accompanied by the marvellous and the 'supernatural.' The nineteenth
century could find nothing real and true that was. Which view was right
and which was wrong? Was either complete? Of these two questions, the
second alone is profitable at the present. Both views were right--in a
certain way of contemplating; both views were wrong--in a certain way.
Neither was complete. At present, as we are struggling to throw off the
fetters which impeded thought in the nineteenth century, it is most
important to free ourselves from its prejudices and narrowness."
He adds (pp. 26 and 27): "There are clear signs of the unfinished state
in which this chapter was left by Luke; but some of the German scholar's
criticisms show that he has not a right idea of the simplicity of life
and equipment that evidently characterized the jailer's house and the
prison. The details which he blames as inexact and inconsistent are
sometimes most instructive about the circumstances of this provincial
town and Roman colonia.
"But it is never safe to lay much stress on small points of inexactness
or inconsistency in any author. One finds such faults even in the works
of modern scholarship if one examines them in the microscopic fashion in
which Luke is studied here. I think I can find them in the author
[Harnack] himself. His point of view sometimes varies in a puzzling
way."
As a matter of fact, Harnack, as pointed out by Ramsay, was evidently
working himself more and more out of the old conclusion as to the lack
of authenticity of the Lucan writings into an opinion ever more and more
favorable to Luke. For instance, in a notice of his own book, published
in the _Theologische Literaturzeitung_, "he speaks far more favorably
about the trustworthiness and credibility of Luke, as being generally in
a position to acquire and transmit reliable information, and as having
proved himself able to take advantage of his position. Harnack was
gradually working his way to a new plane of thought. His later opinion
is more favorable."
Ramsay also points out that Professor Giffert, one of our American
biblical critics, had felt compelled by the geographical and historical
evidence to abandon in part the older unfavorable criticism of Luke and
to admit that the Acts is more trustworthy than previous critics
allowed. Above all, "he saw that it was a living piece of literature
written by one author." In a word, Luke is being vindicated in every
regard.
Some of the supposed inaccuracies of Luke vanish when careful
investigation is made. Some of his natural history details, for
instance, have been impugned and the story of the viper that "fastened"
itself upon St. Paul in Malta has been cited as an example of a story
that would not have been told in that way by a man who knew medicine and
the related sciences in Luke's time. Because the passage illustrates a
number of phases of the discussion with regard to Luke's language I make
a rather long quotation from Ramsay:
Take as a specimen with which to finish off this paper the
passage Acts xxviii, 9 _et seq._, which is very fully
discussed by Harnack twice. He argues that the true meaning of
the passage was not understood until medical language was
compared, when it was shown that the Greek word by which the
act of the viper to Paul's hand is described, implies "bit"
and not merely "fastened upon." But it is a well-assured fact
that the viper, a poisonous snake, only strikes, fixes the
poison fangs on the flesh for a moment, and withdraws its head
instantly. Its action could never be what is attributed by
Luke the eye witness to this Maltese viper; that it hung from
Paul's hand and was shaken off into the fire by him. On the
other hand, constrictors, which have no poison fangs, cling in
the way described, but as a rule do not bite. Are we, then, to
understand in spite of the medical style and the authority of
Professor Blass (who translates "momordit" in his edition),
that the viper fastened upon the apostle's hand? Then, the
very name viper is a difficulty. Was Luke mistaken about the
kind of snake which he saw? A trained medical man in ancient
times was usually a good authority about serpents, to which
great respect was paid in ancient medicine and custom.
Mere verbal study is here utterly at fault. We can make no
progress without turning to the realities and facts of Maltese
natural history. A correspondent obligingly informed me some
years ago that Mr. Bryan Hook, of Farnham, Surrey (who, my
correspondent assures me, is a thoroughly good naturalist),
had found in Malta a small snake, _Coronella austriaca_, which
is rare in England, but common in many parts of Europe. It is
a constrictor, without poison fangs, which would cling to the
hand or arm as Luke describes. It is similar in size to the
viper, and so like in markings and general appearance that Mr.
Hook, when he caught his specimen, thought he was killing a
viper.
My friend, Prof. J.W.H. Trail, of Aberdeen, whom I consulted,
replied that _Coronella laevis_ or _austriaca_, is known in
Sicily and the adjoining islands; but he can find no evidence
of its existence in Malta. It is known to be rather irritable,
and to fix its small teeth so firmly into the human skin as to
need a little force to pull it off, though the teeth are too
short to do any real injury to the skin. Coronella is at a
glance very much like a viper; and in the flames it would not
be closely examined. While it is not reported as found in
Malta except by Mr. Hook, two species are known there
belonging to the same family and having similar habits
(_leopardinus_ and _zamenis_ (or _coluber_) _gemonensis_). The
coloring of _Coronella leopardinus_ would be the most likely
to suggest a viper.
The observations justify Luke entirely. We have here a snake
so closely resembling a viper as to be taken for one by a good
naturalist until he had caught and examined a specimen. It
clings, and yet it also bites without doing harm. That the
Maltese rustics should mistake this harmless snake for a
venomous one is not strange. Many uneducated people have the
idea that all snakes are poisonous in varying degrees, just as
the vulgar often firmly believe that toads are poisonous.
Every detail as related by Luke is natural, and in accordance
with the facts of the country.
In a word, then, the whole question as to Luke's authority as a writer,
as an eye-witness of many things, and as the relator of many others with
regard to which he had obtained the testimony of eye-witnesses is fully
vindicated. Twenty years ago many scholars were prone to doubt this
whole question. Ten years ago most of them were convinced that the Luke
traditions were not justified by recent investigation. Now we have come
back once more to the complete acceptance of the old traditions.
Perhaps the most unfortunate characteristic of much nineteenth-century
criticism in all departments, even those strictly scientific, was the
marked tendency to reject previous opinions for new ones. Somehow men
felt themselves so far ahead of old-time writers and thinkers that they
concluded they must hold opinions different from their ancestors. In
nearly every case the new ideas that they evolved by supposedly newer
methods are not standing the test of time and further study. There had
been a continuous belief in men's minds, having its basis very probably
on a passage in one of St. Peter's Epistles, that the earth would
dissolve by fire. This was openly contradicted all during the nineteenth
century and the time when the earth would freeze up definitely
calculated by our mathematicians. Now after having studied
radioactivity and learned from the physicist that the earth is heating
up and will eventually get too hot for life, we calmly go back to the
old Petrine declaration. Some of the most distinguished of the German
biologists of the present day, such men as Driesch and others, calmly
tell us that the edifice erected by Darwin will have to come down
because of newly discovered evidence, and indeed some of them go so far
as to declare that Darwinism was a crude hypothesis very superficial in
its philosophical aspects and therefore acceptable to a great many
people who, because it was easy to understand and was very different
from what our fathers had believed, hastened to accept it. Nothing shows
the necessity for being conservative in the matter of new views in
science or ethics or religion more than the curious transition state in
which we are with regard to many opinions at the present time, with a
distinct tendency toward reaction to older views that a few years ago
were thought quite untenable. We are rather proud of the advance that we
are supposed to be making along many lines in science and scholarship,
and yet over and over again, after years of work, we prove to have been
following a wrong lead and must come back to where we started. This has
been the way of man from the beginning and doubtless will continue. The
present generation are having this curious regression that follows
supposed progress strongly emphasized for them.
APPENDIX II
SCIENCE AT THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES[35]
With the growth of interest in science and in nature study in our own
day, one of the expressions that is probably oftenest heard is surprise
that the men of preceding generations and especially university men did
not occupy themselves more with the world around them and with the
phenomena that are so tempting to curiosity. Science is usually supposed
to be comparatively new and nature study only a few generations old. Men
are supposed to have been so much interested in book knowledge and in
speculations and theories of many kinds, that they neglected the
realities of life around them while spinning fine webs of theory.
Previous generations, of course, have indulged in theory, but then our
own generation is not entirely free from that amusing occupation.
Nothing could well be less true, however, than that the men of preceding
generations were not interested in science even in the sense of physical
science, or that nature study is new, or that men were not curious and
did not try to find out all they could about the phenomena of the world
around them.
The medieval universities and the school-men who taught in them have
been particularly blamed for their failure to occupy themselves with
realities instead of with speculation. We are coming to recognize their
wonderful zeal for education, the large numbers of students they
attracted, the enthusiasm of their students, since they made so many
handwritten copies of the books of their masters, the devotion of the
teachers themselves, who wrote at much greater length than do our
professors even now and on the most abstruse subjects, so that it is all
the more surprising to think they should have neglected science. The
thought of our generation in the matter, however, is founded entirely on
an assumption. Those who know anything about the writers of the Middle
Ages at first hand are not likely to think of them as neglectful of
science even in our sense of the term. Those who know them at second
hand are, however, very sure in the matter.
The assumption is due to the neglect of history that came in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We have many other similar
assumptions because of the neglect of many phases of mental development
and applied science at this time. For instance, most of us are very
proud of our modern hospital development and think of this as a great
humanitarian evolution of applied medical science. We are very likely to
think that this is the first time in the world's history that the
building of hospitals has been brought to such a climax of development,
and that the houses for the ailing in the olden time were mere refuges,
prone to become death traps and at most makeshifts for the solution of
the problem of the care of the ailing poor. This is true for the
hospitals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it is not
true at all for the hospitals of the thirteenth and fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in their "History of
Nursing"[36] have called attention to the fact that the lowest period in
hospital development is during the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Hospitals were little better than prisons, they had narrow
windows, were ill provided with light and air and hygienic arrangements,
and in general were all that we should imagine old-time hospitals to be.
The hospitals of the earlier time, however, had fine high ceilings,
large windows, abundant light and air, excellent arrangements for the
privacy of patients, and in general were as worthy of the architects of
the earlier times as the municipal buildings, the cathedrals, the
castles, the university buildings, and every other form of construction
that the late medieval centuries devoted themselves to.
The trouble with those who assume that there was no study of science and
practically no attention to nature study in the Middle Ages is that they
know nothing at all at first hand about the works of the men who wrote
in the medieval period. They have accepted declarations with regard to
the absolute dependence of the scholastics on authority, their almost
divine worship of Aristotle, their utter readiness to accept
authoritative assertions provided they came with the stamp of a mighty
name, and then their complete lack of attention to observation and above
all to experiment. Nothing could well be more ridiculous than this
ignorant assumption of knowledge with regard to the great teachers at
the medieval universities. Just as soon as there is definite knowledge
of what these great teachers wrote and taught, not only does the
previous mood of blame for them for not paying much more attention to
science and nature at once disappear, but it gives place to the
heartiest admiration for the work of these great thinkers. It is easy to
appreciate, then, what Professor Saintsbury said in a recent volume on
the thirteenth century:
And there have even been in these latter days some graceless
ones who have asked whether the science of the nineteenth
century after an equal interval will be of any more positive
value--whether it will not have even less comparative interest
than that which appertains to the scholasticism of the
thirteenth.
Three men were the great teachers in the medieval universities at their
prime. They have been read and studied with interest ever since. They
wrote huge tomes, but men have pored over them in every generation. They
were Albertus Magnus, the teacher of the other two, Thomas Aquinas and
Roger Bacon. All three of them were together at the University of Paris
shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century. Anyone who wants to
know anything about the attitude of mind of the medieval universities,
their professors and students, and of all the intellectual world of the
time towards science and observation and experiment, should read the
books of these men. Any other mode of getting at any knowledge of the
real significance of the science of this time is mere pretence. These
constitute the documents behind any scientific history of the
development of science at this time.
It is extremely interesting to see the attitude of these men with regard
to authority. In Albert's tenth book (of his "Summa"), in which he
catalogues and describes all the trees, plants, and herbs known in his
time, he observes: "All that is here set down is the result of our own
experience, or has been borrowed from authors whom we know to have
written what their personal experience has confirmed; for in these
matters experience alone can be of certainty." In his impressive Latin
phrase "_experimentum solum certificat in talibus_." With regard to the
study of nature in general he was quite as emphatic. He was a theologian
as well as a scientist, yet in his treatise on "The Heavens and the
Earth" he declared that "in studying nature we have not to inquire how
God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work
miracles and thereby show forth His power. We have rather to inquire
what nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass."[37]
Just as striking quotations on this subject might be made from Roger
Bacon. Indeed, Bacon was quite impatient with the scholars around him
who talked over-much, did not observe enough, depended to excess on
authority, and in general did as mediocre scholars always do, made much
fuss on second-hand information--plus some filmy speculations of their
own. Friar Bacon, however, had one great pupil whose work he thoroughly
appreciated because it exhibited the opposite qualities. This was
Petrus--we have come to know him as Peregrinus--whose observations on
magnetism have excited so much attention in recent years with the
republications of his epistle on the subject. It is really a monograph
on magnetism written in the thirteenth century. Roger Bacon's opinion of
it and of its author furnishes us the best possible index of his
attitude of mind towards observation and experiment in science.
I know of only one person who deserves praise for his work in
experimental philosophy for he does not care for the
discourses of men and their wordy warfare, but quietly and
diligently pursues the works of wisdom. Therefore what others
grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this man
contemplates in their brilliancy _because he is a master of
experiment_. Hence, he knows all of natural science whether
pertaining to medicine and alchemy, or to matters celestial or
terrestrial. He has worked diligently in the smelting of ores
as also in the working of minerals; he is thoroughly
acquainted with all sorts of arms and implements used in
military service and in hunting, besides which he is skilled
in agriculture and in the measurement of lands. It is
impossible to write a useful or correct treatise in
experimental philosophy without mentioning this man's name.
Moreover, he pursues knowledge for its own sake; for if he
wished to obtain royal favor, he could easily find sovereigns
who would honor and enrich him.
Similar expressions might readily be quoted from Thomas Aquinas, but his
works are so easy to secure and his whole attitude of mind so well
known, that it scarcely seems worth while taking space to do so. Aquinas
is still studied very faithfully in many universities, and within the
last few years one of his great text-books of philosophy has been
replaced in the curriculum of Oxford University, in which it occupied a
prominent position in the long ago, as a work that may be offered for
examination in the department of philosophy. It is with regard to him
particularly that there has been the greatest revulsion of feeling in
recent years and a recognition of the fact that here was a great thinker
familiar with all that was known in the physical sciences, and who had
this knowledge constantly in his mind when he drew his conclusions with
regard to philosophical and theological questions.
It used to be the fashion to make little of the medieval scholars for
the high estimation in which they held Aristotle. Occasionally even yet
one hears narrowly educated men, I am sorry to say much more frequently
scientific specialists than others, talk deprecatingly of this ardent
devotion to Aristotle. No one who knows anything about Aristotle ever
indulges in such an exhibition of ignorance of the realities of the
history of philosophy and science. To know Aristotle well is to think of
him as probably possessed of the greatest human mind that ever existed.
We do not need to go back to the Middle Ages to be confirmed in that
opinion. Modern scientists who know their science well, but who also
know Aristotle well, and who are ardent worshippers at his shrine, are
not hard to find. Romanes, the great English biologist of the end of the
nineteenth century, said: "It appears to me that there can be no
question that Aristotle stands forth not only as the greatest figure in
antiquity but as the greatest intellect that has ever appeared upon this
earth."
Before Romanes, George H. Lewes, in his interesting monograph in the
history of thought, "Aristotle, a Chapter in the History of Science," is
quite as complimentary to the great Greek thinker. We may say that Lewes
was by no means partial to Aristotle. Anything but inclined to accept
authority as of value in philosophy, he had been rendered impatient by
the fact that so much of the history of philosophy was dominated by
Aristotle, and it was only that the panegyric was forced from him by
careful study of all that the Stagirite wrote that he said: "History
gazed on him with wonder. His intellect was piercing and comprehensive;
his attainments surpassed those of every philosopher; his influence has
been excelled only by the founders of religion ... his vast and active
intelligence for twenty centuries held the world in awe."
Professor Osborn, whose scholarly study of the theory of evolution down
the ages "From the Greeks to Darwin" rather startled the world of
science by showing not only how old was a theory of evolution, but how
frequently it had been stated and how many of them anticipated phases of
our own thought in the matter, pays a high compliment to the great Greek
scientist. He says: "Aristotle clearly states and rejects a theory of
the origin of adaptive structures in animals altogether similar to that
of Darwin." He then quotes certain passages from Aristotle's "Physics,"
and says: "These passages seem to contain absolute evidence that
Aristotle had substantially the modern conception of the evolution of
life, from a primordial, soft mass of living matter to the most perfect
forms, and that even in these he believed that evolution was incomplete
for they were progressing to higher forms."
Modern French scientists are particularly laudatory in their estimation
of Aristotle. The group of biologists, Buffon, Cuvier, St. Hilaire, and
others who called world attention to French science and its attainments
about a century ago, are all of them on record in highest praise of
Aristotle. Cuvier said: "I cannot read his work without being ravished
with astonishment. It is impossible to conceive how a single man was
able to collect and compare the multitude of facts implied in the rules
and aphorisms contained in this book."
It is possible, however, to get opinions ardently laudatory of Aristotle
from the serious students of any nation, provided only they know their
Aristotle. Sir William Hamilton, the Scotch philosopher, said:
"Aristotle's seal is upon all the sciences, his speculations have
determined those of all subsequent thinkers." Hegel, the German
philosophic writer, is not less outspoken in his praise: "Aristotle
penetrated the whole universe of things and subjected them to
intelligence." Kant, who is often said to have influenced our modern
thinking more than any other in recent generations, has his compliment
for Aristotle. It relates particularly to that branch of philosophy with
which Kant had most occupied himself. The Koenigsberg philosopher said:
"Logic since Aristotle, like Geometry since Euclid, is a finished
science."
I do not want to tire you or I could quote many other authorities who
proclaim Aristotle the genius of the race. They would include poets like
Dante and Goethe, scholars like Cicero and Anthon, literary men like
Lessing and Reich and many others. The scholars of the Middle Ages, far
from condemnation for their devotion to Aristotle, deserve the highest
praise for it. If they had done nothing else but appreciate Aristotle as
our greatest modern scholars have done, that of itself would proclaim
their profound scholarship.