of justice, that
he investigated the power of steam, and he seems to have very nearly
reached some of the principal doctrines of modern chemistry. But it
should be borne in mind that his METHOD of investigation was even
greater than its RESULTS. In an age when theological subtilizing
was alone thought to give the title of scholar, he insisted on REAL
reasoning and the aid of natural science by mathematics; in an age when
experimenting was sure to cost a man his reputation, and was likely
to cost him his life, he insisted on experimenting, and braved all
its risks. Few greater men have lived. As we follow Bacon's process of
reasoning regarding the refraction of light, we see that he was divinely
inspired.
On this man came the brunt of the battle. The most conscientious men
of his time thought it their duty to fight him, and they fought him
steadily and bitterly. His sin was not disbelief in Christianity, not
want of fidelity to the Church, not even dissent from the main lines of
orthodoxy; on the contrary, he showed in all his writings a desire
to strengthen Christianity, to build up the Church, and to develop
orthodoxy. He was attacked and condemned mainly because he did not
believe that philosophy had become complete, and that nothing more was
to be learned; he was condemned, as his opponents expressly declared,
"on account of certain suspicious novelties"--"propter quasdam novitates
suspectas."
Upon his return to Oxford, about 1250, the forces of unreason beset him
on all sides. Greatest of all his enemies was Bonaventura. This enemy
was the theologic idol of the period: the learned world knew him as the
"seraphic Doctor"; Dante gave him an honoured place in the great poem
of the Middle Ages; the Church finally enrolled him among the saints. By
force of great ability in theology he had become, in the middle of the
thirteenth century, general of the Franciscan order: thus, as Bacon's
master, his hands were laid heavily on the new teaching, so that in 1257
the troublesome monk was forbidden to lecture; all men were solemnly
warned not to listen to his teaching, and he was ordered to Paris, to
be kept under surveillance by the monastic authorities. Herein was
exhibited another of the myriad examples showing the care exercised over
scientific teaching by the Church. The reasons for thus dealing with
Bacon were evident: First, he had dared attempt scientific explanations
of natural phenomena, which under the mystic theology of the Middle
Ages had been referred simply to supernatural causes. Typical was his
explanation of the causes and character of the rainbow. It was clear,
cogent, a great step in the right direction as regards physical science:
but there, in the book of Genesis, stood the legend regarding the origin
of the rainbow, supposed to have been dictated immediately by the Holy
Spirit; and, according to that, the "bow in the cloud" was not the
result of natural laws, but a "sign" arbitrarily placed in the heavens
for the simple purpose of assuring mankind that there was not to be
another universal deluge.
But this was not the worst: another theological idea was arrayed against
him--the idea of Satanic intervention in science; hence he was attacked
with that goodly missile which with the epithets "infidel" and "atheist"
has decided the fate of so many battles--the charge of magic and compact
with Satan.
He defended himself with a most unfortunate weapon--a weapon which
exploded in his hands and injured him more than the enemy; for he argued
against the idea of compacts with Satan, and showed that much which is
ascribed to demons results from natural means. This added fuel to the
flame. To limit the power of Satan was deemed hardly less impious than
to limit the power of God.
The most powerful protectors availed him little. His friend Guy of
Foulques, having in 1265 been made Pope under the name of Clement IV,
shielded him for a time; but the fury of the enemy was too strong, and
when he made ready to perform a few experiments before a small audience,
we are told that all Oxford was in an uproar. It was believed that
Satan was about to be let loose. Everywhere priests, monks, fellows,
and students rushed about, their garments streaming in the wind, and
everywhere rose the cry, "Down with the magician!" and this cry, "Down
with the magician!" resounded from cell to cell and from hall to hall.
Another weapon was also used upon the battlefields of science in that
time with much effect. The Arabs had made many noble discoveries in
science, and Averroes had, in the opinion of many, divided the honours
with St. Thomas Aquinas; these facts gave the new missile--it was the
epithet "Mohammedan"; this, too, was flung with effect at Bacon.
The attack now began to take its final shape. The two great religious
orders, Franciscan and Dominican, then in all the vigour of their
youth, vied with each other in fighting the new thought in chemistry
and physics. St. Dominic solemnly condemned research by experiment and
observation; the general of the Franciscan order took similar ground.
In 1243 the Dominicans interdicted every member of their order from the
study of medicine and natural philosophy, and in 1287 this interdiction
was extended to the study of chemistry.
In 1278 the authorities of the Franciscan order assembled at Paris,
solemnly condemned Bacon's teaching, and the general of the Franciscans,
Jerome of Ascoli, afterward Pope, threw him into prison, where he
remained for fourteen years, Though Pope Clement IV had protected him,
Popes Nicholas III and IV, by virtue of their infallibility, decided
that he was too dangerous to be at large, and he was only released at
the age of eighty--but a year or two before death placed him beyond the
reach of his enemies. How deeply the struggle had racked his mind may be
gathered from that last affecting declaration of his, "Would that I had
not given myself so much trouble for the love of science!"
The attempt has been made by sundry champions of the Church to show that
some of Bacon's utterances against ecclesiastical and other corruptions
in his time were the main cause of the severity which the Church
authorities exercised against him. This helps the Church but little,
even if it be well based; but it is not well based. That some of his
utterances of this sort made him enemies is doubtless true, but the
charges on which St. Bonaventura silenced him, and Jerome of Ascoli
imprisoned him, and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen
years, were "dangerous novelties" and suspected sorcery.
Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the world
had ecclesiasticism allowed the gift. He held the key of treasures
which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery. With his
discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the
world have gained! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was done
to this age also. The nineteenth century was robbed at the same
time with the thirteenth. But for that interference with science the
nineteenth century would be enjoying discoveries which will not be
reached before the twentieth century, and even later. Thousands of
precious lives shall be lost, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort,
privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and
methods which, but for this mistaken dealing with Roger Bacon and his
compeers, would now be blessing the earth.
In two recent years sixty thousand children died in England and in Wales
of scarlet fever; probably quite as many died in the United States. Had
not Bacon been hindered, we should have had in our hands, by this time,
the means to save two thirds of these victims; and the same is true
of typhoid, typhus, cholera, and that great class of diseases of
whose physical causes science is just beginning to get an inkling. Put
together all the efforts of all the atheists who have ever lived, and
they have not done so much harm to Christianity and the world as has
been done by the narrow-minded, conscientious men who persecuted Roger
Bacon, and closed the path which he gave his life to open.
But despite the persecution of Bacon and the defection of those who
ought to have followed him, champions of the experimental method rose
from time to time during the succeeding centuries. We know little of
them personally; our main knowledge of their efforts is derived from the
endeavours of their persecutors.
Under such guidance the secular rulers were naturally vigorous. In
France Charles V forbade, in 1380, the possession of furnaces and
apparatus necessary for chemical processes; under this law the chemist
John Barrillon was thrown into prison, and it was only by the greatest
effort that his life was saved. In England Henry IV, in 1404, issued a
similar decree. In Italy the Republic of Venice, in 1418, followed these
examples. The judicial torture and murder of Antonio de Dominis were not
simply for heresy his investigations in the phenomena of light were
an additional crime. In Spain everything like scientific research was
crushed out among Christians. Some earnest efforts were afterward made
by Jews and Moors, but these were finally ended by persecution; and to
this hour the Spanish race, in some respects the most gifted in Europe,
which began its career with everything in its favour and with every form
of noble achievement, remains in intellectual development behind every
other in Christendom.
To question the theological view of physical science was, even long
after the close of the Middle Ages, exceedingly perilous. We have seen
how one of Roger Bacon's unpardonable offences was his argument against
the efficacy of magic, and how, centuries afterward, Cornelius Agrippa,
Weyer, Flade, Loos, Bekker, and a multitude of other investigators and
thinkers, suffered confiscation of property, loss of position, and even
torture and death, for similar views.(275)
(275) For an account of Bacon's treatise, De Nullitate Magiae, see
Hoefer. For the uproar caused by Bacon's teaching at Oxford, see Kopp,
Geschichte der Chemie, Braunschweig, 1869, vol. i, p. 63; and for a
somewhat reactionary discussion of Bacon's relation to the progress
of chemistry, see a recent work by the same author, Ansichten uber die
Aufgabe der Chemie, Braunschweig, 1874, pp. 85 et seq.; also, for an
excellent summary, see Hoefer, Hist. de la Chimie, vol. i, pp. 368 et
seq. For probably the most thorough study of Bacon's general works
in science, and for his views of the universe, see Prof. Werner, Die
Kosmologie und allgemeine Naturlehre des Roger Baco, Wein, 1879. For
summaries of his work in other fields, see Whewell, vol. i, pp. 367,
368; Draper, p. 438; Saisset, Descartes et ses Precurseurs, deuxieme
edition, pp. 397 et seq.; Nourrisson, Progres de la Pensee humaine, pp.
271, 272; Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, Paris, 1865, vol. ii, p.
397; Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 417. As to
Bacon's orthodoxy, see Saisset, pp. 53, 55. For special examination of
causes of Bacon's condemnation, see Waddington, cited by Saisset, p.
14. For a brief but admirable statement of Roger Bacon's realtion to
the world in his time, and of what he might have done had he not been
thwarted by theology, see Dollinger, Studies in European History,
English translation, London, 1890, pp. 178, 179. For a good example of
the danger of denying the full power of Satan, even in much more recent
times and in a Protestant country, see account of treatment in Bekker's
Monde Enchante by the theologians of Holland, in Nisard, Histoire des
Livres Populaires, vol. i, pp. 172, 173. Kopp, in his Ansichten, pushes
criticism even to some scepticism as to Roger Bacon being the DISCOVERER
of many of the things generally attributed to him; but, after all
deductions are carefully made, enough remains to make Bacon the greatest
benefactor to humanity during the Middle Ages. For Roger Bacon's
deep devotion to religion and the Church, see citation and remarks in
Schneider, Roger Bacon, Augsburg, 1873, p. 112; also, citation from
the Opus Majus, in Eicken, chap. vi. On Bacon as a "Mohammedan," see
Saisset, p. 17. For the interdiction of studies in physical science by
the Dominicans and Franciscans, see Henri Martin, Histoire de France,
vol. iv, p. 283. For suppression of chemical teaching by the Parliament
of Paris, see ibid., vol. xii, pp. 14, 15. For proofs that the world is
steadily working toward great discoveries as to the cause and prevention
of zymotic diseases and their propogation, see Beale's Disease Germs,
Baldwin Latham's Sanitary Engineering, Michel Levy's Traite a Hygiene
Publique et Privee. For a summary of the bull Spondent pariter, and for
an example of injury done by it, see Schneider, Geschichte der
Alchemie, p. 160; and for a studiously moderate statement, Milman, Latin
Christianity, book xii, chap. vi. For character and general efforts of
John XXII, see Lea, Inquisition, vol. iii, p. 436, also pp. 452 et seq.
For the character of the two papal briefs, see Rydberg, p. 177. For
the bull Summis Desiderantes, see previous chapters of this work. For
Antonio de Dominis, see Montucla, Hist. des Mathematiques, vol. i, p.
705; Humboldt, Cosmos; Libri, vol. iv, pp. 145 et seq. For Weyer, Flade,
Bekker, Loos, and others, see the chapters of this work on Meteorology,
Demoniacal Possession and Insanity, and Diabolism and Hysteria.
The theological atmosphere, which in consequence settled down about the
great universities and colleges, seemed likely to stifle all scientific
effort in every part of Europe, and it is one of the great wonders in
human history that in spite of this deadly atmosphere a considerable
body of thinking men, under such protection as they could secure, still
persisted in devoting themselves to the physical sciences.
In Italy, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, came a striking
example of the difficulties which science still encountered even after
the Renaissance had undermined the old beliefs. At that time John
Baptist Porta was conducting his investigations, and, despite a
considerable mixture of pseudo-science, they were fruitful. His was not
"black magic," claiming the aid of Satan, but "white magic," bringing
into service the laws of nature--the precursor of applied science. His
book on meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were broached
on this subject; his researches in optics gave the world the camera
obscura, and possibly the telescope; in chemistry he seems to have been
the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides, and thus to have
laid the foundation of several important industries. He did much to
change natural philosophy from a black art to a vigorous open science.
He encountered the old ecclesiastical policy. The society founded by him
for physical research, "I Secreti," was broken up, and he was summoned
to Rome by Pope Paul III and forbidden to continue his investigations.
So, too, in France. In 1624, some young chemists at Paris having taught
the experimental method and cut loose from Aristotle, the faculty of
theology beset the Parliament of Paris, and the Parliament prohibited
these new chemical researches under the severest penalties.
The same war continued in Italy. Even after the belief in magic had been
seriously weakened, the old theological fear and dislike of physical
science continued. In 1657 occurred the first sitting of the Accademia
del Cimento at Florence, under the presidency of Prince Leopold de'
Medici This academy promised great things for science; it was open
to all talent; its only fundamental law was "the repudiation of
any favourite system or sect of philosophy, and the obligation to
investigate Nature by the pure light of experiment"; it entered into
scientific investigations with energy. Borelli in mathematics, Redi in
natural history, and many others, enlarged the boundaries of knowledge.
Heat, light, magnetism, electricity, projectiles, digestion, and the
incompressibility of water were studied by the right method and with
results that enriched the world.
The academy was a fortress of science, and siege was soon laid to
it. The votaries of scholastic learning denounced it as irreligious,
quarrels were fomented, Leopold was bribed with a cardinal's hat and
drawn away to Rome, and, after ten years of beleaguering, the fortress
fell: Borelli was left a beggar; Oliva killed himself in despair.
So, too, the noted Academy of the Lincei at times incurred the ill
will of the papacy by the very fact that it included thoughtful
investigators. It was "patronized" by Pope Urban VIII in such manner as
to paralyze it, and it was afterward vexed by Pope Gregory XVI. Even in
our own time sessions of scientific associations were discouraged and
thwarted by as kindly a pontiff as Pius IX.(276)
(276) For Porta, see the English translation of his main summary,
Natural Magick, London, 1658. The first chapters are especially
interesting, as showing what the word "magic" had come to mean in the
mind of a man in whom mediaeval and modern ideas were curiously mixed;
see also Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. ii, pp. 102-106; also
Kopp; also Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, vol. iii, p. 239; also
Musset-Pathay. For the Accademia del Cimento, see Napier, Florentine
History, vol. v, p. 485; Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura; Henri
Martin, Histoire de France; Jevons, Principles of Science, vol. ii,
pp. 36-40. For value attached to Borelli's investigations by Newton and
Huygens, see Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Newton, London, 1875, pp. 128,
129. Libri, in his first Essai sur Galilee, p. 37, says that Oliva was
summoned to Rome and so tortured by the Inquisition that, to escape
further cruelty, he ended his life by throwing himself from a window.
For interference by Pope Gregory XVI with the Academy of the Lincei, and
with public instruction generally, see Carutti, Storia della Accademia
dei Lincei, p. 126. Pius IX, with all his geniality, seems to have
allowed his hostility to voluntary associations to carry him very far
at times. For his answer to an application made through Lord Odo Russell
regarding a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals and his
answer that "such an association could not be sanctioned by the Holy
See, being founded on a theological error, to wit, that Christians owed
any duties to animals," see Frances Power Cobbe, Hopes of the Human
Race, p. 207.
A hostility similar in kind, though less in degree, was shown in
Protestant countries.
Even after Thomasius in Germany and Voltaire in France and Beccaria
in Italy had given final blows to the belief in magic and witchcraft
throughout Christendom, the traditional orthodox distrust of the
physical sciences continued for a long time.
In England a marked dislike was shown among various leading
ecclesiastics and theologians towards the Royal Society, and later
toward the Association for the Advancement of Science; and this dislike,
as will hereafter be seen, sometimes took shape in serious opposition.
As a rule, both in Protestant and Catholic countries instruction
in chemistry and physics was for a long time discouraged by Church
authorities; and, when its suppression was no longer possible, great
pains were taken to subordinate it to instruction supposed to be more
fully in accordance with the older methods of theological reasoning.
I have now presented in outline the more direct and open struggle of the
physical sciences with theology, mainly as an exterior foe. We will next
consider their warfare with the same foe in its more subtle form, mainly
as a vitiating and sterilizing principle in science itself.
We have seen thus far, first, how such men as Eusebius, Lactantius, and
their compeers, opposed scientific investigation as futile; next, how
such men as Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the multitude who
followed them, turned the main current of medieval thought from science
to theology; and, finally, how a long line of Church authorities from
Popes John XXII and Innocent VIII, and the heads of the great religious
orders, down to various theologians and ecclesiastics, Catholic and
Protestant, of a very recent period, endeavoured first to crush and
afterward to discourage scientific research as dangerous.
Yet, injurious as all this was to the evolution of science, there was
developed something in many respects more destructive; and this was
the influence of mystic theology, penetrating, permeating, vitiating,
sterilizing nearly every branch of science for hundreds of years. Among
the forms taken by this development in the earlier Middle Ages we find a
mixture of physical science with a pseudo-science obtained from texts
of Scripture. In compounding this mixture, Jews and Christians vied
with each other. In this process the sacred books were used as a fetich;
every word, every letter, being considered to have a divine and hidden
meaning. By combining various scriptural letters in various abstruse
ways, new words of prodigious significance in magic were obtained, and
among them the great word embracing the seventy-two mystical names of
God--the mighty word "Schemhamphoras." Why should men seek knowledge
by observation and experiment in the book of Nature, when the book of
Revelation, interpreted by the Kabbalah, opened such treasures to the
ingenious believer?
So, too, we have ancient mystical theories of number which the
theological spirit had made Christian, usurping an enormous place in
medieval science. The sacred power of the number three was seen in the
Trinity; in the three main divisions of the universe--the empyrean, the
heavens, and the earth; in the three angelic hierarchies; in the three
choirs of seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; in the three of dominions,
virtues, and powers; in the three of principalities, archangels,
and angels; in the three orders in the Church--bishops, priests, and
deacons; in the three classes--the baptized, the communicants, and the
monks; in the three degrees of attainment--light, purity, and knowledge;
in the three theological virtues--faith, hope, and charity--and in much
else. All this was brought into a theologico-scientific relation,
then and afterward, with the three dimensions of space; with the three
divisions of time--past, present, and future; with the three realms of
the visible world--sky, earth, and sea; with the three constituents
of man--body, soul, and spirit; with the threefold enemies of
man--the world, the flesh, and the devil; with the three kingdoms in
nature--mineral, vegetable, and animal; with "the three colours"--red,
yellow, and blue; with "the three eyes of the honey-bee"--and with a
multitude of other analogues equally precious. The sacred power of the
number seven was seen in the seven golden candlesticks and the seven
churches in the Apocalypse; in the seven cardinal virtues and the seven
deadly sins; in the seven liberal arts and the seven devilish arts, and,
above all, in the seven sacraments. And as this proved in astrology that
there could be only seven planets, so it proved in alchemy that there
must be exactly seven metals. The twelve apostles were connected with
the twelve signs in the zodiac, and with much in physical science.
The seventy-two disciples, the seventy-two interpreters of the Old
Testament, the seventy-two mystical names of God, were connected with
the alleged fact in anatomy that there were seventy-two joints in the
human frame.
Then, also, there were revived such theologic and metaphysical
substitutes for scientific thought as the declaration that the perfect
line is a circle, and hence that the planets must move in absolute
circles--a statement which led astronomy astray even when the
great truths of the Copernican theory were well in sight; also, the
declaration that nature abhors a vacuum--a statement which led physics
astray until Torricelli made his experiments; also, the declaration that
we see the lightning before we hear the thunder because "sight is nobler
than hearing."
In chemistry we have the same theologic tendency to magic, and, as a
result, a muddle of science and theology, which from one point of view
seems blasphemous and from another idiotic, but which none the less
sterilized physical investigation for ages. That debased Platonism which
had been such an important factor in the evolution of Christian theology
from the earliest days of the Church continued its work. As everything
in inorganic nature was supposed to have spiritual significance, the
doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation were turned into an argument
in behalf of the philosopher's stone; arguments for the scheme of
redemption and for transubstantiation suggested others of similar
construction to prove the transmutation of metals; the doctrine of the
resurrection of the human body was by similar mystic jugglery connected
with the processes of distillation and sublimation. Even after the
Middle Ages were past, strong men seemed unable to break away from such
reasoning as this--among them such leaders as Basil Valentine in the
fifteenth century, Agricola in the sixteenth, and Van Helmont in the
seventeenth.
The greatest theologians contributed to the welter of unreason from
which this pseudo-science was developed. One question largely discussed
was, whether at the Redemption it was necessary for God to take the
human form. Thomas Aquinas answered that it was necessary, but William
Occam and Duns Scotus answered that it was not; that God might have
taken the form of a stone, or of a log, or of a beast. The possibilities
opened to wild substitutes for science by this sort of reasoning were
infinite. Men have often asked how it was that the Arabians
accomplished so much in scientific discovery as compared with Christian
investigators; but the answer is easy: the Arabians were comparatively
free from these theologic allurements which in Christian Europe
flickered in the air on all sides, luring men into paths which led
no-whither.
Strong investigators, like Arnold of Villanova, Raymond Lully, Basil
Valentine, Paracelsus, and their compeers, were thus drawn far out
of the only paths which led to fruitful truths. In a work generally
ascribed to the first of these, the student is told that in mixing his
chemicals he must repeat the psalm Exsurge Domine, and that on certain
chemical vessels must be placed the last words of Jesus on the cross.
Vincent of Beauvais insisted that, as the Bible declares that Noah, when
five hundred years old, had children born to him, he must have possessed
alchemical means of preserving life; and much later Dickinson insisted
that the patriarchs generally must have owed their long lives to such
means. It was loudly declared that the reality of the philosopher's
stone was proved by the words of St. John in the Revelation. "To him
that overcometh I will give a white stone." The reasonableness of
seeking to develop gold out of the baser metals was for many generations
based upon the doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body, which,
though explicitly denied by St. Paul, had become a part of the creed
of the Church. Martin Luther was especially drawn to believe in the
alchemistic doctrine of transmutation by this analogy. The Bible was
everywhere used, both among Protestants and Catholics, in support of
these mystic adulterations of science, and one writer, as late as 1751,
based his alchemistic arguments on more than a hundred passages of
Scripture. As an example of this sort of reasoning, we have a proof that
the elect will preserve the philosopher's stone until the last judgment,
drawn from a passage in St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, "We have
this treasure in earthen vessels."
The greatest thinkers devoted themselves to adding new ingredients to
this strange mixture of scientific and theologic thought. The Catholic
philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the Protestant mysticism of Jacob Boehme,
and the alchemistic reveries of Basil Valentine were all cast into this
seething mass.
And when alchemy in its old form had been discredited, we find
scriptural arguments no less perverse, and even comical, used on the
other side. As an example of this, just before the great discoveries by
Stahl, we find the valuable scientific efforts of Becher opposed with
the following syllogism: "King Solomon, according to the Scriptures,
possessed the united wisdom of heaven and earth; but King Solomon knew
nothing about alchemy (or chemistry in the form it then took), and sent
his vessels to Ophir to seek gold, and levied taxes upon his subjects;
ergo alchemy (or chemistry) has no reality or truth." And we find that
Becher is absolutely turned away from his labours, and obliged to devote
himself to proving that Solomon used more money than he possibly could
have obtained from Ophir or his subjects, and therefore that he must
have possessed a knowledge of chemical methods and the philosopher's
stone as the result of them.(277)
(277) For an extract from Agrippa's Occulta Philosophia, giving examples
of the way in which mystical names were obtained from the Bible, see
Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, pp. 143 et seq. For the germs of many
mystic beliefs regarding number and the like, which were incorporated
into mediaeval theology, see Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy,
English translation, pp. 254 and 572, and elsewhere. As to the
connection of spiritual things with inorganic nature in relation to
chemistry, see Eicken, p. 634. On the injury to science wrought by
Platonism acting through mediaeval theology, see Hoefer, Histoire de la
Chimie, vol. i, p. 90. As to the influence of mysticism upon strong men
in science, see Hoefer; also Kopp, Geschichte der Alchemie, vol. i, p.
211. For a very curious Catholic treatise on sacred numbers, see the
Abbe Auber, Symbolisme Religieux, Paris, 1870; also Detzel, Christliche
Ikonographie, pp. 44 et seq.; and for an equally important Protestant
work, see Samuell, Seven the Sacred number, London 1887. It is
interesting to note that the latter writer, having been forced to give
up the seven planets, consoles himself with the statement that "the
earth is the seventh planet, counting from Neptune and calling the
asteroids one" (see p. 426). For the electrum magicum, the seven
metals composing it, and its wonderful qualities, see extracts from
Paracelsus's writings in Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus, London, 1887,
pp. 168 et seq. As to the more rapid transition of light than sound, the
following expresses the scholastic method well: "What is the cause why
we see sooner the lightning than we heare the thunder clappe? That is
because our sight is both nobler and sooner perceptive of its object
than our eare; as being the more active part, and priore to our hearing:
besides, the visible species are more subtile and less corporeal than
the audible species."--Person's Varieties, Meteors, p. 82. For Basil
Valentine's view, see Hoefer, vol. i, pp. 453-465; Schmieder, Geschichte
der Alchemie, pp. 197-209; Allgemeine deutsche Biographies, article
Basilius. For the discussions referred to on possibilities of God
assuming forms of stone, or log, or beast, see Lippert, Christenthum,
Volksglaube, und Volksbrauch, pp. 372, 373, where citations are given,
etc. For the syllogism regarding Solomon, see Figuier, L'Alchimie et les
Alchimistes, pp. 106, 107. For careful appreciation of Becher's position
in the history of chemistry, see Kopp, Ansichten uber die Aufgabe der
Chemie, etc., von Geber bis Stahl, Braunschweig, 1875, pp. 201 et seq.
For the text proving the existence of the philosopher's stone from the
book of Revelation, see Figuier, p. 22.
Of the general reasoning enforced by theology regarding physical
science, every age has shown examples; yet out of them all I will select
but two, and these are given because they show how this mixture
of theological with scientific ideas took hold upon the strongest
supporters of better reasoning even after the power of medieval theology
seemed broken.
The first of these examples is Melanchthon. He was the scholar of the
Reformation, and justly won the title "Preceptor of Germany." His mind
was singularly open, his sympathies broad, and his usual freedom from
bigotry drew down upon him that wrath of Protestant heresy-hunters
which embittered the last years of his life and tortured him upon his
deathbed. During his career at the University of Wittenberg he gave a
course of lectures on physics, and in these he dwelt upon scriptural
texts as affording scientific proofs, accepted the interference of the
devil in physical phenomena as in other things, and applied the medieval
method throughout his whole work.(278)
(278) For Melanchthon's ideas on physics, see his Initia Doctrinae
Physicae, Wittenberg, 1557, especially pp. 243 and 274; also in vol.
xiii of Bretschneider's edition of the collected works, and especially
pp. 339-343.
Yet far more remarkable was the example, a century later, of the man who
more than any other led the world out of the path opened by Aquinas,
and into that through which modern thought has advanced to its greatest
conquests. Strange as it may at first seem, Francis Bacon, whose
keenness of sight revealed the delusions of the old path and the
promises of the new, and whose boldness did so much to turn the world
from the old path into the new, presents in his own writings one of the
most striking examples of the evil he did so much to destroy.
The Novum Organon, considering the time when it came from his pen, is
doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in the history of
human thought. It showed the modern world the way out of the scholastic
method and reverence for dogma into the experimental method and
reverence for fact. In it occur many passages which show that the
great philosopher was fully alive to the danger both to religion and to
science arising from their mixture. He declares that the "corruption of
philosophy from superstition and theology introduced the greatest amount
of evil both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." He
denounces those who "have endeavoured to found a natural philosophy on
the books of Genesis and Job and other sacred Scriptures, so 'seeking
the dead among the living.'" He speaks of the result as "an unwholesome
mixture of things human and divine; not merely fantastic philosophy, but
heretical religion."
He refers to the opposition of the fathers to the doctrine of the
rotundity of the earth, and says that, "thanks to some of them, you may
find the approach to any kind of philosophy, however improved, entirely
closed up." He charges that some of these divines are "afraid lest
perhaps a deeper inquiry into nature should, penetrate beyond the
allowed limits of sobriety"; and finally speaks of theologians as
sometimes craftily conjecturing that, if science be little understood,
"each single thing can be referred more easily to the hand and rod of
God," and says, "THIS IS NOTHING MORE OR LESS THAN WISHING TO PLEASE GOD
BY A LIE."
No man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race can, without a
feeling of awe, come into the presence of such clearness of insight and
boldness of utterance, and the first thought of the reader is that, of
all men, Francis Bacon is the most free from the unfortunate bias he
condemns; that he, certainly, can not be deluded into the old path.
But as we go on through his main work we are surprised to find that the
strong arm of Aquinas has been stretched over the intervening ages, and
has laid hold upon this master-thinker of the seventeenth century; for
only a few chapters beyond those containing the citations already made
we find Bacon alluding to the recent voyage of Columbus, and speaking of
the prophecy of Daniel regarding the latter days, that "many shall
run to and fro, and knowledge be increased," as clearly signifying
"that... the circumnavigation of the world and the increase of science
should happen in the same age."(279)
(279) See the Novum Organon, translated by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin,
Oxford, 1855, chaps. lxv and lxxxix.
In his great work on the Advancement of Learning the firm grasp which
the methods he condemned held upon him is shown yet more clearly. In the
first book of it he asserts that "that excellent book of Job, if it
be revolved with diligence, will be found pregnant and swelling with
natural philosophy," and he endeavours to show that in it the "roundness
of the earth," the "fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal
distances," the "depression of the southern pole," the "matter of
generation," and "matter of minerals" are "with great elegancy noted."
But, curiously enough, he uses to support some of these truths the very
texts which the fathers of the Church used to destroy them, and those
for which he finds Scripture warrant most clearly are such as science
has since disproved. So, too, he says that Solomon was enabled in his
Proverbs, "by donation of God, to compile a natural history of all
verdure."(280)
(280) See Bacon, Advancement of Learning, edited by W. Aldis Wright,
London, 1873, pp. 47, 48. Certainly no more striking examples of the
strength of the evil which he had all along been denouncing could be
exhibited that these in his own writings. Nothing better illustrates the
sway of the mediaeval theology, or better explains his blindness to the
discoveries of Copernicus and to the experiments of Gilbert. For a
very contemptuous statement of Lord Bacon's claim to his position as
a philosopher, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, Leipsic, 1872,
vol i, p. 219. For a more just statement, see Brewster, Life of Sir
Isaac Newton, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 298.
Such was the struggle of the physical sciences in general. Let us now
look briefly at one special example out of many, which reveals, as well
as any, one of the main theories which prompted theological interference
with them.
It will doubtless seem amazing to many that for ages the weight of
theological thought in Christendom was thrown against the idea of the
suffocating properties of certain gases, and especially of carbonic
acid. Although in antiquity we see men forming a right theory of gases
in mines, we find that, early in the history of the Church, St. Clement
of Alexandria put forth the theory that these gases are manifestations
of diabolic action, and that, throughout Christendom, suffocation in
caverns, wells, and cellars was attributed to the direct action of evil
spirits. Evidences of this view abound through the medieval period, and
during the Reformation period a great authority, Agricola, one of the
most earnest and truthful of investigators, still adhered to the
belief that these gases in mines were manifestations of devils, and he
specified two classes--one of malignant imps, who blow out the miners'
lamps, and the other of friendly imps, who simply tease the workmen in
various ways. He went so far as to say that one of these spirits in the
Saxon mine of Annaberg destroyed twelve workmen at once by the power of
his breath.
At the end of the sixteenth century we find a writer on mineralogy
complaining that the mines in France and Germany had been in large part
abandoned on account of the "evil spirits of metals which had taken
possession of them."
Even as late as the seventeenth century, Van Helmont, after he
had broken away from alchemy and opened one of the great paths to
chemistry--even after he had announced to the world the existence of
various gases and the mode of their generation--was not strong enough to
free himself from theologic bias; he still inclined to believe that the
gases he had discovered, were in some sense living spirits, beneficent
or diabolical.
But at various. periods glimpses of the truth had been gained. The
ancient view had not been entirely forgotten; and as far back as the
first part of the thirteenth century Albert the Great suggested a
natural cause in the possibility of exhalations from minerals causing a
"corruption of the air"; but he, as we have seen, was driven or
dragged off into, theological studies, and the world relapsed into the
theological view.
Toward the end of the fifteenth century there had come a great genius
laden with important truths in chemistry, but for whom the world was
not ready--Basil Valentine. His discoveries anticipated much that has
brought fame and fortune to chemists since, yet so fearful of danger was
he that his work was carefully concealed. Not until after his death was
his treatise on alchemy found, and even then it was for a long time not
known where and when he lived. The papal bull, Spondent pariter, and the
various prohibitions it bred, forcing other alchemists to conceal their
laboratories, led him to let himself be known during his life at Erfurt
simply as an apothecary, and to wait until after his death to make a
revelation of truth which during his lifetime might have cost him dear.
Among the legacies of this greatest of the alchemists was the doctrine
that the air which asphyxiates workers in mines is similar to that which
is produced by fermentation of malt, and a recommendation that, in
order to drive away the evil and to prevent serious accidents, fires
be lighted and jets of steam used to ventilate the mines--stress being
especially laid upon the idea that the danger in the mines is produced
by "exhalations of metals."
Thanks to men like Valentine, this idea of the interference of Satan
and his minions with the mining industry was gradually weakened, and the
working of the deserted mines was resumed; yet even at a comparatively
recent period we find it still lingering, and among leading divines in
the very heart of Protestant Germany. In 1715 a cellar-digger having
been stifled at Jena, the medical faculty of the university decided
that the cause was not the direct action of the devil, but a deadly gas.
Thereupon Prof. Loescher, of the University of Wittenberg, entered a
solemn protest, declaring that the decision of the medical faculty was
"only a proof of the lamentable license which has so taken possession of
us, and which, if we are not earnestly on our guard, will finally turn
away from us the blessing of God."(281) But denunciations of this kind
could not hold back the little army of science; in spite of adverse
influences, the evolution of physics and chemistry went on. More and
more there rose men bold enough to break away from theological methods
and strong enough to resist ecclesiastical bribes and threats. As
alchemy in its first form, seeking for the philosopher's stone and the
transmutation of metals, had given way to alchemy in its second form,
seeking for the elixir of life and remedies more or less magical for
disease, so now the latter yielded to the search for truth as truth.
More and more the "solemnly constituted impostors" were resisted
in every field. A great line of physicists and chemists began to
appear.(282)
(281) For Loescher's protest, see Julian Schmidt, Geschichte des
geistigen Lebens, etc., vol. i, p. 319.
(282) For the general view of noxious gases as imps of Satan, see
Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, vol. i, p. 350; vol. ii, p. 48. For the
work of Black, Priestley, Bergmann, and others, see main authorities
already cited, and especially the admirable paper of Dr. R. G. Eccles on
The Evolution of Chemistry, New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1891. For the
treatment of Priesley, see Spence's Essays, London, 1892; also Rutt,
Life and Correspondence of Priestley, vol. ii, pp. 115 et seq.
II.
Just at the middle of the seventeenth century, and at the very centre
of opposition to physical science, Robert Boyle began the new epoch
in chemistry. Strongly influenced by the writings of Bacon and the
discoveries of Galileo, he devoted himself to scientific research,
establishing at Oxford a laboratory and putting into it a chemist from
Strasburg. For this he was at once bitterly attacked. In spite of his
high position, his blameless life, his liberal gifts to charity and
learning, the Oxford pulpit was especially severe against him, declaring
that his researches were destroying religion and his experiments
undermining the university. Public orators denounced him, the wits
ridiculed him, and his associates in the peerage were indignant that
he should condescend to pursuits so unworthy. But Boyle pressed on. His
discoveries opened new paths in various directions and gave an impulse
to a succession of vigorous investigators. Thus began the long series of
discoveries culminating those of Black, Bergmann, Cavendish, Priestley,
and Lavoisier, who ushered in the chemical science of the nineteenth
century.