The great series of battles to which I next turn with you were fought
on those fields occupied by such sciences as Chemistry and Natural
Philosophy.
Even before these sciences were out of their childhood, while yet they
were tottering mainly toward childish objects and by childish steps,
the champions of that same old mistaken conception of rigid Scriptural
interpretation began the war. The catalogue of chemists and physicists
persecuted or thwarted would fill volumes.
The first entrance of these sciences, as a well-defined force, into
the modern world, began in the thirteenth century. But the thirteenth
century was marked by a revival of religious fervor; to this day the
greatest and best works of the cathedral-builders are memorials of its
depth and strength.
Out of this religious fervor naturally came a great growth of
theological thought and ecclesiastical power, and the spirit of inquiry
was soon obliged to take account of this influence.
First among the distinguished men who, in that century, laid
foundations for modern science, was Albert of Bollstadt, better known
as Albert the Great, the most renowned scholar of Germany.
Fettered though he was by the absurd methods of his time, led astray
as he was by the scholastic spirit, he had conceived ideas of better
methods and aims. His eye pierces the mists of scholasticism; he sees
the light, and draws the world toward it. He stands among the great
pioneers of modern physical and natural science. He aids in giving
foundations to botany and chemistry, and Humboldt finds in his works
the germ of the comprehensive science of physical geography.[87]
The conscience of the time, acting, as it supposed, in defense of
religion, brought out a missile which it hurled with deadly effect. You
see those mediæval scientific battle-fields strewed with such: it was
the charge of sorcery, of unlawful compact with the devil.
This missile was effective. You find it used against every great
investigator of Nature in those times and for centuries after. The list
of great men charged with magic, as given by Naudé, is astounding. It
includes every man of real mark, and the most thoughtful of the popes,
Sylvester II. (Gerbert), stands in the midst of them. It seemed to be
the received 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.[88]
This missile was hurled against Albert. He was condemned by
the authorities of the Dominican order, subjected to suspicion
and indignity, and only escaped persecution by yielding to the
ecclesiastical spirit of the time, and working mainly in theological
channels by scholastic methods. It was a sad loss to the earth; and
certainly, of all organizations that have reason to lament the pressure
of those ecclesiastical forces which turned Albert the Great from the
path of experimental philosophy, foremost of all in regret should be
the Christian Church, and especially the Roman branch of it. Had the
Church of the thirteenth century been so full of faith as to accept the
truths in natural science brought by Albert and his compeers, 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 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.
The next great man of that age whom the theological and ecclesiastical
forces of the time turn from the right path is Vincent of Beauvais.
Vincent devoted himself to the study of Nature in several of her most
interesting fields. To astronomy, mineralogy, botany, and chemistry,
he gave much thought; but especially did he devote himself to the
preparation of a full account of the universe. Had he taken the path
of experimental research, the world would have been enriched with most
precious discoveries; but the impulse followed by Albert of Bollstadt,
backed as it was by the whole ecclesiastical power of his time, was
too strong, and, in all the life-labor of Vincent, nothing appears of
any permanent value. He built a structure which careless observation
of facts, literal interpretation of Scripture, and theological
subtilizing, combined to make one of the most striking monuments of
human error.[89]
But the theological ecclesiastical spirit of the thirteenth century
gained its greatest victory in the work of the most renowned of all
thinkers of his time, St. Thomas Aquinas. In him was the theological
spirit of his age incarnate. Although he yielded somewhat, at one
period, to love of studies in natural science, it was he who finally
made that great treaty or compromise which for ages subjected science
entirely to theology. He it was whose thought reared the most enduring
barrier against those who, in that age and in succeeding ages, labored
to open for science the path by its own legitimate method toward its
own noble ends.
Through the earlier systems of philosophy as they were then known,
and through the earlier theologic thought, he had gone with great
labor and vigor; he had been a pupil of Albert of Bollstadt, and from
him had gained inspiration in science. All his mighty powers, thus
disciplined and cultured, he brought to bear in making a treaty or
truce, giving to theology the 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 Aquinas gave all his thoughts to bringing science again
under the sway of the theological bias, metaphysical methods, and
ecclesiastical control. He gave to the world a striking example of what
his method could be made to produce. In his commentary upon Aristotle's
treatise upon "Heaven and Earth" he illustrates all the evils of such
a combination of theological reasoning and literal interpretation of
the Scriptural with scientific facts as then understood, and it remains
to this day a prodigious monument to human genius and human folly.
The ecclesiastical power of the time hailed him as a deliverer; it
was claimed that striking miracles were vouchsafed, showing that the
blessing of Heaven rested upon his labors. Among the legends embodying
the Church spirit of that period 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 labor?" To this day the
greater ecclesiastical historians of the Roman Church, like the Abbé
Rohrbacher, and the minor historians of science, who find it convenient
to propitiate the Church, like Pouchet, dilate upon the glories of St.
Thomas Aquinas in thus making a treaty of alliance between religious
and scientific thought, and laying the foundations for a "sanctified
science." But the unprejudiced historian cannot indulge in this
enthusiastic view. The results both for the Church and for the progress
of science have been most unfortunate. It was a wretched step backward.
The first result of this great man's great compromise was to close that
new path in science which alone leads to discoveries of value--the
experimental method--and to reopen the 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.[90]
The path thus unfortunately opened by these strong men became the main
path in science for ages, and it led the world farther and farther
from any fruitful fact or hopeful method. Roger Bacon's investigations
were virtually forgotten; worthless mixtures of literal interpretation
of Scripture with imperfectly authenticated physical facts took their
place.
Every age since has been full of examples of this, but out of them I
will take just one; and it shall be no other than that Francis Bacon,
who, more than any other man, led the modern world out of the path
opened by Aquinas, and back into the path trod by Roger Bacon. 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,
that man whose boldness in thought 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 strength of the evil he did so much to
destroy.
The _Novum Organum_, considering the time when it came from his pen,
is doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in the history
of human thought. This treatise it was which showed the modern world
the way out of the scholastic method and reverence for dogma into the
experimental method and reverence for demonstrated fact. In the course
of 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. Early in his argument he says: "But the corruption
of philosophy from superstition and admixture of theology separates
altogether more widely, and introduces the greatest amount of evil,
both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." And a
little later he says: "Some moderns have indulged this vanity with
the greatest carelessness, and have endeavored to found a Natural
Philosophy on the first of Genesis and the Book of Job, and other
sacred Scriptures, so 'seeking the dead among the living.' And by so
much the more is this vanity to be restrained and coerced because their
expressions form an unwholesome mixture of things human and divine; not
merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical religion. And so it is very
salutary that, with due sobriety of mind, those things only be rendered
to faith which are faith's."[91] Still later, in his treatise, Bacon
returns to the charge yet more strongly. He says: "Nor is it to be
overlooked, that natural philosophy has in all ages had a troublesome
and stubborn adversary in superstition and the blind and immoderate
zeal for religion. Thus it has been among the Greeks, that they who
first proposed to the yet unprepared ears of men the natural causes of
lightning and tempests were condemned, on that head, for impiety toward
the gods; nor by some of the old fathers of the Christian religion
were those much better received, who laid it down from the most sure
demonstrations, such as no one in his senses could nowadays contradict,
that the earth is round, and asserted in consequence that there must be
antipodes. Furthermore, as things are now, the condition of discourses
on Nature is made severe and more rigorous in consequence of the
summaries and methods of scholastic theologians, who, while they have,
as far as they could, reduced theology to order, and have fashioned it
into the form of an art, have besides succeeded in mingling far more
than was right of the quarrelsome and thorny philosophy of Aristotle
with the body of religion."
"The fictions, too, of those who have not feared to deduce and confirm
from the principles and authority of philosophies the true Christian
religion, have the same tendency, though in a different way. These
celebrated the wedding of faith and sense, as though it were lawful,
with much pomp and solemnity, and soothed the minds of men with a
grateful variety of things, but, meanwhile, mingled the divine with
the human in ill-matched state. And in mixtures like this of theology
with natural philosophy, those things only which are now received in
philosophy are included; while novelties, though they be changes for
the better, are all banished and driven out."
And, again, Bacon says: "Lastly you may find, thanks to the
unskillfulness of some divines, the approach to any kind of philosophy,
however improved, entirely closed up. Some, indeed, in their simplicity
are rather afraid, lest perhaps a deeper inquiry into Nature should
penetrate beyond the allowed limits of sobriety." Still further on
Bacon penetrates into the very heart of the question in a vigorous way,
and says: "Others, more craftily, conjecture and consider that, if the
means be unknown, each single thing can be referred more easily to the
hand and rod of God--a matter, as they think, of very great importance
to religion: and this is nothing more nor less than wishing to _please
God by a lie_." And, finally, he says: "Whereas, if one considers the
matter rightly, natural philosophy is, after God's word, the surest
medicine for superstition, and also the most approved nourishment of
faith."[92]
No man who has thought much upon the annals of his race can, without
a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such inspired clearness
of insight and boldness of utterance. The first thought of the reader
is, that, of all men, this Francis Bacon is the most free from the
unfortunate bias he condemns. He certainly cannot be deluded into the
old path. But, as we go on through the treatise, we are surprised
to find that the strong arm of Aquinas had been stretched over the
intervening ages, and had laid hold upon this master-thinker of the
sixteenth century. Only a few chapters further along we find Bacon,
after alluding to the then recent voyage of Columbus, 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 it is
in the fates, i. e., in providence, that the circumnavigation of the
world, which through so many lengthy voyages seems to be entirely
complete or in course of completion, and the increase of science,
should happen in the same age."[93]
Here, then, we have this great man indulging in that very mixture of
literal Scriptural interpretation and scientific thought which he had
condemned, and therefrom evidently deducing the conclusion that these
great voyages and discoveries, which were the beginning of a new world
in thought and action, were the end of all things.
But in his great work on _The Advancement of Learning_ the firm grip
which the methods he condemned held upon him is shown yet more clearly.
In his first book he shows how "that excellent Book of Job, if it be
revolved with diligence, it will be found pregnant and swelling with
natural philosophy," and endeavors to show that the "roundness of the
world," the "fixing of the stars, ever standing at equal distance,"
the "depression of the southern pole," "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 Scriptural warrant most clearly are such as science has since
disproved. So, too, he says that Solomon was enabled by "donation of
God" in his proverbs "to compile a natural history of all verdure."[94]
Certainly no more striking examples of the strength of the evil which
he had all along been denouncing could be exhibited than these in his
own writings; after this we cease to wonder at his blindness to the
discoveries of Kopernik and the experiments of Gilbert.
I pass from the legions of those who from that day to this have
stumbled into similar errors by degrading our sacred volume into a
compendium of history or a text-book of science, and turn next to a
far more serious class of effects arising from the great mediæval
compromise between science and theology. We have considered the wrong
road into which so many master-spirits were led or driven; we will now
look at the war brought against those men of science who persevered in
the right road.
The first great thinker who, in spite of some stumbling into theologic
pitfalls, persevered in this true path was Roger Bacon. His life and
works seem until recently to have been generally misunderstood. He
has been ranked as a superstitious alchemist who stumbled upon some
inventions; but more recent investigation has revealed him to be one
of the great masters in human progress.
The advance of sound historical judgment seems likely to bring nearer
to equality the fame of the two who bear the name of Bacon. Bacon of
the chancellorship and the _Novum Organon_ may not wane; but Bacon
of the prison-cell and the _Opus Majus_ steadily approaches him in
brightness.[95]
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 philosophy and
in all sciences, and his knowledge was sound and exact. By him,
more than by any other man of the middle ages, was the world put on
the most fruitful paths of science--the paths which have led to the
most precious inventions. Among them are clocks, lenses, burning
specula, telescopes, which were given by him to the world, directly
or indirectly. In his writings are found formulæ for extracting
phosphorus, manganese, and bismuth. It is even claimed, with much
appearance of justice, that he investigated the power of steam. He
seems to have very nearly reached also some of the principal doctrines
of modern chemistry. But it should be borne in mind that his method
of investigation was even greater than these vast results. In the age
when metaphysical 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
experiment and braved all its risks. Few greater men have lived. As
we read the sketch given by Whewell of Bacon's process of reasoning
regarding the refraction of light, he seems fairly inspired.[96]
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 did it too
well. It was not that he disbelieved in Christianity; _that_ was never
charged against him. His orthodoxy was perfect. He was attacked and
condemned, in the words of his opponents, "_propter quasdam novitates
suspectas_."
He was attacked, first of all, with that goodly old 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.[97]
The most powerful protectors availed him little. His friend Guy Foulkes
having been made pope, Bacon was for a time shielded, but the fury
of the enemy was too strong. In an unpublished letter, Blackstone
declares that when, on one occasion, Bacon was about to perform a few
experiments for some friends, all Oxford was in an uproar. It was
believed that Satan was let loose. Everywhere were priests, fellows,
and students rushing about, their garments streaming in the wind, and
everywhere resounded the cry, "Down with the conjurer!" and this cry,
"Down with the conjurer!" resounded from cell to cell and hall to
hall.[98]
But the attack took a shape far more terrible. The two great religions
orders, Franciscan and Dominican, vied with each other in fighting the
new thought in chemistry and philosophy. St. Dominic, sincere as he
was, solemnly condemned research by experiment and observation. The
general of the Franciscan order took similar grounds.
In 1243 the Dominicans solemnly 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.[99] In 1278 the
authorities of the Franciscan order, assembled at Paris, solemnly
condemned Bacon's teachings.
Another weapon began to be used upon the battle-fields of that time
with much effect. The Arabs had made noble discoveries in science.
Averroès had, among many, divided the honors with St. Thomas Aquinas.
These facts gave the new missile: it was the epithet "Mahometan." This,
too, was flung with effect at Bacon.[100]
Bacon was at last conquered. He was imprisoned for fourteen years. At
the age of eighty years he was released from prison, but death alone
took 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!"
Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the
world had the world not refused 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, without doubt, be enjoying discoveries
which will not be reached before the twentieth century. Thousands of
precious lives shall be lost in this century, tens of thousands shall
suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of
discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken religious fight
against Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth.
In 1868 and 1869, sixty thousand children died in England and in Wales
of scarlet fever; probably nearly as many died in this country. 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, 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.[101]
But, despite the persecution of Bacon and the defection of those who
ought to have followed him, champions of natural science and the
experimental method arose from time to time during the succeeding
centuries. We know little of them personally. Our main knowledge of
their efforts is derived from the efforts of their opponents and
persecutors.
In 1317 Pope John XXII. issued his bull _Spondent Pariter_, nominally
leveled at the alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the
beginnings of the science of chemistry.
In 1380 Charles V. of France carried out the same policy, and even
forbade the possession of furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical
processes. Under this law the chemist John Barillon, for possessing
chemical furnaces and apparatus, was thrown into prison, and it was
only by the greatest effort that his life was saved.
In 1404 Henry IV. of England issued a decree of the same sort; and in
1418 the republic of Venice followed the example of pope and kings. But
champions of science still pressed on. Antonio de Dominis relinquishes
his archbishopric of Spalatro, investigates the phenomena of light, and
dies in the clutches of the Inquisition.[102]
Pierre de la Ramée stands up against Aristotelianism at Paris. A royal
edict, sought by the Church, stopped his teaching, and the massacre of
St. Bartholomew ended his life.
Somewhat later, John Baptist Porta began his investigations. Despite
many absurdities, his work was most fruitful. His book on meteorology
was the first in which sound ideas were broached. 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 all those
industries based upon the staining and coloring of glass and enamels;
and, last of all, he did much to change natural philosophy from a
"black art" to a vigorous open science. He encountered the same old
policy of conscientious men. The society founded by him for physical
research, "I Secreti," was broken up, and he was summoned to Rome and
censured.[103]
In 1624 some young chemists of Paris, having taught the experimental
method and cut loose from Aristotle, the Faculty of Theology besets the
Parliament of Paris, and the Parliament prohibits this new chemical
teaching under penalty of death.[104]
The war went on in Italy. In 1657 occurred the first sitting of the
_Accademia del Cimento_, at Florence, under the presidency of Prince
Leopold dei Medici. This Academy promised great things for science. It
was open to all talent. Its only fundamental law was "the repudiation
of any favorite system or sect of philosophy, and the obligation to
investigate Nature by the pure light of experiment."
The new Academy entered into scientific investigations with energy;
Borelli in mathematics, Redi in natural history, and many others,
pushed on the boundaries of knowledge. Heat, light, magnetism,
electricity, projectiles, digestion, 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.[105]
Still later, just before the great discoveries by Stahl, we find his
predecessor Becher opposed with the following syllogism: "King Solomon,
according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven and
earth. But King Solomon sent his vessels to Ophir to seek gold, and
he levied taxes upon his subjects. Now, if Solomon had known anything
about alchemy, he would not have done this; therefore Solomon did
not know anything about alchemy (or chemistry in the form which then
existed); therefore alchemy (or chemistry) has no reality or truth."
And we find that Becher is absolutely turned away from his labors,
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.[106]
And, in our time, Joseph de Maistre, uttering his hatred of physical
sciences, declaring that man has paid too dearly for them, asserting
that they must be subjected to theology, likening them to fire--good
when confined, but fearful when scattered about--this brilliant thinker
has been the centre of a great opposing camp, an army of good men who
cannot relinquish the idea that the Bible is a text-book of science.